The W3C celebrated its 25th anniversary on the 1st of October 2019. In this article, Rachel Andrew explains how the W3C works and shares her “Web Story” to explain why the Web Standards process is so vitally important for everyone to have an open web platform where they can share their stories and build awesome things for the web together.
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The web has seen an incredible evolution in the last decade: new HTML/CSS features, browser improvements, and design techniques. Ever since releasing Grid Inspector, the Firefox DevTools team has been inspired to build a new suite of tools to solve the problems of the modern web. In this article, Victoria Wang will tell you everything about all 7 tools and take a peek at potential future projects, with stories from the design process and practical steps for trying out each tool.
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PWAs are supposed to provide visitors with a better experience than a mobile website. But just because PWAs will use sticky navigation the way that native apps do, that doesn’t make them as easy to get around. If you’re worried that your PWA is going to be difficult to navigate without some guidance, put breadcrumbs to work. You can use them to improve navigation, readability, conversions, and more. Today, Suzanne Scacca is going to look at how to design breadcrumbs for PWAs and some interesting use cases where they come in handy.
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If you like writing object-oriented and easy-to-read code, then this article is for you. You’ll learn how to write your own plugin and why October may be a good choice for your next project. Today, Andriy Haydash aims to give you an overview of what to expect from the platform and give you a taste of it before you decide to commit to using it. Don’t be afraid to create a custom plugin for your project if you can’t find an existing one that fits your needs.
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Design systems can improve usability, but they can also limit creativity or fall out of sync with actual products. In this article, we’ll explore how designers and developers can create more robust design systems by building a culture of collaboration.
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By naming lines when setting up our CSS Grid layouts, we can tap into some interesting and useful features of Grid — features that become even more powerful when we introduce subgrids. In this article, Rachel Andrew is going to demonstrate an approach to this kind of editorial design, which builds on a few techniques. In addition to this being a nice way to name sections of your layout, this technique exposes a whole bunch of interesting things about Grid Layout which you may find useful in creating your own layout patterns.
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In this fifth installment of Inspired Design Decisions, Andy Clarke will teach you about Bea Feitler, who directed Harper’s Bazaar throughout the 1960s and has been described as “the pioneering female art director you’ve never heard of.” Andy will teach you about Feitler’s confident work and show you how to apply some of her design techniques to the work you make for the web. In this article, you’ll learn how to emphasize scale and maintain its contrast on even the smallest screens. Andy will teach you how to make confident color choices, and how to use pattern and texture to add depth to your designs.
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Speech-to-text promises to save time transcribing long audio sources like podcasts and interviews. However, the poor quality of the resulting transcription severely limits the technology’s present use cases. We attempt various methods to improve transcription quality, but ultimately the technology fails to accurately represent human speech. That said, its speed and low cost compared to manual transcription still leaves us with some interesting use cases. In this article, Philip Kiely will use speech-to-text to draft transcripts of podcasts and interviews for publication. He ’ll also evaluate the overall accuracy of these format-transformation technologies by running a few samples through round-trip transcriptions.
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Design is increasingly becoming more complex. Design processes require having a tight cross-functional collaboration between all teams involved in the creation of the product. Having a shared design language empowers teams to collaborate more effectively. That’s why many companies invest in design systems. But how can we ensure that a design system actually works for a product you’re working on and improves your team’s productivity? In this article, Nick Babich will try to find the qualities that make a design system good for your product development.
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We had a lovely time at SmashingConf Freiburg. In this post, Rachel Andrew wrappes up the event, including links to the video of all of the presentations, so you can relive what you enjoyed — or share in something of what you missed.
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