Virtual reality is a new immersive medium for exploring content, whether that content is a film (Life of Pi), a game (Beat Saber) or a social experience (as depicted in Ready Player One). Despite its novelty, VR doesn’t require a drastically different toolset to design for — the same tools we use for web game development, 3D modeling, and others are all still applicable. In this tutorial, Alvin Wan leverages your familiarity with web development to get started with VR development.
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Writing for a publication such as Smashing Magazine can help to build your reputation as an expert. In this article, Editor in Chief Rachel Andrew is going to go through the process for pitching, heavily based on her own experience as a writer and as Editor in Chief of Smashing. However, She’s also taken a look at the guidelines for other publications in order to help you find the right places to pitch your article ideas.
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What happened in the web community in the last few weeks? The web is developing and changing so fast, and we need to acknowledge that we as individual persons can’t know and understand everything. And that’s fine. Choose what you want to do, set your priorities, and, most importantly of all, don’t hesitate to hire someone else for the things you can’t do on your own. In this article, Anselm has summarized the most important happenings in the web community that have taken place over the past few weeks in one handy list for you. Enjoy!
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Depending who you ask, you may hear that Gutenberg is the worst or the best thing that has happened to WordPress. But since its release 8 months ago, Gutenberg has been greatly improved, offering a user experience much richer than anything that was possible in WordPress. At the current pace of development, it’s only a matter of time until its most outstanding issues have been dealt with and the user experience becomes truly pleasant. In this article, Leonardo Losoviz will take a look at its latest developments, and where it is heading to.
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A series of interviews between Vitaly Friedman and speakers from the upcoming View Source conference in Amsterdam. Hear from Tejas Kumar, Sharell Bryant, Ali Spittel, Kenji Baheux, Jory Burson, Hui Jing Chen, Henri Helvetica, Elizabeth Sweeney, and Jeremy Keith. Today, Vitaly brings you a conversation with Kenji Baheux, a Product Manager at Google, working on Chrome/Web Platform, about the web in different parts of the world, differences between usage of the web, and what we need to be aware of when expanding to an unfamiliar market in India or Southeast Asia.
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You don’t have much time to capture the attention of visitors to your PWA. Rather than waste that time with an overcrowded hero image or, even worse, disappoint them with a lackluster design, get creative with what little space you have above-the-fold. One of the best sources of inspiration for this? Movie posters. In this article, Suzanne Scacca will look at some examples of good and bad movie posters and see what sort of lessons we can use to help you with your PWA hero design.
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The distributed team structure is known to offer many benefits for a company and its employees; however, this sort of work model also comes with its own unique set of obstacles. In 2018, Owl Labs found that 56% of the participating companies in their study adopted or allowed for some form of remote arrangement for its employees. While this organizational approach has revolutionized the way we perform our job functions, it’s also paved the way for new patterns to emerge in the way we interact with each other across the distance. In this article, Randy Tolentino will review how “remote soft-skills” can help with the challenge of building authentic connections with your distributed co-workers.
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Do you know the impact unused CSS has on performance? Spoiler: It’s a lot! In this article, Luke Harrison will explore a Sass-oriented solution for dealing with unused CSS, avoiding the need for complicated Node.js dependencies involving headless browsers, and DOM emulation. He will then touch upon some existing solution for removing it from stylesheets.
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It’s hard to capture the experience of being at a SmashingConf, however, Rachel Andrew brings you the videos from our Toronto event. They are available so that everyone can learn from the insights our speakers shared — many of them coding live on stage.
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In this third instalment of Inspired Design Decisions, Andy Clarke will teach you how to use frameworks to create layouts as engaging as in the well-known Ernest Journal. All it takes is an understanding of layout design and imagination. Curiosity keeps a creative mind open to new possibilities, and that’s what Ernest Journal magazine — the inspiration for this issue — is all about. Ernest Journal’s design is successful because although each article has its own distinctive elements which connect the visual style with the content, those articles use a consistent grid system and foundation styles.
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