May 9, 2019 — Does the word “influencer” make you cringe? If you’re paying attention to the right ones (i.e. digital influencers), you’ll find that their websites actually have some very valuable lessons for web designers. In this article, Suzanne Scacca will show you some of the tricks they use to establish authority through design. This post is about giving your website the same kind of clout as a digital influencer — and using that perceived expert status to consistently maintain high levels of traffic, engagement and referrals. Read more…

May 8, 2019 — IoT is growing to include many devices with many owners. Web developers will be faced with the problem of finding ways to enable owners to interact with their devices. But, this problem gives rise to a great deal of business. In this article, Richard Leddy will explore some aspects of web page development for the Internet of Things (IoT) that are already in demand. This discussion delves into the interface requirements using Vue.js as a catalyst and illustrates one method of webpage to device communication out of many subsitutions. Read more…

May 7, 2019 — Software development and maintenance has, generally speaking, been a time-consuming and arduous process for developers and engineers who carry the brunt of the work. However, with the introduction of front-end-as-a-service, and a company like Mason pioneering the way, that could all change. In this article, Suzanne Scacca is going to give you a closer look at FEaaS, who it’s for and why empowering product and marketing teams with it is a big deal. Read more…

May 6, 2019 — In this article, you’ll learn how you can progressively replace your JavaScript-driven lazy loading with its native alternative — thanks to hybrid lazy loading. Read more…

May 3, 2019 — To make the best of SVG, it’s useful not only to learn its syntax but also to understand how SVG is generated by graphic design software. Let’s take a closer look at the process of generating SVG with popular design apps and how we can use them to our own advantage. In this post, Mikolaj Dobrucki will shed light on three of the most popular design tools: Adobe Illustrator, Sketch, and Figma. There are also other tools available supporting SVG that may have other functionalities and implement other solutions. This article should be enough to deal with the most common use cases. Read more…

May 2, 2019 — It’s essential to be ready to design for both visual and voice. Since prototyping for voice is new for many designers, it may be unclear as to where to start and what process to follow. Read more…

May 1, 2019 — The display specification is a very useful spec to understand as it underpins all of the different layout methods we have. Continuing a series on the display property in CSS, this time Rachel Andrew takes a look at the values which control box generation, for those times when you don’t want to generate a box at all. Read more…

April 30, 2019 — Artists and designers from across the globe once again got out their favorite tools and designed unique and inspiring wallpapers to welcome the new month. The wallpapers all come in versions with and without a calendar and can be downloaded for free. At the end of this post, we also collected some May favorites from past years’ wallpapers editions that are too good to gather dust somewhere down in the archives. Available with and without a calendar for May 2019. Enjoy! Read more…

April 30, 2019 — We had a wonderful time at the sold-out SmashingConf San Francisco! As always with any Smashing Conference, there were plenty of surprises! We had icecream and cookies, our amazing DJ Tobi Lessnow kept everyone well entertained between talks, and Vitaly opened the conference with just the right amount of balloons! In this article, Rachel Andrew rounds up all of the videos, photos, tweets and resources that were shared on- and offstage. Coming up next: SmashingConf Toronto. Read more…

April 29, 2019 — Design involves decisions, and those decisions are often flawed because our brains are wired for survival. The same brain features that literally helped us survive in the wild do not serve us well in the 21st-century workplace. In this article, Eric Olive will identify four decision-related traps that impede good design and offer techniques for avoiding these traps. These decision traps are based on research conducted by psychologists, neuroscientists, molecular biologists, and behavioral economists including several cited here. Read more…