The z-index property, despite all that’s written about it, is still widely misunderstood and mishandled. Stacking issues in a complex single-page web application can become a major pain. Adhering to some principles, however, we can easily avoid these issues. In this article, Pavel Pomerantsev will recap what z-index actually is and how you can stop guessing whether it might work in any specific case and start treating it just like any other convenient tool.
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Design systems have changed the way we design and build applications. They are quickly becoming a cornerstone of an organization’s digital product strategy. In this article, Nick Babich presents a tool that offers a ready-to-use design system that can be adapted to your individual needs: meet Indigo.Design. This tool attempts to solve this problem by introducing a unified platform for visual design, UX prototyping, code generation and app development. Using this platform increases the chances that you will create a design system that takes root and becomes an essential part of the organization.
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Design is a creative field where forms and space intermingle to lend us a variety of experiences. Whatever design we come across, our brains are hardwired to transform that piece into simpler components made up of basic shapes and forms that are at play with the spaces. When the elements are arranged in an orderly manner, the intelligent use of spaces draws our eye to the most noticeable space –be it positive or negative. As much as the positive space seems to dominate the negative counterpart, both are used in equilibrium to tell a harmonious, coherent, and a seamlessly complete story. But what kind of story do spaces tell in web design?
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As designers, we usually turn to different sources of inspiration, and, well, we’ve discovered one of the best ones: wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd.
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Has Generation Z been part of your discussions with web design clients? If not, then it’s time you factored it in. This next generation wasn’t caught between worlds the way many millennials were, which means they have a whole different set of expectations when it comes to the technology they interact with on a daily basis. As Gen Z gets older and their spending power becomes more obvious, your clients are going to need you to design their websites in a way that appeals to their specific demands. With this guide, Suzanne Scacca will show you how to do that.
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There are a few ways to align elements in CSS. In this article, Rachel Andrew explains what they are with some tips to help you remember which to use and why. She will take a look at the different alignment methods. Instead of providing a comprehensive guide to each, Rachel explain a few of the sticking points people have and point to more complete references for the properties and values. You can go a long way by understanding the fundamental things about how the methods behave, and then need a place to go look up the finer details in terms of how you achieve the precise layout that you want.
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It might feel like there are some things outside of your control as a web designer or developer. Like web hosting. But what if you had a say in it? Would you know how to best advise your clients on making the right choice for the future of their website? Today, we’re going to explore Plesk VPS hosting as an option. In the following article, Suzanne Scacca is going to show you why clients need the power of VPS hosting behind the websites you design for them. And why you — the administrator — need a tool like the Plesk control panel to manage it.
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There is no better way to understand data than by visualizing it with charts and diagrams. The JS community has some great open-source projects that make data visualization easier, however, there has not been a go-to solution for building real-time backends that can back these charts and make them real-time. With GraphQL (which has a well-defined spec for real-time subscriptions), we can get a real-time backend running within seconds and use it to power real-time charts. In this article, Rishichandra Wawhal will explain how to build real-time charts with open-source technologies apt for exactly this particular task.
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Art direction has been part of advertising and print design for over 100 years, but on the web art direction is rare and there have been few meaningful conversations about it. Art Direction for the Web by Andy Clarke changes that and explains art direction, what it means, why it matters, and who can do it. Jump to table of contents or pre-order the book right away. This is a book about why art direction matters and how you can art-direct compelling and effective experiences across devices and platforms.
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When we combine the nature of fallbacks, we can start to see how they might help us gather feedback. Feedback is the key to understanding whether what you’ve created is valuable or not. In order to have successful products, we need to understand our users and implement great feedback loops so that we can make good decisions and build great products. Today, Ben Christine will dive into some examples from the wild in which feedback loops are missing from popular fallbacks. Then, he will follow up with ideas of how that feedback loop might look and work in those fallbacks.
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