Building real-time applications is hard. However, GraphQL is rapidly upending this status-quo. In three simple steps you can quickly wire-up a fully-functional real-time app, without getting mired in unnecessary details such as setting up a websocket connection. That right there is the power of community tooling backing an abstraction like GraphQL. In this article, Sandip Devarkonda will explore what GraphQL is, and then take it for a spin by building a poll app in which users can vote and on-screen aggregated results are updated in real time.
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WordPress has a brand new content editor called “Gutenberg” that is going to shape WordPress for years to come, and it should allow more designers and front-end developers into the ecosystem. This should be welcomed with open arms. Well, if and when it is fully accessible, anyway. In this article, Andy Bell explains why it’s a movement (not just a new editor) and what’s happened and how this sort of situation might be avoided by others in the future.
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Give yourself a break in 2019. There’s no need to master new design techniques; most of what was on trend this year is going to stay on trend next year. Instead, think about ways in which you can clean up your clients’ mobile websites and set a better standard for mobile-first design going forward. In this article, Suzanne Scacca is going to talk about the mobile design elements we’ve held onto for a little too long and what you should do about them going forward.
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Did you know that there are three brain networks that are involved in creativity? In this article, Susan Weinschenk explores what creativity is, the recent brain science on what is happening in your brain when you are being creative, and the role of creativity in UX design. Is creativity something you can just turn on? Are some people just creative and others aren’t? And if so, which one are you? Let’s explore.
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Caching delivers a faster response, and frees up resources in the server. When optimizing the speed of our websites from the server side, caching ranks among the most critical tasks to get just right. In this article, Leonardo Losoviz examines an architecture based on self-rendering components and SSR, how do we identify those sections of code that require user state, isolate them from the page, and make them be rendered on the client-side only?and analyzes how to implement it for WordPress sites through Gutenberg.
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A roundup of Advent Calendar sites of interest to web designers and developers. From accessibility to UX, coding challenges to Perl, there really is something for everyone this December. Today, Rachel Andrew brings you calendars which are true community efforts, often with the bulk of the work falling to an individual or tiny team, with no budget to pay authors and editors. So, please join us in supporting these efforts, share the articles that you enjoyed reading, and join the discussions respectfully. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, you can certainly learn a lot of new things over the next 24 days.
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December is here, so why not spread some holiday love across your devices — we’ve got some truly eye-catching wallpapers to sweeten the last days of the year. Remember that all images can be clicked on and lead to the preview of the wallpaper, and you can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our Desktop Wallpaper Calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?
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Using a Structured Content Management System (SCMS) can be a great way to free your content from a paradigm that begins to feel its age. In this article, Knut Melvær suggests some overarching strategies, with some concrete real-world examples on how to think about working with structured content. This is the guide Knut wished had the last couple of years when running projects with headless Content Management Systems (CMSs), and we hope it will be helpful to you!
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Throughout this tutorial, Ahmed Bouchefra introduces Angular Router and how you can use it to create client-side apps and Single Page Apps with routing and navigation. You will see how to use the Angular Router to add routing and navigation into our application. Also Ahmed will take a look at different concepts like the Router outlet, routes, and paths and we created a demo to practically show the different concepts. You can access the code from this repository.
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Progressive web applications (PWAs) are more of a methodology that involves a combination of technologies to make powerful web applications. In this article, Ankita Masand will look at the pain points of users who are browsing old non-PWA websites and the promise of PWAs to make the web great. You’ll learn most of the important technologies that make for cool PWAs, like service workers, web push notifications and IndexedDB.
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