November 14, 2018 — Ever since Pokémon Go brought augmented reality into consumers’ line of sight, marketers and developers have been looking for a way to hone AR’s power for their own purposes. If there ever was a time to jump on this game-changing bandwagon, it’s now. AR provides spatial and facial mapping technologies that will not only delight your users, but will improve the overall experience of interacting with your app’s brand. In this post Suzanne Scacca will provide you with examples of what’s being done in the AR space now and hopefully inspire your own efforts to bring this game-changing tech to your mobile app in the near future. Read more…

November 13, 2018 — Sending many transactional emails at once, if not architected properly, could become a bottleneck for the application and degrade the user experience. Part of the problem is connecting to the SMTP server from within the application, synchronously. In this article, Leonardo Losoviz will explore how to send emails from outside the application, asynchronously, using a combination of AWS S3, Lambda, and SES. Read more…

November 12, 2018 — WordPress has a few significant limitations — it requires time and coding skills to create a website. Building a website used to be a complex exercise only professionals could do, but the situation changed. Today, Nick Babich will review a tool that will allow us to work smarter. Imagine WordPress without design and technical limits. In this article, Nick reviews the Visual Composer Website Builder tool that helps simplify the process of page building in WordPress. Read more…

November 9, 2018 — Have you ever considered whether CSS Grid can actually replace the need for CSS frameworks or third-party component libraries? In doing so, Rachel Andrew discovered a range of reasons people use a third-party framework and the positive and negative things about doing so.  In this article, you will discover that the reasons for using frameworks are varied, and not simply centered around use of the grid system contained in that framework. We hope that by unpacking these reasons, Rachel can help you to make your own decision, in terms of what is best for the sites and applications that you are working on, and also for the team you work with. Read more…

November 8, 2018 — When creating a multi-step form in which a file is uploaded and manipulated, if the application is running on several servers behind a load balancer, then we need to make sure that the file is available all throughout the execution of the process, for whichever server handles the process at each step. In this article, Leonardo Losoviz will solve this issue by creating a repository accessible to all servers where to upload the files, based on AWS S3. Read more…

November 6, 2018 — In this tutorial, Alvin Wan will program three-dimensional objects and add simple interactions to these objects. Additionally, you can learn how to build a simple message passing system between clients and servers. He will specifically focus on point-and-click adventure games. Such games are a casual class of games; the goal is to point and click on objects in the scene, to finish a puzzle. You will build a simple version of such a game but in virtual reality. Read more…

November 6, 2018 — By creating understandable and tangible visuals, companies will decrease interdepartmental miscommunications and increase overall productivity. A storyboard is a collection of cells, either in a linear progression or mapped out from a central idea that tells a story. Storyboards are meant to be simple representations of a larger concept, and force both its creators and readers to break down large complex topics into simple step by step subsections. In this article, Joshua Bumcrot adresses anyone who wants to develop a product and improve internal communication. Read more…

November 5, 2018 — Animated GIFs are popular on the web for good reason. They provide more engagement than an ordinary image, while remaining more digestible compared to a typical video. However GIFs are a terrible format for storing video and are often huge in size leading to slow page load times and high data usage. With HTML5 video, you can reduce the size of GIF content by up to 98% while still retaining the unique qualities of the GIF format in the browser. Today, Ayo Isaiah will show you how to convert animated GIFs to video files and examine how to properly embed these video files on the web so that they act just like a GIF would. Read more…

November 2, 2018 — At Smashing Conferences, we don’t big up speakers to be Idols On A Pedestal — they’re developers just like the audience, who happen to have solved a problem that we think others face, so share that knowledge. In this post, Bruce Lawson brings you the newest member of the Smashing Team — Bruce Lawson — looks back on a successful Smashing Conf NY. Read more…

November 1, 2018 — A 404 page should do more than apologize for poor navigation on behalf of your website. There are some 404 pages that go above and beyond. Rather than the stark white of a standard 404 error page, these pages take an opportunity to speak to users in a more personal tone. Excellent 404 pages are exactly like getting an unexpected treat from a friendly face. In this article, Shelby Rogers will show you why making an effort with a 404 page could better your website’s chances of people coming back despite the inconvenience, and how to track those errors to reduce how often people see it. Read more…