OAuth2 is the protocol that enables anyone to log in with their Facebook account. It powers the “Log in with Facebook” button in apps and on websites everywhere. In this article, Zack Grossbart will show you how “Log in with Facebook” works and will explain the protocol behind it all. He’ll look at two examples: why Spotify uses Facebook to let you log into the Spotify mobile app, and why Quora uses Google and Facebook to let you log into its website.
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Time to freshen up your desktop! Our monthly wallpapers challenge is an opportunity to let your ideas run wild and try something new, to indulge in a little project just for fun. This post features desktop wallpapers for May 2017, created by designers and artists from all across the globe. Each wallpaper comes in versions with and without a calendar and can be downloaded for free. You can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our Desktop Wallpaper Calendars 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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What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at.
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Sketch makes the day-to-day life of a user interface designer a lot better. Mundane little things such as measuring distances and sizes are now much easier and quicker. You can automate parts of your workflow and use real data in your Sketch designs. You can also organize your files more optimally, and more. If you’re a UI designer and are still using mostly Photoshop or Illustrator, Lachezar Petkov highly recommends you try Sketch. You might never want to look back!
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Moving from one image for all kinds of devices to the common one-size-per-form-factor approach is definitely a step in the right direction. The downside is that, from a performance perspective, the approach is too general. There is more juice to be squeezed. However, from a development and maintenance perspective, it might make sense because three image sizes, or breakpoints, are manageable. In this article, Jon Arne Sæterås will look closely at how well the one-size-per-form-factor approach really works and how you can use smart content delivery networks to improve image performance.
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Apple’s GameplayKit has several algorithms and data structures that make it easier to follow game development best practices. When you develop a game, you need to sprinkle conditionals everywhere. If Pac-Man eats a power pill, then ghosts should run away. GKRuleSystem, lets you build up complex conditional logic from smaller pieces. By structuring your code around it, you’ll create rules that are easier to change or reuse for new levels. In this article, we’re going to take typical game logic code and learn how to represent it as a rule system.
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As a designer, you will be facing more demands and opportunities to work with digital systems that embody machine learning. To have your say about how best to use it, you need a good understanding about its applications and related design patterns. In this article, Lassi Liikkanen illustrates the power of machine learning through the applications of detection, prediction and generation. To help you get started, he has included two non-technical questions that will help with assessing whether your task is ready to be learned by a machine.
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What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at.
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The beauty of Jekyll is in its simplicity. While WordPress can match many of the features of Jekyll, it often comes at the cost of complexity through extra plugins or infrastructure. In this article, Mike Neumegen will take on the role of a web developer building a website for a fictional law firm. WordPress is an obvious choice for a website like this, but is it the only tool we should consider? Let’s look at a completely different way of building a website, using Jekyll.
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Javier Cuello started using Sketch a few years ago, as a replacement for his favorite design software back then, Fireworks, which had been discontinued by Adobe — leaving a whole generation of designers broken-hearted. In this article, Javier will outline how to make use of symbols in Sketch in order to unleash their full potential, going from the most basic situations to some more advanced use cases. He’ll also include some tips and tricks that he has learned along the way.
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