Skilled UX design is aerodynamic. Any bumps on the way will drag the whole plane down. Designers need to cater to their users any chance they get, so don’t make them think any more than they have to. In this article, Danny Halarewich will share some tips to reduce cognitive overload, such as using a range of content types and structured page composition to avoid visual clutter, or to remove redundancies wherever you can. Also, keep an eye out for ways to minimize the number of steps users must take or the amount of effort they must expend.
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Traditionally, scaling was mostly relevant for server-side systems. As more and more users would use your application, you needed to make sure that you could add more servers to your cluster, that your database could be split across multiple servers, and so on. Due to rich web applications, scaling has become an important topic on the frontend. The frontend of a complex app needs to be able to handle a large number of users, developers and parts. In this article, Max Stoiber shares everything you need to now about React Boilerplate to get started.
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Let these designs shine on you with their smart details, fantastic textures, and well-chosen color palettes that will undoubtedly help you start the new week with your creativity freshly nurtured. There isn’t a magic formula to rely on. Luckily, this year’s summer vacation was fruitful in providing us with many visual stimuli to get the creative process going. Nothing but design goodness. So please lean back and soak it all in. Enjoy!
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Improving every tiny thing by 1% dramatically improves performance. This applies to what Marko Dugonjić did in the SGS project and its intricate navigation. By focusing on the finer details, improving each detail by a tiny bit, he significantly reduced the complexity of the navigation and improved loading times, while keeping the navigation appealing and engaging for users. No web project is ever truly complete; there are always a few more things on the to-do list. That’s perfectly fine, as long as you keep on testing, refining and providing the best experience for users.
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Not enough people know about the major advantages of web apps. They can replace all of the functions of native apps and websites at once. In this article, Ada Rose Cannon will show you some do’s and dont’s on how to make a progressive web app, as well as resources for further research. She’ll also go into the various components and support issues surrounding web apps. Although not every browser is friendly to them, there are still some compelling reasons to learn more about this technology.
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Today’s icon sets will come in handy forwWhatever project you may be working on. This exclusive icon pack was tirelessly crafted by the design team at Ecommerce Website Design, and come in various formats that can be used for personal as well as commercial purposes. It is licensed under under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. You may modify the size, color or shape of the icons. No attribution is required, however, reselling of bundles or individual pictograms is not cool. Please provide credits to the creators and link to the article in which this freebie was released if you would like to spread the word in blog posts or anywhere else.
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This week’s reading list consists of a lot of little, smart details that you can use on websites. From tweaking the user’s reading experience during page load to pure JavaScript functions and verifying the integrity of external assets. And finally, we see some articles on thinking differently about established working habits — be it working on AI without data or the virtue of not shipping a feature.
Please note that I’ll be on vacation for the next four weeks, so please don’t expect any new Web Development Reading List before October, 7th. Enjoy September, your work, your life!
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With a few additions, WordPress websites can accommodate a responsive image use case known as art direction. Art direction gives us the ability to design with images whose crop or composition changes at certain breakpoints. In this article, Laurie Laforest will show you how to set up a WordPress theme to support art direction in a simple manner. This method relies on WordPress’ standard administration interface as much as possible, and it requires only a single image to be uploaded.
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Each month we challenge you, the design community, to get your creative juices flowing and produce some inspirational and unique desktop wallpapers. The result is a collection of desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. All of them come in versions with and without a calendar and are free to download. A big thank-you to everyone who shared their artwork! Now, which one will make it to your desktop? Be sure to check out the icy winter wallpaper and our best of wallpaper collection.
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