June 8, 2016 — Simple design is hard, since it requires much more thought and inspiration. Colors play a major role, and today Vitaly Friedman would like to show you a couple of illustrations that may motivate you to try out some new color combinations and techniques. From 3D illustrations to artwork created with ink and watercolors, Vitaly is sure there’s something that’ll spark your inspiration. Be warned though, some of them may even give you wanderlust from just looking at them. Read more…

June 6, 2016 — Passwords are written off as inconvenient and unavoidable, but due to a combination of sensors, encryption and seasoned technology users, authentication is taking on new (and exciting) forms. In this article, Drew Thomas will show you that it’s OK to rethink common password habits, and it’s acceptable to use common sense and due diligence to create usable, secure and error-free authentication – passwords or otherwise. Most other interaction patterns have been updated over time, but no one wants to mess with password authentication. It’s time to change that! Read more…

June 3, 2016 — 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. Read more…

June 2, 2016 — In this article, Luca Leone and Anders Schmidt Hansen will investigate an alternative to the classic “pages and links” paradigm, a model dubbed “zoom navigation.” Perhaps the reason why zooming interfaces are rare is that traditional HTML linking quickly became the dominant navigation paradigm, and zooming navigation presented problems of implementation, but we have good reasons now in a multi-device world to give zooming navigation another chance and to experiment with ideas and implementations. At the end of the article, they will introduce some prototypes and discuss their technical implementations. Read more…

June 1, 2016 — BEM has been an absolute lifesaver for me in my effort to create applications in a modular, component-driven way. David Berner has been using it for nearly three years now, and the problems above are the few stumbling blocks he’s hit along the way. This article aims to be useful for people who are already BEM enthusiasts and wish to use it more effectively or people who are curious to learn more about it. Read more…

May 31, 2016 — This creativity mission has been going on for eight years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed to it and who are still enthusiastically continuing to do so each month. We give all artists the full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience throughout their works. This is why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us, but rather designed from scratch by the artists themselves. It’s time to give your desktop a makeover! Read more…

May 30, 2016 — When we design responsive websites, we tend to see responsive design merely as a collection of slightly differently sized rectangles, with a slightly different layout, sometimes with slightly different content poured into them. In this article, Vitaly Friedman features some of the slightly more obscure design patterns, such as responsive car-builder interfaces, mega dropdown navigation, content grids, maps and charts, as well as responsive art direction. Read more…

May 27, 2016 — 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. Read more…

May 27, 2016 — The WordPress server stack has had to evolve over the years to keep up with this need for speed, therefore WordPress server stack looks quite different today than it did a few years ago. To better understand it, Carl Alexander is going to explore this new stack in detail. You’ll see how the various pieces fit together to make a WordPress website fast.Today marks a special day for WordPress. Powering many websites (and yes, Smashing Magazine is one of them), it celebrates its 13th birthday today. Happy birthday, dear WordPress! Here’s to many more! Read more…

May 26, 2016 — From coworking spaces geared to nurturing the next generation of tech unicorns to boutique offerings, coffee shops, amazing workshops, art galleries and even a beach locale, Gemma Church has scoured a hundred coworking spaces across the world. Coworking spaces allow freelancers, small business owners and independent workers to rent a working area that is shared with others. The setup is usually more casual than the fixed rental agreement you would get in a dedicated office space. Read more…