Eleventy (aka 11ty) is rising in the ranks among static site generators. This Node-based builder is attractive due to its zero-config starting point, purely static output, and ease of achieving the coveted top Lighthouse performance score of four perfect 100s. Let’s dive into what else makes it unique, and learn about some essential concepts to help you successfully get started.
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One of the drivers of the popularity of headless options is that expectations for the quality of user experience are constantly going up. We have a wealth of tools to help developers build things fast so results are expected quickly. Going headless lets your team take full control of the user experience instead of wrestling with a large tool that doesn’t do quite what you wanted. In this article, Aaron Hans will explore what headless means, use cases for it, and how to decide if headless is a good fit for you.
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In a new short series of posts, we highlight some of the useful tools and techniques for developers and designers. Recently we’ve covered CSS Auditing Tools and CSS Generators, and this time we look into reliable accessible components: from tabs and tables to toggles and tooltips. We sincerely hope that these tools and techniques will prove to be useful in your day-to-day work — and most importantly help you avoid some time-consuming, routine tasks.
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Wondering what’s happenin’ at Smashing? Well, we’ve been busy. Here’s a little story of how we removed floating labels, improved performance on mobile, and launched a new series of articles. Oh, and how you can contribute to Smashing, too.
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The secret to growing a successful web design business is thinking of design as a service, not a product. When you focus on recurring revenue and sell to one targeted niche, you can grow a business faster than ever. In this two-part series, Stephen Roe shares the agency growth lessons we’ve learned. In this first part, we break down the pricing model that’s worked best for us and explain how to leverage it in your business. In the next article, we’ll share proven sales techniques you can use as you scale.
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As Flutter keeps evolving, there are more and more things we can do with it, but it’s still not reasonable to say that Flutter can be used for any app development project of any kind. Flutter has been transitioning from a cross-platform mobile development SDK for Android/iOS into a tool that allows you to run the same code natively in a browser on Windows, Linux and macOS. With Flutter 2, non-mobile Flutter development is starting to become more viable.
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How do we know which patterns are good, better, best when it comes to accessibility? Is it better to use an established pattern/library or create new ones? With the myriad of choices available, we can quickly become caught up in a web of confusion on this topic. In this article, Carie Fisher will attempt to untangle the complex world of accessible patterns — one step at a time. She will kick things off by reviewing current accessible patterns and libraries, then you will consider your general pattern needs and potential restrictions, and lastly, she will walk you through a series of critical thinking exercises to learn how to better evaluate patterns for accessibility.
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In a new short series of posts, we highlight some of the useful tools and techniques for developers and designers. This time Iris Lješnjanin brings you CSS Generators: from CSS shadows to easing gradients to CSS overlays to CSS doodles.
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We all benefit when we work to increase the overall UX maturity of our organizations. If we wish to meaningfully improve our UX practice, it is critical we look for opportunities to help grow the maturity of UX across our organization. We face a larger challenge when it comes to growing UX in a way that has impact across an organization than we do with growing our own UX skills. In this article, Victor Yocco explores the concept of UX maturity, and focuses on finding and utilizing UX champions, and demonstrating the return on investment or value of UX.
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Ideally, a CSS auditing tool would provide some insights about how heavily CSS implact rendering performance, and which operations lead to expensive layout recalculations. It could also highlight what properties don’t affect the rendering at all (like Firefox DevTools does it), and perhaps even suggest how to write slightly more efficient CSS selectors. In a new short series of posts, we highlight some of the useful tools and techniques for developers and designers to get their work done better and faster. Starting out with a few tools for getting to the bottom of CSS.
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