1,379 articles from Smashing Magazine.
Google Analytics is often on a “need to know” basis, but why not flip the script? Paul Scanlon shares how he wrote a GitHub Action that queries Google Analytics to automatically generate and post a top ten page views report to Slack, making it incredibly easy to track page performance and share insights with your team.
Sticky positioning is one of those CSS features that’s pretty delicate and can be negated by a lot of things, so here’s another one to add to your mental catalog: Sticky elements don’t play nicely if they have to coordinate with other elements to make up a combined height, like `100vh`. Philip Braunen explores why this happens and presents a solution to fix it.
Designing for digital products requires a different mindset than traditional websites. It’s all about continuous adaptation, refining, and iterating as user behavior and needs evolve. Paul Boag reflects on the key differences, including how the frequency of usage impacts your design approach and what you can do about it.
Let’s get ready for September with a fresh collection of desktop wallpapers! Created with love by the community for the community, they come in versions with and without a calendar. Enjoy!
In the second part of this series, Joas Pambou aims to build a more advanced version of the previous application that performs conversational analyses on images or videos, much like a chatbot assistant. This means you can ask and learn more about your input content.
Want to create more randomized effects in your JavaScript code? The `Math.random()` method alone, with its limitations, won’t cut it for generating unique random numbers. Amejimaobari Ollornwi explains how to generate a series of unique random numbers using the `Set` object, how to use these random numbers as indexes for arrays, and explores some practical applications of randomization.
Finding the right typeface for a logo is a challenge and can be a very time-consuming process that requires both creativity and a practical approach. Levi Honing provides the essential background and tools to enhance your typography journey and apply this knowledge to your logo design. Let’s dive deep to learn how to create a logo that is not only expressive but also purposeful and well-thought-ou
Although JavaScript regexes used to be underpowered compared to other modern flavors, numerous improvements in recent years mean that’s no longer true. Steven Levithan evaluates the history and present state of regular expressions in JavaScript with tips to make your regexes more readable, maintainable, and resilient.
Discover effective pricing strategies for digital projects. Learn how to balance fixed pricing, time and materials, and value-based approaches while managing client expectations and scope creep.
Ever felt pressure to speed up your design process? Here’s how to address unrealistic expectations and foster a shared understanding with stakeholders, ensuring everyone is aligned on the path to a successful delivery. Part of [Smart Interface Design Patterns](https://smart-interface-design-patterns.com) by yours truly.
In this two-part series, Andrii Zhdan outlines common challenges faced at the start of a design career and offers advice to smooth your journey based on insights from his experience hiring designers. In Part 2, Andrii speaks about how you can grow faster in your brand-new junior UX job.
For teams working remotely across the globe or together in an office, as well as for any group of collaborating users, a scheduler can be a valuable tool indeed. In this post, you’ll find some of the best commercial web scheduler libraries (JavaScript based) with amazing UX and high efficiency that are currently available.
Have you ever wondered what happened after CSS3? It’s common knowledge that we never saw CSS4 come after it, yet we have a plethora of new features that have no similar way of defining when they were introduced. The W3C CSS-Next community group is actively searching for better approaches for how we describe the evolution of CSS over time and identify feature sets as effectively as we did with CSS3
In this two-part series, Andrii Zhdan outlines common challenges faced at the start of a design career and offers advice to smooth your journey based on insights from his experience hiring designers. Learn why mastering design tools is crucial, how to build a strong portfolio, and tips for acing your first interviews.
Handling translations for multilingual websites is famously difficult and, yet, crucial for many companies and organizations that serve a global audience. Thankfully, modern tooling abstracts away a great deal of the work, allowing for seamless translations that dynamically update the rendered content on a page, as demonstrated in this step-by-step tutorial.
Do you need a little inspiration boost? Well, then our new batch of desktop wallpapers might be for you. Designed by the community for the community, they come in versions with and without a calendar for August 2024. Enjoy!
Many UX professionals often find themselves working alone, and usually face more projects impacting user experience than they can handle. In this article, Paul Boag explains how UX teams can be transformed into a significant driver of customer-centric innovation within organizations.
Joas Pambou built an app that integrates vision language models (VLMs) and text-to-speech (TTS) AI technologies to describe images audibly with speech. This audio description tool can be a big help for people with sight challenges to understand what’s in an image. But how this does it even work? Joas explains how these AI systems work and their potential uses, including how he built the app and wa
WCAG provides guidance for making interactive elements more accessible by specifying minimum size requirements. In this article, Eric Bailey discusses the nuances of interactive element sizes and clarifies what it looks like to provide accessible interactive experiences using WCAG-compliant target sizes.
In today’s turbulent landscape of design, Penpot stands out with its commitment to open-source, free unlimited access, and its unique, robust features. An example could be its new components system that takes another leap forward in aligning design with code. Let
This in-depth guide takes you through the three crucial phases of conversational search, revealing how users express their needs, explore results, and refine their queries. Learn how AI agents can overcome communication barriers, personalize the search experience, and adapt to evolving user intent.
Today, UX design contributes to the problem of excessive consumption through persuasive e-commerce practices and designing for companies with linear and exploitative business models. Anna Rátkai explores practical steps we can take to reduce material consumption and the massive environmental impact that comes along with it by designing mindful shopping experiences.
Visualize the user experience with user journey maps. Here are some helpful templates, real-world applications, and insights on the importance of mapping both successful and unsuccessful touchpoints. Part of [Smart Interface Design Patterns](https://smart-interface-design-patterns.com) by yours truly.
Let’s welcome the new month with some fresh desktop wallpapers! Created by artists and designers from across the globe, they come in versions with and without a calendar for July 2024. Enjoy!
Interface copy plays a crucial role in the overall user experience, helping guide users smoothly, allowing them to navigate easily through the app, discover and start using product features, and more. In this article, you’ll find simple, practical tips and a checklist to help you create a clear and concise microcopy, ensuring a seamless user experience.
Gaining buy-in for accessibility can be challenging due to common myths and misunderstandings. For many, accessibility remains a big mystery. Here are some practical techniques for winning stakeholder support. Part of [Smart Interface Design Patterns](https://smart-interface-design-patterns.com) by yours truly.
The biggest mistake you can make in UX design is to launch a website or app and then walk away. Monitoring and improving after launch will benefit users and your metrics. Nothing will bring bigger gains.
Balancing the age-old simplicity of words on paper with the myriad creative possibilities of the web is a tension as old as the web itself. Leaning into that overlap can bring new dimensions not just to the things we write but also to how we write them.
Have you heard of the Screen Orientation API? What about the Device Orientation API, Vibration API, or the Contact Picker API? Juan Diego Rodriguez is interested in these under-the-radar web features and discusses how they can be used to create more usable and robust progressive web apps if and when they gain broader support.
Job openings typically cast a very restrictive frame for candidates, with long lists of expectations and requirements. But what if this narrow focus can overlook the value of “V”-shaped designers who excel by crossing boundaries, connecting dots, and innovating beyond rigid boxes?
Whether you want to take your user research skills to the next level, get better at UX writing, or stay up-to-date on the latest design trends, a newsletter is the perfect opportunity to get the best of the best resources delivered straight to your inbox on a regular basis. In this post, we highlight some design newsletters that you might want to consider subscribing to.
What are these CSS Container Style Queries, and why should you use them? Juan Diego Rodríguez delves deeply into style queries, and not at the syntax level, but at what exactly they are solving and what sort of use cases you would find yourselves reaching for them in your work if and when they gain browser support.
The 2-page login pattern is becoming pervasive. Here are the reasons behind this design choice and alternative solutions to create a more efficient and user-friendly authentication experience.
Kristian Mikhel covers various practical applications of scents in product experience, from immersive entertainment to healing spaces and medical appliances, and how designers can drive innovation across spheres and disciplines.
Do perfect Lighthouse scores mean the performance of your website is perfect? As it turns out, Lighthouse is influenced by a number of things that can be manipulated and bent to make sites seem more performant than they really are, as Salma Alam-Naylor demonstrates in several experiments.
The times for CSS have probably never been more exciting than today. In this quick read, we’ve got some useful CSS tips and techniques for you that you can apply to your work right away. Let’s dive deeper into self-modifying CSS variables, hanging punctuation, and more.
There’s more to achieving good UX than research and design. We need to effectively communicate our ideas to gain buy-in from key stakeholders. Victor covers how UX practitioners can harness the power of persuasion and other tactics from the field of communication when presenting research findings and design concepts to key stakeholders.
The web is still a young platform, and we’re only now beginning to recognize what “success” looks like for large projects. In his recent Smashing book, [Success at Scale](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/printed-books/success-at-scale/), Addy Osmani presents practical case studies featuring the web’s most renowned companies and their efforts to make big changes to existing apps and sites. In this
Let’s kick off June with some fresh inspiration! Artists and designers from across the globe once again tickled their creativity to celebrate the beginning of the new month with a collection of beautiful and unique wallpaper calendars.
What does it mean to learn the “basics”, or fundamentals, of front-end web development? Is starting with HTML and CSS still the best entry point to learn how to make websites and apps when we have a seemingly endless supply of frameworks? Geoff Graham thinks so and discusses why you might consider going “back to basics” to start or move forward in your career.
Imagine finally resolving never-ending discussions about UI decisions for good. Here are some practical examples of decision trees for UI components and how to use them effectively. An upcoming part of [Smart Interface Design Patterns](https://smart-interface-design-patterns.com).
Application frameworks have built whole ecosystems on top of them. Let’s take a closer look at serverless platforms such as Netlify’s [Platform Primitives](https://www.netlify.com/platform/primitives) and explore how they can increase our productivity with a serverless fullstack experience.
After years of relying on checkbox hacks to create a “switch” control for forms that toggle between two states, HTML may be gaining a native way to go about it by adding a `switch` attribute to checkbox inputs. Daniel Yuschick walks us through a first impression of switch controls and discusses current and ongoing considerations that need to be explored further before it is ready for prime time.
How can we get better at naming? This post is dedicated to naming conventions, tips, and real-world examples that help you name things in a robust and flexible way.
It’s easy to get lost in a sea of CSS frameworks and libraries, each promising easier styling and smoother layouts. Brecht De Ruyte demonstrates four CSS utility classes (plus a bonus) using techniques that allow them to be used practically anywhere you need a particular layout — be it Grid or Flexbox — with configurable options.
Should you hide or disable a feature? You’ve probably been there before. Here are some considerations for hiding versus disabling, along with possible alternatives to improve UX. An upcoming part of [Smart Interface Design Patterns](https://smart-interface-design-patterns.com).
Many organizations prioritize internal structures and services over customer-centricity, hindering effective decision-making. Through a case study, Talke Hoppmann-Walton advocates for a shift towards an outside-in perspective and proposes the use of a user segmentation matrix to foster alignment across departments and prioritize customer needs.
Juan Diego Rodriguez explains why media queries still occupy a vital role in responsive layouts; only they are now one tool in a larger toolbox with modern techniques that are best when used together.
Is there such a thing as harmony between designers and developers in the workplace, and if so, how can it be achieved? In this article, Chris Day explores the challenges of effective collaboration, outlines the key factors at play, and (hopefully!) empowers you to find the right solutions to help you and your team deliver to their full potential.
How do we conduct UX research when there is no or only limited access to users? Here are some workarounds to run UX research or make a strong case for it. An upcoming part of [Smart Interface Design Patterns](https://smart-interface-design-patterns.com).
Preethi Sam walks through an example that demonstrates where custom properties are more suitable than variables while showcasing the greater freedom and flexibility that custom properties provide for designing complex, refined animations.
In this comprehensive guide, Temani Afif explores different techniques for creating common shapes with the smallest and most flexible code possible.
React Server Components (RSCs) combine the best of client-side rendering, and author Lazar Nikolov thoroughly examines how we got here with a deep look at the impact that RSCs have on the page load timeline.
How do we conduct UX research when there is no or only limited access to users? Here are some workarounds to run UX research or make a strong case for it. An upcoming part of Smart Interface Design Patterns.
In this article, Eduard Kuric discusses mouse interaction data, what kind of magic can be done with it, and some of the hidden pitfalls to watch out for so you get a head start incorporating them in your solutions.
Amit Sheen demonstrates using `:has()` to apply styles conditionally when a certain `` in a `` element is chosen by the user and how we gain even more conditional styling capabilities when chaining `:has()` with other pseudo-classes, such as `:not()` — no JavaScript necessary.
May is almost here, so what better occasion could there be for some fresh and inspiring desktop wallpapers? Created with love by artists and designers from across the globe, the wallpapers in this post come in versions with and without a calendar. Enjoy!
Business acquisitions are common but often shrouded in mystery because they happen behind closed doors. In this article, Yaakov details the story of his company and the journey it took him on, shedding light on the process of selling a business and what he learned from the experience.
Free-tier pricing is a common marketing strategy. “Free” gets people in the door and allows them to settle in and see how things work. But, as Juan Diego Rodriguez explains, the practice of free *tiers* is often conflated with free *trials*. And while the distinction may be nuanced, the consequences of sunsetting free-tier pricing may be huge.
Conducting UX research that includes participants with a variety of disabilities is vital to building inclusive technology, but most prototypes used for testing are inaccessible. Rather than continuing to leave out feedback from disabled consumers, which ultimately leads to exclusive technology, researchers must get creative in their workarounds and be relentless in their efforts.
