Home/2021
Archive

Year 2021

1,767 articles published in 2021.

Performance — New Year, New Beginnings: Smashing Workshops & Audits — Smashing Magazine

New Year, New Beginnings: Smashing Workshops & Audits — Smashing Magazine

Catch up on what’s been cookin’ at Smashing and explore some of the most popular community resources featured in our newsletter over the past few weeks. Spoiler: there are also new workshops, front-end & UX audits and truly smashing podcast episodes. This article covers pretty much everything you need to build fast experiences on the web today — from metrics to tooling and front-end techniques and

ILIris LjesnjaninIris Ljesnjanin·January 15, 2021Performance
Design & UX — Web Design Trends 2021: The Report — Smashing Magazine

Web Design Trends 2021: The Report — Smashing Magazine

2020 was anything but normal. The world has changed, and so has our role as designers. We never know what the future will bring, but ultimately we shape it, and we can contribute more positive change to the world than we often think we can. Consumers had their lives shaken up and many businesses experienced new challenges as well as opportunities thanks to the novel events of the year.

SSSuzanne ScaccaSuzanne Scacca·January 15, 2021Design & UX
Frontend — Integrating A Dialogflow Agent Into A React Application — Smashing Magazine

Integrating A Dialogflow Agent Into A React Application — Smashing Magazine

When it comes to building a conversational chat assistant that could be used at a small or enterprise level, Dialogflow would most likely be one of the first options that would show up in your search list — and why wouldn’t it? It offers several features such as the ability to process audio and text inputs, provide dynamic responses using custom webhooks, connect to millions of Google-enabled devi

NVNwani VictoryNwani Victory·January 14, 2021Frontend
Engineering — A Day in the Life of a Backend Platform Engineer at Slack Pune

A Day in the Life of a Backend Platform Engineer at Slack Pune

5:25 am First alarm rings. *Snooze.* 6:30 am The final alarm rings and I know this is the last one, so I get up and immediately start making my bed. I open the curtains to take a look at the weather and the early morning light. I walk to my balcony and stand there to…

KPKalpak Pingle·January 13, 2021Engineering
Security — Untangling Compliance: Working Toward a Global Framework

Untangling Compliance: Working Toward a Global Framework

As part of Cloudflare’s recent Privacy Week we hosted a series of fireside chats on security, privacy, and compliance. Many of these conversations touched on the intricate legal debate being held in Europe around data sovereignty. Here are some of the highlights.

JKJason KincaidJason Kincaid·January 11, 2021Security
Frontend — Let's Bring Spacer GIFs Back!

Let's Bring Spacer GIFs Back!

The 90s web gave us many delightful things: web rings, guestbooks, “under construction” animations, and spacer GIFs. In this article, we'll see how I use a Spacer component to solve common layout problems, and why it's often a great tool for the job in the modern web.

JWJosh W. Comeau·January 11, 2021Frontend
Engineering — Painters Tape and Fault Tolerance

Painters Tape and Fault Tolerance

One of my favorite things in the world is painters tape (also called masking tape). It seems like something silly: some tape you put on a wall when you’re painting to avoid getting paint on the wall. The tape doesn’t have a strong adhesive, so it can be pulled back off the wall without damaging it.

CCChris Coyier·January 8, 2021Engineering
Design & UX — Svelte and Spring Animations

Svelte and Spring Animations

Spring animations are a wonderful way to make UI interactions come to life. Rather than merely changing a property at a constant rate over a period of time,

ARAdam RackisAdam Rackis·January 8, 2021Design & UX
Career & Teams — Apache Beam for Search: Getting Started by Hacking Time - Shopify

Apache Beam for Search: Getting Started by Hacking Time - Shopify

To create relevant search, processing clickstream data is key: you frequently want to promote search results that are being clicked on and purchased, and demote those things users don’t love. Typically search systems think of processing clickstream data as a batch job run over historical data, perhaps using a system like Spark. But on Shopify’s Discovery team, we ask the question: What if we could

SEShopify Engineering·January 8, 2021Career & Teams
Design & UX — Getting Started With The GetX Package In Flutter Applications — Smashing Magazine

Getting Started With The GetX Package In Flutter Applications — Smashing Magazine

GetX is an extra lightweight solution for state, navigation, and dependencies management for Flutter applications. Flutter is one of the fastest ways to build truly cross-platform native applications. It provides features allowing the developer to build a truly beautiful UI experience for their users, and in this article, Kelvin Omereshone will be looking at GetX’s benefits, features, and how to s

KOKelvin OmereshoneKelvin Omereshone·January 8, 2021Design & UX
Security — Ransom DDoS attacks target a Fortune Global 500 company

Ransom DDoS attacks target a Fortune Global 500 company

In late 2020, a major Fortune Global 500 company was targeted by a Ransom DDoS (RDDoS) attack by a group claiming to be the Lazarus Group. Cloudflare quickly onboarded them to the Magic Transit service and protected them against the lingering threat.

OOmerOmer·January 7, 2021Security
Engineering — How To Make More Money Selling Shopify Apps In 2021 — Smashing Magazine

How To Make More Money Selling Shopify Apps In 2021 — Smashing Magazine

Developing a Shopify app and being able to sell it are two different things. While you might be a very skilled app developer, that’s not always enough for Shopify merchants to decide to install a newly released and unreviewed app on their sites. If you want to give merchants a reason to install and use your Shopify app, there are four things you need to do.

SSSuzanne ScaccaSuzanne Scacca·January 7, 2021Engineering
Frontend — Styling Code In and Out of Blocks

Styling Code In and Out of Blocks

There is a <code> tag in HTML. I literally just used it to wrap that tag in the previous sentence — so meta. It is an inline-by-default element that

CCChris Coyier·January 6, 2021Frontend
Frontend — Whack-a-Mole: The CSS Edition

Whack-a-Mole: The CSS Edition

We’ve seen the checkbox hack and how it can be used to build a complete state machine in CSS. Today, we’ll take that line of thought a step further and build

WYWill YuWill Yu·January 6, 2021Frontend
SRE & Ops — GitHub Availability Report: December 2020

GitHub Availability Report: December 2020

In December, we experienced no incidents resulting in service downtime. This month’s GitHub Availability Report will provide a summary and follow-up details on how we addressed an incident mentioned in November’s report.

KBKeith BallingerKeith Ballinger·January 6, 2021SRE & Ops
SRE & Ops — Building On-Call Culture at GitHub

Building On-Call Culture at GitHub

GitHub’s engineering group moved from a monolithic, hero-based on-call rotation to a more balanced on-call culture in order to increase our on-call expertise and improve the experience for our customers.

MMMary Moore-SimmonsMary Moore-Simmons·January 6, 2021SRE & Ops
Frontend — Custom Properties as State

Custom Properties as State

Here's a fun idea from James Stanley: a CSS file (that presumably updates daily) containing CSS custom properties for "seasonal" colors (e.g. spring is

CCChris Coyier·January 5, 2021Frontend
Distributed — Sponsored Post: Bridgecrew, Toptal, IP2Location, Ipdata, StackHawk, InterviewCamp.io, Educative, Triplebyte, Stream, Fauna - High Scalability -

Sponsored Post: Bridgecrew, Toptal, IP2Location, Ipdata, StackHawk, InterviewCamp.io, Educative, Triplebyte, Stream, Fauna - High Scalability -

Who's Hiring? * Looking to rapidly hire Top Software Developers? Get Started with Toptal. Toptal will match you with top-quality, pre-screened freelance software developers that meet your project requirements. All in under 48 hours. Get started right away with a no risk trial. * InterviewCamp.io has hours of system design content. They also do live system design discussions every week. They break

HSHigh Scalability·January 5, 2021Distributed