This is not a regular Smashing article. But these aren’t regular times either. I was born and grew up in Minsk, Belarus. That’s where I spent nights playing Prince of Persia. That’s where I’d wait in front of a bakery nearby for the smell of freshly basked Narochansky bread. That’s also the place where our […]
READ MOREWe all need a little inspiration boost every now and again. Maybe your secret is to go for a walk, have a chat with a friend, or scroll through your favorite eye candy resources. Whatever it might be that helps you refuel your creative batteries, maybe our new collection of desktop wallpapers could help, too. […]
READ MOREIn theory, everybody has a relatively similar concept for what a “Design System” means, though nuances start showing up as we approach the real world. The target may still be the same, but different organizations will require diverse strategies to accomplish them. As with many complicated tasks in engineering and architecture, there is no silver […]
READ MOREHow would you measure performance? Sometimes it’s the amount of time an application takes from initial request to fully rendered. Other times it’s about how fast a task is performed. It may also be how long it takes for the user to get feedback on an action. Rest assured, all these definitions (and others) would […]
READ MOREWordPress 5.9 was released recently shipping with Full Site Editing (FSE), which enables using blocks to create the layout for any page in the website (as was already possible to write posts via the WordPress editor). Slowly but surely, blocks are becoming the main user interface for creating WordPress sites. However, FSE does not fully […]
READ MOREI work for Readymag, which makes a browser-based design tool that helps people create websites, portfolios, and all kinds of online publications, without coding. Many widgets are available in our tool, and the text widget is one of the most widely used. The text widget is a text-entry field where the user can style text […]
READ MOREIn this episode, we’re talking about Responsible JavaScript. What does it mean for code to be responsible, and how should we approach projects differently? I spoke to expert Jeremy Wagner to find out. Show Notes Responsible JavaScript website Buy the book from A Book Apart Jeremy’s personal website Jeremy on Twitter Weekly Update Fitts’ Law […]
READ MOREPicture this situation: You’re approaching a deadline fast, and you’re using every spare minute to achieve your goal of finishing this complex refactoring, with plenty of changes in your CSS files. You’re even working on the last steps during your bus ride. However, your local tests seem to fail every time, and you can’t get […]
READ MOREMarkdown is second nature for many of us. Looking back, I remember starting typing in Markdown not long after John Gruber released his first Perl-based parser back in 2004 after collaborating on the language with Aaron Swartz. Markdown’s syntax is intended for one purpose: to be used as a format for writing for the web.— […]
READ MOREInspiration can come from unexpected places — the conversations we had, the dots we’ve connected in our minds and the little things we’ve spotted somewhere. And while we sometimes need a good idea for a specific problem, at other times there’s nothing more precious than taking a step back from the task we’re working on […]
READ MOREMatt Mullenweg (creator of WordPress) has expressed interest in having the WordPress editor comply with the Block Protocol, a recently-released specification which aims to have “blocks” be portable across applications. When I learned about Matt’s interest, I got quite thrilled, since such a development could produce several positive consequences for WordPress and other actors too. […]
READ MOREVoice is a powerful tool that we can use to communicate with each other. Human conversations inspire product designers to create voice user interfaces (VUI), a next-generation of user interfaces that gives users the power to interact with machines using their natural language. For a long time, the idea of controlling a machine by simply […]
READ MOREAmid the KPIs and e-commerce and seemingly endless analytics, there are still plenty of sites embracing frivolity. Doesn’t it take the edge off to just have a little fun? The web can feel like a very businesslike place nowadays. Most places you go there seem to be legions of glossy products and unnervingly personalized ads […]
READ MOREWhen I started writing Touch Design for Mobile Interfaces, I would regularly find an interesting topic or tangent that led far into the weeds, and had to stop myself from pursuing it too far. I didn’t want to become a hermit who dies with a never completed fifteen-volume work on a constantly-shifting topic. But many […]
READ MOREIn 2016, I released the first version of the tool, then called not Statoscope, but Webpack Runtime Analyzer. That was a technical demo of another rempl tool made by Roman Dvornov. We wanted to provide a visual interface to analyze bundles in real-time. That is, you run the special tool in your browser, and it […]
READ MOREQR codes are a useful technology that simplify and enrich the customer journey. The technology is currently used almost everywhere: e-menus in restaurants, virtual business cards, customer feedback collection after food delivery, boarding passes at the airport. However, as with everything else, a business owner should consider several things when using this technology if they […]
READ MORELast week, we looked at the different benefits and costs of using frameworks, starting from the point of view of which core problems they’re trying to solve, focusing on declarative programming, data-binding, reactivity, lists and conditionals. Today, we’ll see whether an alternative can emerge from the web platform itself. Roll Your Own Framework? An outcome […]
READ MOREProjects built using JavaScript-based frameworks often ship large bundles of JavaScript that take time to download, parse and execute, blocking page render and user input in the process. This problem is more apparent on unreliable and slow networks and lower-end devices. In this article, we’re going to cover code-splitting best practices and showcase some examples […]
READ MOREThe COP26 climate conference has thrown into a sharp light the importance of reducing carbon emissions in every area of our lives. Everyone can play a role in this, including those of us working on the web. Measuring the carbon footprint of the web isn’t an exact science, but a report by the BBC in […]
READ MORETime flies… The first month of 2022 lies already behind us, and with February just around the corner, it’s time for some fresh inspiration. So how about some wallpapers to tickle your ideas? Well, we’ve got you covered. As every month since more than ten years already, artists and designers from across the globe once […]
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