The new Smashing Book #3 has finally arrived—freshly printed, neatly packed and ready to be shipped to you, our dear reader. We believe this is by far the best book we've produced so far. We are very proud and excited, and the initial verdict has been thoroughly positive, yet in the end it's up to you to decide how valuable and useful they really are. Get your books now!
In recent years, the Web has changed—a lot. The Web designer’s tools are now advanced, and browsers are highly capable. Designers have established clever coding and design techniques, and they face new challenges and are embracing new technologies. These changes are fundamental and require us to reconsider how we approach Web design. It’s time to rethink and reinvent: it is time to redesign the Web. The new Smashing books will change the way you design websites for the better.
We are very happy to present a sample chapter by Aarron Walter from the upcoming printed Smashing Book #3. In this chapter, Aarron explains how sharing our personalities can help us create lasting relationships with users, and how it can improve the bottom line of our business. The sample is also available for free download in PDF, EPUB and MobiPocket.—Editorial Team
Redesigning a website can be the seven-layer taco dip of hell. You’ve searched for inspiration on dozens of websites, captured screenshots, jotted down notes, consulted friends and colleagues, maybe even interviewed users. But despite your due diligence, your vision for the new website remains unclear.
I feel your pain, my friend. I have been there many times. A redesign brings with it the pressure to innovate, to reimagine, to make a better version of the website so that it lasts for years to come. It can be paralyzing.
Around the end of October last year, Vitaly Friedman of Smashing Magazine asked me if I would be interested in contributing to the new Smashing Book #3. There were a few options as to how I could contribute to it. But since my days were already filled until Summer 2012, it was clear to me that I could only find time to design the cover.
After some doubting on my end (as I was slightly concerned about the timing), I decided to take on the project. This was just too good an opportunity, as the briefing basically said "Do your thing. We want your design". It would have been foolish to refuse such a fun, creative challenge. In this post, I'd like to shed some light on the creative process behind the cover design and the rationale behind the cover design.
Two years ago, we launched the Smashing Email Newsletter. Today, we'd like to reflect on some of the greatest newsletter articles of the past year and celebrate this anniversary with our 100,000 readers with a fabulous book giveaway!
Back then, we planned to launch the Smashing Newsletter only if we had at least 10,001 subscribers who were interested in receiving the newsletter; and indeed, we managed to reach over 17,300 subscribers! Up to the present day, our newsletter is being sent out to more than 100,000 readers and we have promised ourselves to do our best to make their subscriptions worthwhile. Every two weeks, we hunt down obscure blogs, useful tools, valuable techniques as well as quality goodies, and present them to our readers in short bits and pieces in our newsletter issues.
Yes, the brand new Smashing Book #3 is coming. The printing press is warming up, the illustrations are finished, and the chapters are being proofread. This third book is the best printed book we’ve produced so far: it is a valuable, cutting-edge, high-quality printed book that any Web designer should have on their bookshelf.
This time, we’ve also prepared an extra book 3⅓ that offers even more exclusive content. And unlike its predecessors, the new Smashing Book #3 has a theme: Redesign. It is a professional guide on how to redesign websites and it also introduces a whole new mindset for progressive Web design. In this ever-changing Web design industry, the book challenges you to think differently about your work and will change the way you design websites forever.
As the end of the year approaches and the holidays near, many of you might already be pondering your new year's resolution for 2012. Before you get back to serious business in the new year, you should lean back, relax, spend some quality time with loved ones, and give a good book or eBook a closer look. After all, you don’t want to fall behind just as the year begins, do you? This is an occasion to catch up on developments in the fields of Web design, Web development and coding.
The last three Smashing Bundle Deals of the year.
For each of the last seven days, we have been offering a different special bundled deal. We hope many of you have found an appealing offer in there, and we hope we were able to inspire some of you to get your colleagues and office friends a resourceful printed book or an eBook for the new year. In this post we'd like to kindly inform you about the books we've prepared for the last three days of our Bundle Countdown to Christmas and we are confident that they will make your visit to the Smashing Shop worthwhile.
A couple of days ago, we launched a photo contest in which you could submit a photo of how upcoming holidays are celebrated in your city. For those who have participated, thank you for taking the time to shoot the photots and sending them to us.
We've received hundreds of pictures from all over the world and we have to be honest and say that it was really hard to pick only ten winners! All winners have been contacted. Of course, the owner of each photo owns all the copyrights.
Christmas is near and the spirits are rising but why not speed it all up a bit? To make the days prior to Christmas much more exciting, we'll provide you with something to look forward to each day for the next ten days. This year, we'd love to help you out with your Christmas presents. We have some truly smashing Christmas deals lined up for you, and with very affordable, special prices for our dear readers and customers.
We have put together extremely content-rich and valuable bundle deals at prices you have not seen at Smashing Magazine. Seize the opportunity while it lasts and if you are lucky, you might just win one out of the 10 Golden Tickets (read the post to find out more). Where’s the catch you ask? There is none — better yet: you can win a bundle deal of your choice daily with a little touch of whimsy fortune!
A brand new series on Smashing Magazine, where we highlight and curate the most interesting discussions, tools, techniques and articles that have been published recently and present them in a nice compact overview.
Find out the answer to the question of why reinventing the wheel is a good thing, why you should make a mobile friendly website first, how to make that website, how to serve a print style sheet and you’ll get an excellent lesson in out-of-the-box thinking and innovation.
Some very important browser stats, layout patterns for responsive designers, a new device class to keep an eye on, a great article on CSS performance, and the important fact that the Unix time stamp is more nerdy than ever these days.
An experiment with fonts, lasers, node and sockets, a presentation about boring CSS, type news, JavaScript opinions, a crazy animation, and more.
Get Your Smashing Book #3! This book is the best printed book we've produced so far: it is a valuable, cutting-edge, high-quality book that any Web designer should have on their bookshelf. Get your book now: printed or eBook!
This position will be responsible for the management of the billing and collection activities of the Company. This role includes client implementations, invoice and…
We’re looking for a passionate UI Designer to create human-friendly, clean and effective interfaces for our desktop software, the Thingiverse web community, and…
Free eBook: "Best of Smashing Magazine" We've got a gift for you! To celebrate our birthday, we've released a free eBook with best articles published here on Smashing Magazine over all these years. In PDF, ePUB and Mobi. Get it now for free!
CAPTCHAs, or Completely Automated Public Turing Tests to Tell Computers and Humans Apart, exist to ensure that user input has not been generated by a computer. These peculiar puzzles are commonly used on the Web to protect registration and comment forms from spam. Read more...
In one of his recent presentations, Frans Johansson explained why groundbreaking innovators generate and execute far more ideas than their counterparts. After watching his presentation, my thoughts began to surface about how meaningful the presentation was regardless of a persons industry, culture, field or discipline. Read more...
You know that we have a traditional habit of regularly researching the latest resources, tools and services out there on the Web, as productivity is a crucial asset of professional Web designers and developers. We could, and should, all integrate workflow optimization into our working practices. Read more...
