You know, we use ad-blockers as well. We gotta keep those servers running though.
Did you know that we publish useful books and run
friendly conferences — crafted for pros like
yourself? E.g. our upcoming SmashingConf Barcelona,
dedicated to smart front-end techniques and design patterns.
Some things are either on or off and, when those things aren’t on (or off), they are invariably off (or on). The concept is so rudimentary that I’ve only complicated it by trying to explain it, yet on/off switches (or toggle buttons) are not all alike. Although their purpose is simple, their applications and forms vary greatly.
In this inaugural post, I’ll be exploring what it takes to make toggle buttons inclusive. As with any component, there’s no one way to go about this, especially when such controls are examined under different contexts. However, there’s certainly plenty to forget to do or to otherwise screw up, so let’s try to avoid any of that.
If you've ever tried to implement a bulletproof, good-looking file uploader, you might have encountered an issue: uploading an entire folder or folders of files is usually quite a hassle, as files in each folder have to be selected manually. And then some folders might contain sub-folders as well.
Well, we can use webkitdirectory, a non-standard attribute that allows users to pick a directory via a file input. Currently supported in Chrome, Firefox and Edge.
Words are the primary component of content for the web. However, until a short while ago, all we had at our disposal were but a few system fonts. Adding to that, those system typefaces weren’t necessarily coherent from operating system to operating system (OS).
Fortunately, Windows, macOS and Linux made up font-wise, and since then, all modern fonts have been compatible across those OS’. There’s no question, the future of web typography looks promising.
Editor’s Note: Welcome to this month’s web development update. It’s actually the first one that we publish, and from now on, Anselm will summarize the most important things that happened over the past month in one handy list for you. So that you’re always up-to-date of what’s going on in the web community. Enjoy!
Today, I’d like to begin this update with a question I’m asking myself quite often, and that was fueled by the things I read lately: Where do we see our responsibility, where do we see other people’s responsibilities? And how do companies fit in here?
We love exploring opportunities. While many of us are quite familiar with publications and events surrounding us, we often lack the global perspective on what's happening in the web industry across the world. For example, do you know what the state of web design in Singapore is? What about front-end events in Kuala Lumpur? What about the acceptance of UX-driven processes in Hong Kong? That's exactly what we want to find out!
For that reason, we're happy to have teamed up with our friends at Mozilla for the Developer Roadshow Asia, so we can connect and learn from designers and developers in southeastern Asia. Together, we're planning on organizing a series of informal, free meetup-style events for people who build for the web. On September 19th to 25th, folks from around the globe will be getting together in Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Hong Kong. Do join us, won't you?
User interface design has changed dramatically in the last few years, as traditional computers have ceded dominance to smaller screens, including tablets, mobile phones, smartwatches and more.
As the craft has evolved, so has its toolset; and from one app to rule them all — looking at you, Photoshop! — we have gotten to a point where it seems like a new contender among UI design tools crops up every month. And I have to admit that many of the new UI design tools look pretty good and promising.
If you’re stuck in a job you hate and have dreams of becoming a designer and working in a creative role that fills you with excitement daily, the road to entering this completely new industry can feel daunting.
Making a major career shift late in life to follow your passion is scary. Not only is it sometimes difficult to know where to start to learn about an expansive field like design, but it can also feel risky, especially if you’re working a secure job.
Design doesn’t scale as cleanly as engineering. It’s not enough that each element and page is consistent with each other — the much bigger challenge lies in keeping the sum of the parts intact, too. And accomplishing that with a lot of designers involved in the same project.
If you’re working in a growing startup or a large corporation, you probably know the issues that come with this: The big-picture falls from view easily as everyone is focusing on the details they are responsible for, and conceptions about the vision of the design might be interpreted differently, too. What we need is a set of best practices to remove this friction and make the process smoother. A strategy to scale design without hurting it.
The way people consume information is constantly evolving. As web designers and developers, we keep up with all of the different screen shapes and sizes, learning to create beautiful, flexible software. Yet most of the available tools still don’t reflect the nature and diversity of the platform we’re building for: the browser.
When I was making my first responsive website in 2012, I quickly realized how inefficient and time-consuming the constant browser window resizing was. I had just moved from Estonia to Australia, and with a newborn, time was very much a precious resource.
Layout on the web has always been tricky, but with CSS Grid being now supported in all major browsers, most of the hacks that helped to achieve complex layouts have become obsolete. Firefox even has a CSS Grid Inspector built in, so that there’s nothing to hold you back from making even the most challenging flexible layout reality.
To explore the possibilities and features of CSS Grid together, we’d love to invite you to a little contest. Because there’s nothing better to completely grasp a new technology as getting your hands dirty and playing with it, right?
We should always look for opportunities to grow and improve. Retrospectives and reflections allow you to codify what you’ve learned from experience, to document mistakes and avoid future ones, and to increase your potential to grow in the future.
Agile methodologies typically include time for retrospectives throughout a project. Regardless of your methodology, all teams would benefit from having a retrospective at the conclusion of a project.
Recently, there has been a proliferation of virtual reality (VR) web browsers and VR capabilities added to traditional browsers. In this article, we’ll look at the state of browsers in VR and the state of VR on the web via the WebVR APIs.
The web community has experimented with VR before, with VRML, but now WebVR takes a new approach to VR, one more suited to the modern web. We've accelerated 3D on the web since 2011 with the release of WebGL. Now the web can handle VR thanks to new web APIs that take advantage of VR hardware using WebGL.
