Author Rachel Andrew

December 4, 2020 — Meet our new friendly online meet-up, Smashing Meets, with three wonderful speakers, the entire Smashing family and plenty of truly smashing cats. As always, free for Smashing Members. Read more…

November 2, 2020 — There is now a specification for native CSS masonry layout, as part of the Grid Layout spec. In this article, Rachel Andrew explains how it works with the help of a couple of demos you can try out in Firefox Nightly. Read more…

September 11, 2020 — This week we celebrate the 14th birthday of Smashing Magazine. We didn’t quite have the year that we planned though! I took a look back at some memories from this year and previous years — with the help of the team and some Smashing friends. Read more…

August 27, 2020 — The SmashingConf team had such fun at their first SmashingConf Live! event last week. In this post, editor-in-chief Rachel Andrew shares highlights and feedback from the online conference. Read more…

July 14, 2020 — We’re moving all of the 2020 conferences online. We hope this means that more of you can join us for these great line-ups! Read more…

July 13, 2020 — Rachel Andrew takes a look at a new effort to crowdfund the costs of implementing browser features. Read more…

July 7, 2020 — In this article, Rachel Andrew takes a look at some of the interesting CSS features that are making their way into browsers right now. Read more…

May 29, 2020 — In this post, Rachel Andrew looks back at our successful Smashing Meets and considers how we will take everything we learned to make our Smashing Live conference even better. Read more…

May 14, 2020 — Smashing Meets is a friendly, inclusive, online meetup for people who work on the web. We focus on front-end and UX, but cover all sorts of topics from performance to accessibility. We organize Smashing Meets together with some amazing communities from around the world. Read more…

April 30, 2020 — Our initial online workshops went so well, we have scheduled many more. Find out how what we learned from those first workshops and what we have coming up over the next two months. Read more…

March 30, 2020 — Announcing a set of checklists to help you create smart interface design patterns. Totally free if you sign up for our friendly newsletter. Read more…

March 23, 2020 — With so many people — including our workshop leaders — working from home, we thought we would bring our Smashing workshops from our home offices to yours. Read more…

March 12, 2020 — We are sad to have to reschedule SmashingConf SF, however we are working to find ways to be with our community virtually until we can all meet up again. Read more…

March 4, 2020 — Around the web and within the CSS Working Group, there has been some discussion about whether we should specify a version of CSS — perhaps naming it CSS4. In this article, Rachel Andrew rounds up some of the pros and cons of doing so, and asks for your feedback on the suggestion. Read more…

February 12, 2020 — In a new series, Rachel Andrew breaks down the CSS Grid Layout specification. This time, we take a look at how to use grid-template-areas to place items. Read more…

February 10, 2020 — SmashingConf is coming to Austin, and in this post, we bring you an interview with one of our speakers, Rémi Parmentier, who will be presenting on HTML email and aiming to solve all of your email creation woes. Read more…

February 3, 2020 — SmashingConf is coming to Austin, and in this post, we bring you an interview with one of our speakers, Zach Leatherman, who will be talking about type and font performance. Read more…

January 21, 2020 — SmashingConf is coming to Austin! In this post, Rachel Andrew gives you a rundown of what you can expect and shares a video interview with Miriam Suzanne who will be sharing the stage with the rest of the brilliant SmashingConf Austin speakers! Read more…

January 10, 2020 — In a new series, Rachel Andrew breaks down the CSS Grid Layout specification. This time, we take a look at how to use the grid lines to place items. Read more…

January 3, 2020 — In a new series, Rachel Andrew breaks down the CSS Grid Layout specification. This time, we take a detailed look at what happens when you create a grid container and the various properties that can be applied to the container to shape your grid. Read more…

December 31, 2019 — The Smashing Team looks back at 2019. It’s been a busy year with new team members, four conferences, two books, a print magazine, and many, many articles. Read more…

December 27, 2019 — The CSS contain property gives you a way to explain your layout to the browser, so performance optimizations can be made. However, it does come with some side effects in terms of your layout. Read more…

December 11, 2019 — A roundup of Advent Calendar sites of interest to web designers and developers. From accessibility to UX, coding challenges to Perl, there really is something for everyone this December. Read more…

November 29, 2019 — Rather than do a round-up of the best deals available this Black Friday, we decided to do a round-up of the best independent products and makers. If you have money to spend, why not send some of this to folk creating great stuff in our community. Read more…

November 14, 2019 — In these two videos (a webinar recorded for our Smashing Members and a presentation from SmashingConf Freiburg), you can discover all the tips and tricks you need to help you design HTML emails. Follow along as Rémi Parmentier shares what he knows about taming email clients. Read more…

November 12, 2019 — The video from SmashingConf New York is ready to share. This post rounds up the event with all the video, photos and memories of the fun we had together in New York. Read more…

November 1, 2019 — In this article, Rachel Andrew looks at some common layout patterns that we can’t yet do on the web and the CSS Specifications that might let us achieve them in the future. Read more…

October 11, 2019 — In this article, Rachel Andrew explains how the W3C works and shares her “Web Story” to explain why the Web Standards process is so vitally important for everyone to have an open web platform where they can share their stories and build awesome things for the web together. Read more…

October 4, 2019 — By naming lines when setting up our CSS Grid layouts, we can tap into some interesting and useful features of Grid — features that become even more powerful when we introduce subgrids. Read more…

October 1, 2019 — We had a lovely time at SmashingConf Freiburg. This post wraps up the event and also shares the video of all of the Freiburg presentations. Read more…

September 27, 2019 — It’s official! Next year, we’ll be organizing a SmashingConf in each of these cities: San Francisco, Freiburg, New York and Austin! We’re planning to build on the success and the things we have learned in 2019, so that we can bring you a practical two days of learning — with plenty of fun and surprises along the way! Read more…

September 6, 2019 — Smashing Magazine is thirteen years old! In this article, I share the stories of some of our Smashing Team. The people behind the magazine, books, and conferences. Read more…

September 4, 2019 — In this article, Rachel Andrew explores the situations in which you might encounter overflow in your web designs and explains how CSS has evolved to create better ways to manage and design around unknown amounts of content. Read more…

August 19, 2019 — Writing for a publication such as Smashing Magazine can help to build your reputation as an expert. In this article, Editor in Chief Rachel Andrew explains how to pitch to publications, and how to have the best chance of an accepted proposal. Read more…

August 14, 2019 — A series of interviews between Vitaly Friedman and speakers from the upcoming View Source conference in Amsterdam. Hear from Tejas Kumar, Sharell Bryant, Ali Spittel, Kenji Baheux, Jory Burson, Hui Jing Chen, Henri Helvetica, Elizabeth Sweeney, and Jeremy Keith. Read more…

August 8, 2019 — It’s hard to capture the experience of being at a SmashingConf, however, we have made the videos from our Toronto event available so that everyone can learn from the insights our speakers shared — many of them coding live on stage. Read more…

August 6, 2019 — An understanding of CSS Writing Modes is useful if you want to work with vertical scripts, or change writing mode for creative reasons. However, they also underpin our new layout methods, and those ideas are increasingly being applied across all of CSS. In this article, find out why Rachel Andrew believes understanding writing modes is so important. Read more…

July 15, 2019 — Margins in CSS seem simple enough at first glance. Applied to an element it forms a space around the element, pushing other elements away. However, there is more to a margin than you might think. Read more…

July 11, 2019 — Now that some time has passed since the team returned from SmashingConf Toronto, we’ve had time to think about the event and wrap up some of the things we all learned. Take a look. Read more…

July 9, 2019 — There is more to styling lists in CSS than you might think. In this article, Rachel starts by looking at lists in CSS, and moving onto some interesting features defined in the CSS Lists specification — markers and counters. Read more…

June 19, 2019 — There is a wide variety of choices when it comes to creating a PDF from a web application. In this article, Rachel Andrew takes a look at the tools that are available and shares her recommendations to help you find the tool that works best for you. Read more…

May 24, 2019 — Continuing a series on the display property in CSS, this time Rachel Andrew takes a look at what happens when you use grid as a value of display, with added information about how subgrid changes that behavior. Read more…

May 20, 2019 — The web is wonderfully diverse and unpredictable because of wonderfully diverse people shaping it. In this new series of short interviews, we talk to interesting people doing interesting work in our industry and sharing what they’ve learned. Read more…

May 1, 2019 — Continuing a series on the display property in CSS, this time Rachel Andrew takes a look at the values which control box generation, for those times when you don’t want to generate a box at all. Read more…

April 30, 2019 — We had a wonderful time at the sold-out SmashingConf San Francisco! In this article, Rachel Andrew rounds up all of the videos, photos, tweets and resources that were shared on- and offstage. Read more…

April 8, 2019 — We talk a lot about Flexbox and CSS Grid Layout, but these layout methods are essentially values of the CSS display property, a workhorse of a property that doesn’t get a lot of attention. Rachel Andrew takes a better look in a short series. Read more…

March 28, 2019 — There are a few ways to align elements in CSS. Let’s make sense of inline and box alignment, flex and grid alignment and common issues and problems to keep in mind. Read more…

March 11, 2019 — What problems will the new aspect ratio unit solve? A look at the design of a new CSS feature. Read more…

February 27, 2019 — What is fragmentation, why might you want to use it, and what is the current state of browser support? Rachel Andrew has the answers. Read more…

February 4, 2019 — It can be frustrating when you want to use a feature and discover that it is not supported or behaves differently across browsers. In this article, Rachel Andrew explains how CSS is evolving to make it easier to deal with them. Read more…

January 22, 2019 — Today, we’re launching a Smashing Survey. We want to find out about you, our readers, so that we can better bring you the tutorials, articles and resources that you need. Read more…

January 11, 2019 — The Multi-column Layout spec is often overlooked as we use Grid and Flexbox. In this article Rachel Andrew explains why it is different to other layout methods, and shows some useful patterns and sites which showcase it well. Read more…

January 2, 2019 — You don’t need to commit to memorizing every CSS Property and Value, as there are good places to look them up. There are some fundamental things, however, which will make CSS much easier for you to use. This article aims to guide you along your path of learning CSS. Read more…

December 31, 2018 — The Smashing Team looks back at 2018. Conferences, articles, books and the Smashing Membership — there has been a lot going on. Read more…

December 12, 2018 — Feature Policy can help protect your site from third parties using APIs that have security and privacy implications, and also from your own team adding outdated APIs or poorly optimized images. Find out how. Read more…

December 3, 2018 — A roundup of Advent Calendar sites of interest to web designers and developers. From accessibility to UX, coding challenges to Perl, there really is something for everyone this December. Read more…

November 9, 2018 — Have you ever considered whether CSS Grid can actually replace the need for CSS frameworks or third-party component libraries? In doing so, Rachel Andrew discovered a range of reasons people use a third-party framework and the positive and negative things about doing so. Read more…

October 26, 2018 — Last week, Rachel Andrew attended the CSS Working Group meeting at W3C TPAC, and rounds up some of the discussions in this post — including those things where you can help make a decision. Read more…

October 4, 2018 — In this final article of the series, we wrap up by taking a look at some of the common uses for Flexbox. What should we use Flexbox for, and what it is not so good at? Read more…

September 27, 2018 — Rachel Andrew writes about her involvement with the CSS Working Group, and why she feels it is important that web developers understand what is being worked on in CSS, and have a way to offer feedback. Read more…