Smashing Newsletter: Issue #211

Editorial

Since the last newsletter issue, we launched our latest eBook “The WebP Manual” by Jeremy Wagner. If you want to understand this new image format, it is a great way to quickly get up to speed.

We have a whole list of upcoming books here at Smashing Magazine, with many exciting things lined up for you, starting with the Smashing Book 6 in September. One way to get your hands on all of the e-books as they are released is to become a Smashing Member, and we are very excited today as we are very nearly at 1,000 Members! Members help us to keep creating top-notch content for professional designers and developers, and also to work with upcoming writers and speakers, bringing new voices to our community.

We would love for you to join us — you can check out what is upcoming for Members later in this email.

— Rachel (@rachelandrew)

How To Get To Know A Legacy Codebase
Invaluable Web Dev Cheatsheets
A Memory Game To Train Your Typographic Eye
Figures In The Sky
On Building Accessible Toggle Switches
SmashingConf New York Is Coming
Free Email Design System For Sketch
CSS Duotone Generator
Upcoming In Smashing Membershp
Upcoming Workshops With Vitaly Friedman

1. How To Get To Know A Legacy Codebase

In his latest blog post, Harry Robert’s shares his tips on how to get to know a legacy codebase and make sense of it. A good roadmap that’ll take you through the unfamiliar code jungle safely — from seeing what breaks, to setting up regression tests, and understanding how things originally came together. (cm)

2. Invaluable Web Dev Cheatsheets

A great cheatsheet can be a real timesaver, and we all evidently appreciate one. Well, Devhints is another one you can add to your collection: A treasure chest for any developer brought to you by Rico Sta. Cruz. (cm)

3. A Memory Game To Train Your Typographic Eye

Recognizing different styles of fonts is one of the most challenging parts of typography. To help you train your eyes for even the smallest details, Matej Latin created the Font Memory Game. (cm)

4. Figures In The Sky

In her interactive, dataviz-driven story “Figures in the Sky,” Nadieh Bremer gives us a deeper look into how current and past cultures across the world have seen their myths in the stars’ constellations — from the Western, to the Chinese, Maori, and even Aztec cultures. Fascinating! (cm)

5. On Building Accessible Toggle Switches

Toggle switches are nothing new, but what if you want to build a two-option switch that explicitly states which state is enabled? One that is accessible, too?

Sara Soueidan tinkered with the idea and now wrote up her approach and how she got to it in a comprehensive blog post. A good read with lots valuable lessons learned and things to keep in mind. (cm)

6. SmashingConf New York, Oct 23-24

You might have heard about our live sessions conference last month in Toronto? It was a big success, and in New York we will be doing a few live sessions, too. Exciting!

Come and see Sara Soueidan, Dan Mall, Debbie Millman, Sarah Drasner and so many others speak at the New World Stages. Here’s the full speakers line-up.

Tickets to SmashingConf New York 2018 are now available — grab yours before it’s gone!

Enjoy two days packed with knowledge, lunch sessions, and a great rooftop party! Make your SmashingConf more memorable by adding a full-day workshop and save $100.

7. Free Email Design System For Sketch

Design systems help us keep consistency in a project even when different designers are working on it. But what about emails? After all, you’ll want to keep the different kinds of emails you send out to your users to look consistent, too. For that purpose, Lee Munroe created a free email design system for Sketch. (cm)

8. CSS Duotone Generator

Sometimes, a little experiment can turn into something really cool. To practice his Vanilla JavaScript skills, Rick Metzger started to tinker with an idea about three weeks ago; now it has grown into a practical tool just waiting to be used. Meet the CSS Duotone Generator. (cm)

9. Upcoming In Smashing Membership

Smashing Membership helps us to keep the site alive and go ad-free. Every Member makes a difference, and get valuable content from it, too!

Coming up next:

Smashing Book 6: We are releasing “Designing For Audio UIs and Watches” by Greg Nudelman and “Accessibility in SPAs” by Marcy Sutton at the end of this week!
We’ll be releasing the SmashingConf Toronto videos, with live interactive sessions on everything from designing live to auditing third-party scripts live.
Smashing TV: Webinars on how to improve UI performance and how to set up a proper product roadmap.

We are very grateful for the kind and generous support of 998 members! You can become one of us, as well. ;-)

10. Upcoming Workshops With Vitaly Friedman

🇩🇪 Freiburg, SmashingConf, Sept. 10 – 11, 2018
New York, SmashingConf NY, Oct. 23 – 24, 2018

Or, if you’d like to run an in-house workshop at your office, feel free to get in touch with Vitaly at vitaly@smashingconf.com and briefly describe what problems you’re facing and would like to solve. Don’t worry about the costs — we’ll find a fair price for sure. Get in touch — it’s that easy!

July 31, 2018 Smashing Newsletter: Issue #211

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