Smashing Newsletter: Issue #216

Editorial

Conference season is in full swing. Smashing standup meetings involve discovering just where in the world our remote team happen to be checking in from this week. Many of the team members will be together at SmashingConf NYC 2018 next week, and there are still a few tickets left! If you can get there, it looks like it will be amazing two days of learning and meeting friends old and new.

Last week, we also published a brand new Smashing Book: Form Design Patterns by Adam Silver is a practical guide to building and designing inclusive forms for the web. You can read an excerpt from the book, “A Registration Form”, in which Adam takes a look at the foundational qualities of a well-designed form and how to think about them. If you enjoy reading it, you can get the book right away.

— Rachel (@rachelandrew)

Complex Animations Made Easy
A11y Style Guide
Useful Resources To Up You In The VS Code Game
JavaScript For Designers
What Can My Font Do?
Color Inspiration From Forgotten Times
SmashingConf New York Is Coming
Design Abstraction Escalation
Upcoming In Smashing Membershp
Our Next Smashing Workshops

1. Complex Animations Made Easy

Building complex animations for native apps is usually a difficult and lengthy process. The design team at Airbnb set out to solve this problem and now introduced an open-source tool which helps you do the same: Lottie.

Lottie is an iOS, Android, and React Native library that renders After Effects animations in real time, allowing apps to use animations as easily as they use static assets. If you want to see what others have done with the help of Lottie, be sure to check out LottieFiles, a community to find, test, and share animations. (cm)

2. A11y Style Guide

What accessibility pieces should you include in a project? And how do you implement inclusive design when the project doesn’t have a lot of time or budget? A component-driven approach can make the undertaking a lot more efficient. The open-source A11y Style Guide helps you get started.

Components include everything from cards and forms to media, navigation, and more. To make your site more inclusive, the tool comes with pre-populated accessible components that include helpful links to related resources and WCAG guidelines. One for the bookmarks. (cm)

3. Useful Resources To Up You In The VS Code Game

VS Code can help developers take their productivity to the next level, and with the right tools and resources you can get even more out of it. We compiled some useful VS Code resources that are bound to up you in that VS Code game.

First of all, there’s “VS Code can do that?!”, an overview of all the best things about Visual Studio Code that nobody ever bothered to tell you. Curated by Burke Holland and Sarah Drasner. Burke also wrote an article on the topic in which he takes a look at how VS Code extends traditional text editor concepts and opens up entirely new avenues for productivity. A list of handy VS Code extensions comes from Daniel Deutsch, covering HTML, Markdown, JavaScript, and general extensions. Last but not least, there’s Valerii Iatsko’s comprehensive list of delightful VS Code packages and resources. VS Code goodness at its best. (cm)

4. JavaScript For Designers

Are you a designer who’s tired of being “the one who doesn’t know JavaScript”? Then Dave Martin’s “JavaScript for Designers” course is for you. Taught by a designer for designers, the course takes you from learning the basics of the dreaded language to building your first fully funtional HTML prototype. The difference from other JavaScript courses: this one only covers the things that are applicable to you as a designer. (cm)

5. What Can My Font Do?

If you want to see what a font is capable of, Wakamai Fondue is for you. Upload a font to it, and the tool will tell you about the features in the font. It’ll also provide you with the CSS you need to use these features in your project. Handy! (cm)

6. Color Inspiration From Forgotten Times

How about some color inspiration that is, well, a bit different? Brought to life by Brandon Shepherd, Color Leap takes you on a journey through 4,000 years of color history.

From 2,000 BC to the 1960s, the project showcases 180 color palettes from 12 distinct eras, each one of them representing the color language of its time. Fascinating! (cm)

7. SmashingConf New York (Oct 23-24)

Just one more week until SmashingConf NY and we have only a few tickets left! At the conference, we’ll be exploring front-end techniques and design strategies that will help you become better designer and developer.

SmashingConf is a friendly, inclusive event which is focused on real-world problems and solutions.

We’ll dive into new challenges, solutions, and opportunities: from progressive web apps, front-end and HTTP/2 to serverless, Vue.js and Nuxt, all the way to inclusive design, branding and machine learning. Plus a bunch of hands-on workshops on design, front-end and UX.

Ah, need to convince your boss? We’ve got your back, too! (PDF, 602 KB). We’d love to see you there!(cr)

8. Design Abstraction Escalation

“What are we losing by abstracting our design processes? Could it be as fundamental as losing a sense of humanity in our work?”, asks Mark Boulton in his article “Design Abstraction Escalation”. A thought-provoking read about how good design often falls victim to conformity and efficiency and how you can prevent yourself from walking into that trap. (cm)

9. Upcoming In Smashing Membership

We recently added our newest book Form Design Patterns to the Smashing Membership, an eBook on designing and coding accessible and progressively enhanced web forms. The eBook is included in the Smashing Membership. Each member makes a difference and gets valuable content from it, too!

Coming up next:

Smashing TV: “Visual Studio Code Is On Fire!” with Burke Holland. (Oct. 30, 11:00 AM Eastern)

We are very grateful for the kind and generous support of 1,238 members. Thank you so much for making it happen!

10. Our Next Smashing Workshops

In our workshops, we are looking into the current state of front-end and interface design, covering advanced challenges and actual real-life solutions to front-end problems. Coming up next:

New York, NY, SmashingConf NY, Oct. 25th, 2018
Sofia, Bulgaria, UX Sofia, Nov. 7th, 2018
Belfast, Northern Ireland, Pixel Pioneers, Nov. 22nd, 2018

Or, if you’d like to run an in-house workshop at your office, please 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!

October 16, 2018 Smashing Newsletter: Issue #216

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