February 22, 2022 Smashing Newsletter: Issue #341
This newsletter issue was sent out to 176,446 subscribers on Tuesday, February 22, 2022.
Editorial
When I was growing up, we had a large bookshelf in our living room. It housed literally hundreds of books, from classic literature to practical guides. Every other evening I would pass by the bookshelf studying what’s inside: the covers, the titles, dusty pages, and perhaps even notes on the side.
One book, in particular, was among my favorites though. It was a dusty old book, with partly torn pages, plenty of coffee stains, and yellowish old paper. It was a book that my grandfather, who had been a scientist, wrote years ago on the subject of geology. I couldn’t understand much of what the book was about, but I enjoyed exploring all of his notes, deciphering the handwriting, and imagining the stories behind all of the stains that came to be. For years, it has become a journey that I was fiercely exploring in my imagination.
We all learn from books that just happen to be around us. They may not cover the topics that we’re particularly interested in. In this newsletter issue, we want to highlight some of the wonderful books released by the community, and hopefully, you’ll be able to learn something from them as well.
On another note, we have another fantastic Smashing Hour coming up this week. This time, I’ll be spending a full hour with Paul Boag on Feb. 24, 8–9 AM PT (check your timezone). This community event is free for all, and you are more than welcome to register and join us. We’d love to see you there!
Pssst! We’ve just recently finished cooking something new.
Happy reading, everyone!
— Vitaly (@smashingmag)
1. How Modern Browsers Work
Have you ever wondered how the browser turns your code into a functional website? Or maybe you’re unsure why a specific technique is suggested for performance improvements? An inside look at how modern browsers work can help you connect the dots.
Mariko Kosaka wrote a great four-part article series in which she looks inside the Chrome browser — from high-level architecture to the specifics of the rendering pipeline — to give you a better understanding of the bigger picture. The friendly illustrations in the article make the quite abstract topic easier to grasp. If you want to dig even deeper, Pavel Panchekha’s and Chris Harrelson’s free eBook Web Browser Engineering is for you. They have a very special approach to learning to understand how browsers work: You get to construct a basic browser yourself. Will you take on the challenge? (cm)
2. Free Design And UX Books
What practices power the world’s best design teams? DesignBetter by InVision published 10 free books that share valuable insights into how others work. They help you bring design and development closer together, share tips to get the best out of a design sprint, guide you through planning and implementing a design system, look into strategies to communicate with business partners, and much more. The books are available in ePUB, PDF, and audiobook formats.
Maze provides guides to usability testing and UX research. UXPin also offers a massive library of UX books and whitepapers for free download. In it, you’ll find more than 100 books covering everything from mobile and web prototyping, wireframing, and mockups to usability testing, project management, design process, and more. Good stuff. (cm)
3. Design Patterns For Modern Web Apps
Design patterns are a fundamental part of software development. They provide solutions to common code problems and guide you when you face a problem that fellow developers have already encountered before. Whenever you’re in the need for a helpful design or component pattern when building a web app, Patterns.dev has got your back.
The free book and accompanying online platform puts the power of patterns right at your fingertips. The patterns are divided into three categories: design, rendering, and performance and cover vanilla JavaScript just like React. And while some might argue that patterns needlessly add complexity to a codebase, Patterns.dev understands itself as a catalog that wants to increase awareness rather than a checklist of things that you must do. One for the bookmarks. (cm)
4. Upcoming Front-End & UX Workshops
You might have heard it: we run online workshops around frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, navigation, or landing pages. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.
As always, here’s an overview of our upcoming workshops:
- Ethical Design Masterclass UX
Trine Falbe. Mar 1–15 - Architecting Design Systems Workflow
with Nathan Curtis. Mar 3–11 - Accessibility In Modern Applications Dev
with Marcy Sutton. Mar 22 – Apr 5 - Interface Design Patterns UX Training UX
with Vitaly Friedman. Apr 15 – May 13 - Jump to all online workshops →
5. Books From The Community
Here at Smashing, we know from our own experience how much love and sweat goes into producing a book that is truly valuable to its readers. That’s why we’d love to shine a light on three fantastic books from the community today. Books that tackle topics that you certainly don’t have on your (digital) bookshelf yet, but that will prove to be precious companions in your day-to-day work.
First off, Sarah Drasner’s Engineering Management For The Rest Of Us. Sarah wrote the book not for the born leaders but for engineers who suddenly find themselves in a managing position. In it, she shares everything she learned in more than 10 years of experience in Engineering Management, the things nobody told her about and that she wished she knew when she was getting started.
Next up, Emma Bostian. Emma wrote her book De-Coding The Technical Interview Process to help you nail every aspect of your next tech interview. After spending hundreds of hours studying JavaScript and systems designs for interviews and working on take-home projects, she distilled everything she learned into this guide — from the application process to the live coding challenge, the whiteboard on-site interviews, and, of course, negotiating an offer.
Last but not least, Ahmad Shadeed’s book Debugging CSS is here to help you improve your debugging skills and reduce the time you spend on bugs. The focus lies on actionable advice and tips and each CSS issue has a mockup that shows it clearly so you don’t have to imagine it. All the examples are things that you face in your day-to-day work, nothing is abstract. Happy reading! (cm)
6. Free JavaScript Books
Maybe you have heard developers say that JavaScript is the worst language you could possibly learn. Well, it doesn’t have to be. We came across three free books that help you master JavaScript — no matter if you’re just about to take your first steps in the world of JavaScript or if you already have some experience with the language.
JavaScript For Impatient Programmers by Dr. Axel Rauschmayer is aimed at newcomers without any prior JavaScript knowledge who are looking to gain a modern view on the language. It covers all essential JavaScript features up to and including ES2022. Exercises and quizzes help you put your knowledge to the test and, if you like, you can dig even deeper with the optional advanced sessions.
Marijn Haverbeke’s book Eloquent JavaScript is a modern introduction to programming. Part one discusses the JavaScript language, part two looks at web browsers and how JavaScript is used to program them, and part three focuses on Node.js. The book is also available in Persian, Spanish, Arabic, Bulgarian, Portuguese, and Russian.
If you already have 6–9 months experience with JavaScript, you might want to look into Kyle Simpson’s free book series You Don’t Know JS Yet. It dives deep into the core mechanisms of JavaScript and helps you understand why the code you write does work. Looking for more? The site JSbooks collected more free JavaScript resources for different skill levels. Happy learning! (cm)
7. High Performance Browser Networking
Web performance has gained more and more importance in the past years. For a good reason. Faster sites improve user engagement and retention and lead to higher conversions. In fact, speed is a feature, and there are many factors to consider to deliver speedy experiences. Ilya Grigorik’s free book High Performance Browser Networking explores what plays into the performance of your site.
In his book, Ilya dives deep into the various types of networks (WiFi, 3G/4G), transport protocols (UDP, TCP, TLS), application protocols (HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2), and APIs (XHR, WebSocket, WebRTC, and more) available in the browser. A hands-on overview to make sense of it all. (cm)
8. Why Are Hyperlinks Blue?
Why is it that links are blue? Who was it that decided to make them blue? When was this decision made, and how did this decision make such a lasting impact? Well, no one knows, but Elise Hotard Blanchard has some pretty good theories.
Elise is a Senior UX Designer at Mozilla and has been creating websites since 2001. Once she stopped and wondered why links — specifically hyperlinks — are blue, she and her colleagues set out to do some research. With some fascinating discoveries of how hyperlinks evolved over time, her article explains just how these early innovations impact usability on the web today. (il)
That’s All, Folks!
Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!
This newsletter issue was written and edited by Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf) and Iris Lješnjanin (il).
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