Smashing Newsletter: Issue #382

Editorial

It’s December! So that’s just about time for all the wonderful communities around the web to get ready for front-end & UX advent calendars: from performance to UX and storytelling. In this newsletter issue, we look at just that — some of the great resources that will be delighting us with incredible content this month.

In our humble news, we have something planned for December as well. Smashing Hour with Dan Mall will be taking place on Dec. 14 at 8–9 am PT (check your timezone) with everything on design systems.

And if you are planning for 2023 already, we have SmashingConfs already announced — with the topics and first speakers coming very shortly. The early birds are out there, so get yours before it’s too late!

— Vitaly (@vitalyf)

1. The Storyteller Advent Calendar

Storytelling is a powerful tool. But how to truly master the craft? With her Storyteller Advent Calendar, Chiara Aliotta transforms you into a storyteller who is able to craft beautiful and remarkable experiences and brands through storytelling. You can follow along on Instagram for 24 magic tips and useful resources on storytelling and design.

The first week of the calendar is dedicated to brand storytelling and brand strategy. In the second week, Chiara will explore storytelling applied to UX. The final week is all about storytelling practices to engage and persuade your audience. A perfect December companion for any UX designer. (cm)

2. 24 Days Of Design Gifts

Christmas morning comes early this year! Framer and Fons Mans teamed up with a few friends to count down to Christmas with 24 Days of Design Gifts. We don’t want to spoil the surprise, but there are some cool things waiting, such as font freebies and friendly discounts on popular design tools and apps.

Each deal is only available for 24 hours. So if you want to make sure to not miss out on anything, you can set a “jingle bell” to get a reminder via email every time a new deal goes live. Definitely a calendar to keep an eye on this December. (cm)

3. HTMHell Advent Calendar

HTML is the backbone of every site and while it might seem easy to master, the deeper you dig, there are quite a few pitfalls and bad practices lurking behind the corner. Let’s make them visible!

Last year, Manuel Matuzović published the first HTMHell Advent Calendar with 24 links to articles about HTML he found on other sites. Since many people enjoyed these posts, he decided to raise the ante and publish 24 articles on HTMHell written specifically for the advent calendar. 24 authors from all over the world gave their best and wrote about accessibility, performance, usability and security. Fantastic resources to make the web a bit better, baby step by baby step. (cm)

4. Lean UXmas

Lean UXmas is back for another year. The site has been publishing each advent since 2014 to bring us the most popular articles and latest news on Agile and Lean UX.

If you find yourself impatiently waiting for the next article to be posted, you can always check out the previous advent calendars by typing the year into the base URL, or simply search for them below the website’s header. The archive is full of gems just waiting to be discovered. (cm)

5. Upcoming Online Workshops

That’s right! We run online workshops on front-end and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. 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.

Smashing Online Events — With online workshops, we aim to give you the same experience and access to experts as in an in-person workshop from wherever you are.

As always, here’s an overview of our upcoming workshops:

Successful Design Systems Workflow
with Brad Frost. Jan 10–24
Designing For Complex UI Masterclass UX
with Vitaly Friedman. Jan 19 – Feb 2
New Front-End Adventures, 2023 Edition DEV
with Vitaly Friedman. Feb 8–22
Universal Principles of Typography Masterclass UX
with Elliot Jay Stocks. Mar 2–16
Interface Design Patterns UX Training UX
with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 10 – Apr 7
Smart Interface Design Patterns Video Course UX
9h-video + UX training on interface design with Vitaly Friedman
Jump to all workshops →

6. Web Performance Calendar

Even if you’re just a little bit into performance optimization, The Web Performance Calendar is for you. For the 14th year in a row, it makes December the favorite time for speed geeks and anyone who wants to give their site a speed boost.

Organized by Stoyan Stefanov, the Web Performance Calendar publishes a new article every day. They are written by developers from across the globe and each one of them shines a light on performance, by sharing insights into new tools or presenting useful techniques, for example. Anyone is welcome to contribute to the calendar, so do feel free to reach out with a topic or tool you’re passionate about or a technique you’d like to tell the web performance community about. (cm)

7. Advent Of CSS And JavaScript

There’s no better way to learn than through real-world projects and components. So why not dedicate December to improving your CSS skills? Advent of CSS helps you do just that by delivering a new CSS challenge to your inbox every day leading up to Christmas Eve.

The challenges include all the assets you need to get started — including a Figma design file, a style guide, a brief, ways to push yourself, and steps to help you get started. Before accepting a challenge, you should know basic HTML and CSS.

If you’re looking to improve your JavaScript skills, Advent of JavaScript will accompany you through the month. It is based on the same idea as Advent of CSS and each challenge comes with the HTML and CSS you’ll need so that you can focus entirely on writing JavaScript. (cm)

8. Web Components Bookmarks

When Serhii Kulykov started to learn Web Components in early 2016, the initial wave of hype had passed and Web Components were undergoing quite a deep trough of disillusionment. Today it’s clear that Web Components are here to stay. That’s why Serhii created Web Components Bookmarks.

Web Components Bookmarks is a curated collection of Web Components guides and resources. Serhii plans to add lots of content every day in the upcoming weeks as an advent series and, finally, to open-source the collection at the end of December. If you’ve always wanted to wrap your head around Web Components, there couldn’t be a better time than now. (cm)

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).

December 6, 2022 Smashing Newsletter: Issue #382

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