A portfolio is a must-have for any designer or developer who wants to stake their claim on the Web. It should be as unique as possible, and with a bit of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, you co...
There is an aspect to Web design that no one likes to talk about: spec’ing. We all do it, we all hate it, but we also understand that specs are vital to both designers and developers. Fo...
Probably the most remarkable characteristic of our Web design community is that we care about our craft. We care about best practices, about our work, about learning, sharing and improvi...
“Mobile Web design.” Unless you’ve been hiding under a bush for the last 18 months, you’ll know that it’s one of the hottest topics in the industry at the moment. Barely a week goes by w...
Ruby is an object-oriented language. What does that even mean? It has unique quirks and characteristics that we’ll explain clearly. This article assumes that you have no programming expe...
The story of usability is a perverse journey from simplicity to complexity. That’s right, from simplicity to complexity—not the other way around. If you expect a “user-...
Editor’s Note: This post is the seventh in the new Smashing Daily series on Smashing Magazine, where we highlight items to help you stay on the top of what’s going on in the ...
At our company, we process a lot of requests on the leading gift cards and coupons websites in the world. The senior developers had a meeting in late October to discuss working on a solu...
What is it that makes a typeface into a text font, instead of a font for larger sizes? The answer differs slightly, depending on whether one aims for print or Web-based environments. Nev...
Many dismiss copywriting as something that ad agency people do. Truthfully, all of us need to pay close attention to copywriting if we want to achieve our business objectives. The goal o...
Responsive design is the hottest topic in front-end Web development right now. It’s going to transform the Web into an all-singing, all-dancing, all-devices party, where we can access an...
In this article, we take a break from some of the more advanced ways to customize WordPress, and share some super-easy customization techniques for the WordPress Admin area. If you’...
E-commerce runs on secrets. Those secrets let you update your blog, shop at Amazon and share code on GitHub. Computer security is all about keeping your secrets known only to you and the...
In my nearly two decades as an information architect, I’ve seen my clients flush away millions upon millions of dollars on worthless, pointless, “fix it once and for all” website redesig...
The idea behind this project was to produce a consistent set of buttons that could be used for the range of social actions frequently taken in Web applications. These actions are often i...
Editor’s Note: This post is the first in the new Smashing Daily series on Smashing Magazine, where we highlight items to help you stay on the top of what’s going on in the in...
I had thought terms like “intellectual property” and “intellectual theft” were of fairly recent provenance, so my eye was caught by the latter’s use in a headline of a 1930 edition of th...
Myths have developed around and researchers have studied how the human brain juggles creativity and organization. Popular theory tells us that the left brain is structured and logical, w...
Interaction designers create wireframes in tools such as Adobe Illustrator, OmniGraffle and Microsoft Visio. Originally, these wireframes were primitive shapes drawn to represent various...
The Web has become increasingly interactive over the years. This trend is set to continue with the next generation of applications driven by the real-time Web. Adding real-time functiona...
The new Smashing Book #3 has finally arrived—freshly printed, neatly packed and ready to be shipped to you, our dear reader. We believe this is by far the best book we’ve pro...
While certainly not as well known as Photoshop, Adobe Fireworks is a great tool for creating user interfaces, website designs and mock-ups, wireframes, icons and much more. However, most...
What if someone came to you and said, “I’ve designed this great website, but people don’t stay on it. Why?” How would you respond? Would you ask them whether they have done e...
A few weeks ago, I was quite surprised when I saw the pavement quickly approaching while I was out for a walk. Laying there stunned, I soon realized what had happened: I fell. Ouch. B-mi...
Any application of typography can be divided into two arenas: micro and macro. Understanding the difference between the two is especially useful when crafting a reading experience, becau...
We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspira...
Welcome to the first in a new series of interviews called “How I Work”. These interviews revolve around how thinkers and creators in the Web world design, code, and create. T...
The gaming industry is huge, and it can keep its audience consumed for hours, days and even weeks. Some play the same game over and over again — and occasionally, they even get out...
Thanks to CSS3, we can create effects and animations without using JavaScript, which will facilitate the work of many designers. But we must be careful to avoid abusing CSS3, not only be...
The Web font revolution that started around two years ago has brought up a topic that many of us had merrily ignored for many years: font rendering. The newfound freedom Web fonts are gi...
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