You know, we use ad-blockers as well.
We gotta keep those servers running though. Did you know that we publish
useful books and run
friendly conferences — crafted for pros like yourself?
E.g. our upcoming SmashingConf New York, dedicated to smart front-end
techniques and design patterns.
Design patterns. An almost mythical phrase that often inspires either awe or resentment. As designers, we tend to think of design patterns as generic off-the-shelf solutions that can be applied to various contexts almost mechanically, often without proper consideration. Navigation? Off-canvas! Deals of the day? Carousel! You get the idea.
Sometimes we use these patterns without even thinking about them, and there is a good reason for it: Coming up with a brand new solution every time we encounter an interface problem is time-consuming and risky, because we just don’t know how much time will be needed to implement a new solution and whether it will gracefully succeed or miserably fail in usability tests.
Joan is applying for a small loan on all-online-loanzzz.com. She's becoming frustrated with the number of financial-disclosure forms she has to fill out. She's thinking about visiting her local bank to ask for a loan instead.
While waiting for a page to load, the application presents a cartoon image of a person wearing a business suit sitting in a jail cell. The image caption says, "Hey, everyone hates disclosures. We know you do, too. We're doing our best to keep everyone out of jail. Please bear with us for a few more clicks. You won't regret it, and our loan officers will stay out of jail." Joan smirks at the image. She might not appreciate the number of forms she has to complete, but she understands the serious nature of applying for a loan.
The average American spends at least five hours per day on their smartphone. So, why is it so hard to make mobile ads work? Marketers toil over clicks and conversions on highly targeted ads, but users, tired of intrusive banners, keep installing ad blockers.
With $100 billion in annual mobile ad spend at stake, someone has to figure out a way to fix this disconnect.
Design is one of the most controversial things in our industry. There are barely any redesigns that aren’t discussed heavily in the community. Changing a well-working design is even harder as people tend to dislike anything new, but if we give them a bit of time, they might start to see things from a different perspective.
Instead of following what everyone else is doing, we shouldn’t hesitate to leave the beaten tracks when designing — by creating a contrast-rich, deep design without using drop shadows, for example. Whatever you do, be sure to explore new options whenever you can.
Industries often experience evolution less as slow and steady progress than as revolutionary shifts in modality that change best practices and methodologies seemingly overnight. This is most definitely true for front-end web development.
Our industry thrives on constant, aggressive development, and new technologies emerge on a regular basis that change the way we do things in fundamental ways.
Accomplished musicians often talk about how, at certain moments in their careers, they had to unlearn old habits in order to progress. This process often causes them to regress in performance while they adjust to an ultimately better method.
Once the new approach is integrated, they are able to reach new heights that would not have been possible with their previous techniques.
We have all been there. That dreaded moment when after weeks of work we have to present our progress to key stakeholders, and they mercilessly tear it apart. It feels inevitable, but usually, we can avoid these situations.
Wouldn’t life be so much easier if we didn’t need to get other people to buy-in to our work? Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way, especially in digital. What we do involves so many different disciplines working together. We have to get the support of colleagues, stakeholders and management. But, achieving that can be painful, to say the least.
HTTPS is a must for every website nowadays: Users are looking for the padlock when providing their details; Chrome and Firefox explicitly mark websites that provide forms on pages without HTTPS as being non-secure; it is an SEO ranking factor; and it has a serious impact on privacy in general.
Additionally, there is now more than one option to get an HTTPS certificate for free, so switching to HTTPS is only a matter of will.
This week was full of great browser vendor news: Safari 11 was announced with long-awaited features such as WebRTC and tracking protection, and a new Edge build with new CSS features is now available, too.
But the past few days also had some valuable articles up their sleeves: about implementing HTTP/2 push, using datetime-local, and slimming down your CSS, for example. I collected everything in this reading list for you, so you don’t miss out on anything. Enjoy!
