Articles by Smashing Magazine from November 2011

    In this article, Id like to reacquaint you with the humble workhorse of communic...

According to W3Techs, almost 55% of the 1 million most visited websites that are run on a content management system (CMS) are run on WordPress. WordPress is a darn fine CMS and is stable and easy to u...

In this article, Id like to reacquaint you with the humble workhorse of communication that is the paragraph. Paragraphs are everywhere. In fact, at the high risk of stating the obvious, you are readin...

    In his book, The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz comes to an interesting concl...

    In a time when everyone seems to have a tablet, which makes it possible to consu...

In a time when everyone seems to have a tablet, which makes it possible to consume everything digitally, and the only real paper we use is bathroom tissue, it might seem odd to write about the long-fo...

    If youre a plugin developer and you just love to write code, then writing a read...

    The Web is just starting to use animation well. For years, animated GIFs and Fla...

If youre a plugin developer and you just love to write code, then writing a readme.txt file for a plugin in WordPress repository might be your idea of hell. When youve written all of that lovely code,...

    Congratulations. Youve just completed a pixel-perfect mock-up of an app, and you...

Congratulations. Youve just completed a pixel-perfect mock-up of an app, and youve gotten the nod from everyone on the team. All thats left to do is save the tens, hundreds or maybe even thousands of ...

    Right there in the center of my boilerplate for design proposals is a section th...

Right there in the center of my boilerplate for user experience strategy and design proposals is a section that I glare at with more resentment each time I complete it. Its called Deliverables, and it...

The Web is just starting to use animation well. For years, animated GIFs and Flash ruled. Text moved and flashed, but it was never seamless. Animations had boxes around them like YouTube videos. HTML5...

    Much of the excitement weve seen so far about HTML5 has been for the new APIs: l...

Much of the excitement weve seen so far about HTML5 has been for the new APIs: local storage, application cache, Web workers, 2-D drawing and the like. But lets not overlook that HTML5 brings us 30 ne...

    Multisite is a powerful new feature that arrived with the release of WordPress 3...

Multisite is a powerful new feature that arrived with the release of WordPress 3.0. It allows website managers to host multiple independent websites with a single installation of WordPress. Although e...

    Have you read Where the Wild Things Are? The storybook has fluidity of content a...

Have you read Where the Wild Things Are? The storybook has fluidity of content and design figured out.It goes that one night, protagonist Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind or anothe...

    Today we are delighted to release another freebie for our design community. Ther...

Today we are delighted to release another freebie for our design community. There are many free icon sets out there, and there are quite many commercial ones as well. Yet a good, consistently designed...

    There comes a point in the career of many Web designers where the logical progre...

    Forums have been around forever, so it should come as no surprise that several p...

    There are many ways to skin a redesign (I think thats how the saying goes). On a...

Forums have been around forever, so it should come as no surprise that several plugins for the popular publishing platform WordPress provide this feature, as well as support for integrating other foru...

There are many ways to skin a redesign (I think thats how the saying goes). On a philosophical level, I agree with those who advocate for realigning, not redesigning, but these are mere words when you...

    As Web developers, we have an affinity for developing with JavaScript. Whatever ...

As Web developers, we have an affinity for developing with JavaScript. Whatever the language used in the back end, JavaScript and the browser are the primary language-platform combination available at...

    Disclaimer: This post by Jeremy Keith is one of the many reactions to our recent...

Disclaimer: This post by Jeremy Keith is one of the many reactions to our recent article on the pursuit of semantic value by Divya Manian. Both articles are published in the Opinion column section in ...

    Meta-utopia is a world of reliable meta data. When poisoning the well confers be...

Update (November 12th 2011): Read a reply by Jeremy Keith to this article in which he strongly argues about the importance of pursuing semantic value and addresses issues discussed in the article as w...

    Security has become a foremost concern on the Web in the past few years. Hackers...

Security has become a foremost concern on the Web in the past few years. Hackers have always been around, but with the increase in computer literacy and the ease of access to virtually any data, the p...

    The country selector. Its there when you create an account for a new Web service...

The country selector. Its there when you create an account for a new Web service, check out of an e-commerce store or sign up for a conference. The normal design? A drop-down list with all of the avai...

    Creating a grid is typically one of the very first things you do when starting a...

Creating a grid is typically one of the very first things you do when starting a design comp. After all, it provides the basic structure on which the rest of your design will lie. In this article, wel...

    Creating WordPress tutorials is a fantastic way to help build the WordPress comm...

Creating WordPress tutorials is a fantastic way to help build the WordPress community and to increase your Web traffic. Thats no secret. Just Google wordpress tutorial and youll see hundreds of result...

    Contrary to what you may read, peppering your form with nice buttons, color and ...

Contrary to what you may read, peppering your form with nice buttons, color and typography and plenty of jQuery plugins will not make it usable. Indeed, in doing so, you would be addressing (in an uns...

    Designers hold CSS close to their hearts. Its just code, but it is also what mak...

Designers hold CSS close to their hearts. Its just code, but it is also what makes our carefully crafted designs come to life. Thoughtful CSS is CSS that respects our designs, that is handcrafted with...

    Getting into Android development can be quite a challenge, particularly if youre...

Getting into Android development can be quite a challenge, particularly if youre new to Java or Eclipse or both. Whatever your past experience, you might feel tempted to start working away without che...

List tables are a common element in WordPress administration interface. They are used on nearly all default admin pages with lists, and developers often integrate them into their plugins. But creating...

    Frequently, when I discuss CSS3 with other developers, the issue of stubborn cli...

Frequently, when I discuss CSS3 with other developers, the issue of stubborn clients comes up. They tell me that even though they personally dont think a website should look the same in all browsers a...

This is the final part in a three-part series on how to build and grow successful user experience teams in agile environments. It covers challenges related to organization, hiring and integration that...

    Many Web companies spend hours and hours agonizing over the best domain names fo...

Many Web companies spend hours and hours agonizing over the best domain names for their clients. They try to find a domain name that is relevant and appropriate, sounds professional yet is distinctive...

    When I took my first steps into the WordPress theme arena, I didnt know much abo...

    User experience design isnt just about building wireframes and Photoshop mock-up...

    User experience design isnt just about building wireframes and Photoshop mock-up...

User experience design isnt just about building wireframes and Photoshop mock-ups. It extends to areas that you wouldnt necessarily think are part of the discipline.For example, your customer service ...

When I took my first steps into the WordPress theme arena, I didnt know much about it. I wandered blindly into the business, not knowing whether I was doing things correctly. Over time, through trial ...

    We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some int...

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 inspiration. As a mat...