Articles by Smashing Magazine from June 2013

Launching a new product especially your first can be incredibly daunting. Even knowing where to turn for help can be hard. So many blog posts are full of free advice on how to successfully launch th...

   Launching a new product — especially your first — can be incredibly daunting. Even knowing where to turn for help can be hard. So many blog posts are full of free advice...

   Twitter needs no introduction. It has become the way to reach audiences for some people and companies and a place to hang out for others. Placing a Twitter feed on one’s webs...

Twitter needs no introduction. It has become the way to reach audiences for some people and companies and a place to hang out for others. Placing a Twitter feed on ones website has almost become compu...

   Thanks to the skyrocketing popularity of mobile devices, a new generation of designers and CMS developers has found the religion of Structured Content. Once the domain of semantic m...

Thanks to the skyrocketing popularity of mobile devices, a new generation of designers and CMS developers has found the religion of Structured Content. Once the domain of semantic markup purists and i...

Please notice that this article is targeted at newcomers to the industry rather than seasoned designers and developers. The point of the article is to provide a general guide to building meaningful, f...

   A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… a youngling designer embarked on an epic journey strewn with perilous layout challenges, constant procrastination, devious jQuery er...

   Please notice that this article is targeted at newcomers to the industry rather than seasoned designers and developers. The point of the article is to provide a general guide to bui...

   Responsive Web design has transformed how websites are designed and built. It has inspired us to think beyond device classifications and to use media queries to adapt a layout to th...

Responsive Web design has transformed how websites are designed and built. It has inspired us to think beyond device classifications and to use media queries to adapt a layout to the browsers viewport...

   Mobile user experience design is maturing. One way to gauge this is to look at the tools at our disposal. Prototyping tools such as Balsamiq, Axure and Fireworks enable us to build ...

Mobile user experience design is maturing. One way to gauge this is to look at the tools at our disposal. Prototyping tools such as Balsamiq, Axure and Fireworks enable us to build wireframes and clic...

The WordPress functions.php theme file provides an efficient way to modify WordPress theme by theme. This file contains mostly theme-related functions but can also be used to enhance or modify default...

   In my career as a user experience professional, part of my purpose has always been to help push our profession forward. And I’ve had the great privilege of being able to do j...

In my career as a user experience professional, part of my purpose has always been to help push our profession forward. And Ive had the great privilege of being able to do just that in a myriad of way...

You know how it goes: you are facing a difficult situation with a client, and you aren’t quite sure how to respond to it to navigate the conversation into a meaningful direction. This is where e...

   You know how it goes: you are facing a difficult situation with a client, and you aren’t quite sure how to respond to it to navigate the conversation into a meaningful directi...

In the first installment of this two-part series on type classification, we covered the basics of type classification the various methods people have used, why they are helpful, and a brief survey of...

Three weeks ago we launched a photo contest and asked everyone to submit a creative picture of the object that fuels their creativity and inspiration. For all of you who have participated, thank you s...

   In the first installment of this two-part series on type classification, we covered the basics of type classification — the various methods people have used, why they are help...

   Three weeks ago we launched a photo contest and asked everyone to submit a creative picture of the object that fuels their creativity and inspiration. For all of you who have partic...

   This is the story of what we learned during a redesign for our most demanding client — ourselves! In this article, I will explain, from our own experience of refreshing our a...

This is the story of what we learned during a redesign for our most demanding client ourselves! In this article, I will explain, from our own experience of refreshing our agency website, why we aband...

Today we are pleased to feature a set of 200 useful and beautiful foodie icons. This freebie was created by the team behind Freepik, and at the time of writing it’s the largest set of food icons...

   You’ve just created the best user experience ever. You had the idea. You sketched it out. You started to build it. Except you’re already in trouble, because youâ€�...

Youve just created the best user experience ever. You had the idea. You sketched it out. You started to build it. Except youre already in trouble, because youve forgotten something: the copy. Specific...

   Today we are pleased to feature a set of 200 useful and beautiful foodie icons. This freebie was created by the team behind Freepik, and at the time of writing it’s the larges...

   With the Leap Motion controller being released on June 27th and the Google Glass Explorer program already live, it is obvious that our reliance on the mouse or even the monitor to i...

Editor's note: Please note that this article explores an entirely hypothetical scenario, and these are opinions, some of which you may not agree with. However, the opinions are based on current trends...

The other day, I finally accomplished one of my long-standing goals: to go from one of those Wouldnt it be cool ideas to a working, live app in less than 1 hour. 45 minutes, actually.It all started wi...

   The other day, I finally accomplished one of my long-standing goals: to go from one of those “Wouldn’t it be cool…” ideas to a working, live app in less tha...

   We are talking and reading a lot about responsive Web design (RWD) these days, but very little attention is given to Web applications. Admittedly, RWD still has to be ironed out. Bu...

We are talking and reading a lot about responsive Web design (RWD) these days, but very little attention is given to Web applications. Admittedly, RWD still has to be ironed out. But many of us believ...

When a team builds a complex application, there is often a common breakdown of roles. Specifically on the back end, there are database engineers, application engineers and operations engineers, or som...

   Guess what? The Smashing Conference is coming! 2 single-track conference days, 3 full-day workshops, 16 excellent speakers, and only 300 available seats. We’d be honoured to w...

   When a team builds a complex application, there is often a common breakdown of roles. Specifically on the back end, there are database engineers, application engineers and operation...

Today well discuss how to improve the paint performance of your websites and Web apps. This is an area that we Web developers have only recently started looking at more closely, and its important beca...

   Today we’ll discuss how to improve the paint performance of your websites and Web apps. This is an area that we Web developers have only recently started looking at more clos...

   This week at Smashing Magazine, we’ve decided to reflect on and analyze performance, navigation, code base, style guides, content, customer support, our tools and our internal...

   Adaptive images are the current hot topic in conversations about adaptive and responsive Web design. Why? Because no one likes any of the solutions thus far. New elements and attrib...

Adaptive images are the current hot topic in conversations about adaptive and responsive Web design. Why? Because no one likes any of the solutions thus far. New elements and attributes are being disc...

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...

   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 in...