March 31, 2017 — What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at. Read more…

March 31, 2017 — We’ve been on this mission to bring you unique wallpaper calendars each month anew for eight years already, and we are very thankful to all the designers and artists who keep it running by diligently contributing their artworks to it. This post features their works for April 2017. No matter if April means blooming colors and embracing the warmer weather in your part of the world or getting cozy for autumn, our new batch of desktop wallpapers is bound to cater for some fresh inspiration regardless of that. Read more…

March 30, 2017 — Quantitative research methods come with effective statistical techniques for determining a sample size. Qualitative research methods currently have no similar commonly accepted technique. Yet, there are steps you should take to ensure you have collected and analyzed the right amount of data. In this article, Victor Yocco will propose a formula for determining qualitative sample sizes in user research. He’ll also discuss how to collect and analyze data in order to achieve “data saturation.” Finally, Victor will provide a case study highlighting the concepts explored in this article. Read more…

March 29, 2017 — As the number of chart types and approaches keeps growing, the things are getting worse, and sometimes even top experts get confused with identifying the goals of one chart type or another. Stacked bar charts are often worthwhile and should be considered when the occasion demands. In this article, Vitaly Radionov explains why you should be careful when and where you use them. Read more…

March 28, 2017 — Today, we share our knowledge to get better and more efficient at what we do, like in a guild. What place could be better for a guild of web designers and developers to get together for a friendly conversation, to learn from each other and to spark new ideas at a location that lives and breathes centuries of crafted skills? We are headed back to the Historic Merchants’ Hall in our lovely hometown Freiburg, and we’d love you to join us there for SmashingConf Freiburg 2017! Read more…

March 27, 2017 — To this day, a lot of companies still religiously follow the path to app store publishing. “Publish it and they will come,” “The web is dead,” they used to say! According to recent studies, just 26.4% of users who visit a page in an app store today will install an app. The other 73.6% are lost to the developer and don’t even try the app. Among the ones who install it, an average of 99% are lost in the following 90 days. As a consequence, the same people who declared the web dead years ago are now shouting, “Apps are dying”. So, Where is the mobile web heading? To answer this question, Ciprian Borodescu and his colleagues at Appticles have conducted a colossal study on 10,000 publishing and e-commerce websites from Alexa, scouting for signs of resurrection, and instead finding serious traces of diversification. Their findings are detailed in this article. Read more…

March 24, 2017 — What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at. Read more…

March 23, 2017 — By using colour, typography, hierarchy, contrast, and all the other tools at their disposal, designers can take an unordered jumble of information and turn it into something that’s easy to use and pleasurable to behold. Like life itself, design can win a small victory against the entropy of the universe, creating pockets of order from the raw materials of chaos. For years, web design was dictated by the designer. The user had no choice but to accommodate the site’s demand for a screen of a certain size or a network connection of a certain speed. Now, web design can be a conversation between the designer and the user. Now, web design can reflect the underlying principles of the web itself. Read more…

March 22, 2017 — In this article, Margarita Klubochkina will show you that Improving your billing form can make the user experience much more intuitive and, as a result, ensure user convenience and increase confidence in your product. It’s an important part of web applications which you can improve quickly and easily using simple features sush as suitable autocomplete and name attributes for autofilling, VanillaMasker to separate card digits, or Halter font for easy comparison. Read more…

March 22, 2017 —

Bunnies ahead! These fluffy little fellows are an unmistakable sign that Easter is here. Along with their companions in crime, yellow chicks, of course. But did you know that Easter bunnies can be much more than cute? Some of them have a secret passion for skateboarding, others take it up even with their natural predators to protect their easter eggs. Don’t believe it? Well, wait and see.

In this post, we compiled the best Easter wallpapers from our monthly contest for you. It all started back in 2008 and it’s still running today thanks to the love and patience that artists and designers from all across the globe put into creating unique, inspiring, and, well, simply beautiful, wallpapers each month anew. So without further ado, let’s dive right into the world of bunnies, cheeky chicks, blooming flowers, easter eggs, and — how could we forget — chocolate, of course. Happy Easter!