February 2, 2017 — While the concept of mobile-first began as a philosophy to help prioritize content and ensure positive, device-agnostic experiences, budgetary and scheduling constraints often result in mobile-first meaning mobile-only. According to the analytics data of Marli and Jasons’s healthcare clients, the majority of their users are still on desktop. They want to provide a positive experience for those users and for users on mobile and tablet apps and for those using mobile browsers — and even for users having an in-person experience! It is not accurate to assume that mobile is the primary experience. Read more…

February 1, 2017 — Decorate your desktop with a lovely wallpaper to celebrate Valentine’s Day. These 43 wallpapers are the very best Valentines Day wallpapers from Smashing Magazine’s monthly contest – running from 2008 until 2016 and still counting. Please notice that we respect the ideas and motivation behind artists’ work, which is why we’ve given all designers full freedom to explore her creativity and express her emotions and experience through her work. And this is also why the theme of the wallpaper weren’t anyhow influenced by us, but designed from scratch by the artist herself. Spread the love! Read more…

January 31, 2017 — Don’t you feel like Wonderwoman or Superman when squishing that annoying CSS/JavaScript bug or improving front-end performance, or making the UX workflow smooth at your company? Well, we do! Now, we also love sharing. SmashingConf NYC 2017 won’t solve all complex problems, but once it’s over you’ll know how to conquer yours. With practical front-end and UX techniques, battles, fights, wins and losses, we’d love you to learn and share your special abilities and your experiences! So reserve that plane and meet us in New York City! Read more…

January 31, 2017 — This monthly wallpapers mission has been going on for eight years already and we are very thankful to all the creative minds who challenge their skills and contribute to it each month anew. Today, Cosima Mielke features their desktop artwork for February 2017. All images can be clicked on and lead to the preview of the wallpaper. Remember you can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our Desktop Wallpaper Calendars series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them? Read more…

January 30, 2017 — In this article, Constantine Konovalov will attempt to describe the principal solutions involved in the development of his own version of the Paris metro map. The entire process that went into the creation of this new map, took him around two and a half years to complete, and an article of that length would bore even the most committed of readers. So, In this light, he will cover only the principal graphical solutions. At the end of the report, Constantine has included a time-lapse video of the entire creation process. Read more…

January 27, 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…

January 27, 2017 — In today’s icon set, you’ll find a good number of icons that have been specifically tailored to e-commerce projects, but also some more versatile motifs like a love letter, calendar, and even a WiFi sign that sends off some lovely vibes. This icon set is available in two different styles — each available in AI, SVG, EPS, Sketch, CSH and PNG formats. Thanks to the creative minds behind Roundicons who created these 30 sugar-sweet icons dedicated just for you to use for all things valentine. Perfect to spread some love, and hopefully, conquer the hearts of your users. Read more…

January 26, 2017 — Two years ago, The Russian ruble’s exchange rate slumped, and Andrew Sumin and his team had to take a look at what email consists of. At the time, they didn’t have file deduplication in place, but they estimated that it could shrink the total storage size by 36%, because many users receive the same messages, such as price lists from online stores and newsletters from social networks that contain images and so on. In this article, he will describe how he implemented a deduplication system under the guidance of PSIAlt. Read more…

January 25, 2017 — The human to computer interaction is heavily based on interacting with graphical UI elements, and color plays a critical role in this interaction. When designing a new app, it’s often difficult to decide on a color scheme that works well, as there are an infinite number of possible color combinations out there. In this article, Nick Babich will go over the most important points related to color in apps. He’ll cover traditional color scheme patterns, custom color combinations that aren’t based strictly on any one pattern, and he’ll also learn how to choose colors and contrasts for your app that support usability. If you’d like to hone your own color usage skills, you can download and test Adobe XD for free, and get started right away. Read more…

January 24, 2017 — Creating responsive email is not an easy task. If you want to stand out, no matter how beautiful your emails are, you need to make sure they render correctly in your reader’s inbox, regardless of what email client they’re using. There are a few techniques out there to help email developers. You might be familiar with some of them, such as the hybrid approach, the mobile-first approach or even the Fab Four technique by HTeuMeuLeu. But because of the reasons stated earlier, and especially the lack of a standard, none of these techniques will enable you to tame all email clients at once. Read more…