Imagine how your excitement after posting a blog and seeing so many visitors talking about it, turns to dismay as they start to tweet that your website is down — a database connection error is shown. Many of these mobile users access the Web via slow data connections and crowded public Wi-Fi. So, anything you can do to ensure that your website loads quickly will benefit those users. In this article, Rachel Andrew will show you Varnish Web application accelerator, a free and simple thing that makes a world of difference when a lot of people land on your website all at once.
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Navigation is merely a means to an end, and this is why users have contrasting expectations about content and navigation. While content is supposed to be unique and exciting, navigating to it is supposed to be as simple as possible. In this article, you will find a guide to efficiently simplifying the navigation experience, by analyzing the type and amount of content as well as choosing and designing the right type of navigation menu!
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As designers, we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one: distinctive desktop wallpapers. This article features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for December 2013. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your desktop wallpaper!
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In this article, we feature a set of 54 flat icons created and designed by Nick Frost and Greg Lapin. If you are looking for a way to make your design fresh and expressive, then this freebie is the answer. It includes 36 icons drawn from a full commercial set available on Smallicons, plus 18 icons designed exclusively for Smashing Magazine.
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Today, Vitaly Friedman reveals the Smashing Book Mystery riddle and announces the winners! (in case you want to figure it out first, close this window since there are spoilers in this post.
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95% of downloaded apps are abandoned within a month and 26% of apps are only used once, and depending on the user, these abandoned apps are deleted or ignored, never to be opened again. Lyndon Cerejo’s app graveyard is the final resting place for apps that he has downloaded but have since left neglected. The following are lessons from his app graveyard that he keeps in mind when designing apps, and they might help you, too.
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To celebrate the long-awaited release of our new Smashing Book (yaaaay!), we’ve prepared a little mystery for you. Below you’ll find an animated GIF that contains a hidden message. Once you resolved the mystery, you’ll see a Twitter hashtag displayed in plain text. Are you ready? Action!
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Many large businesses had a chief electricity officer when electricity first started to power the industrial economy. Companies just couldn’t operate without power, but it wasn’t always that way. Over a decade after introducing electricity, many business leaders were still building factories by water, despite no longer needing it to power their machinery. They needed help integrating the new technology into their thinking and that is where the chief electricity officer came in.
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In this article, Peter Traeg provides an overview of how to build a simple mobile application using each of the following approaches. Few developers have had the opportunity to develop for mobile using a variety of tools, and this series is intended to broaden your scope. Hopefully you will be in a better position to choose the right development tools for your mobile application’s needs!
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You want to be lean and you want to be agile by using technologies that will help you succeed in the short and long term. And those technologies are not always easy to pick out. Full-stack JavaScript hits all the marks. You’ve probably seen it around. With JavaScript, you can create scalable, maintainable applications, unified under a single language. There’s no doubt, it’s a force to be reckoned with. In this article, Alejandro Hernandez will introduce these components piece by piece.
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