March 28, 2012 — What is it that makes us loyal fans of the websites and apps we love? When we sat down to answer this question for ourselves, we found that the websites and apps we truly love have one thing in common: soul. Read more…

March 28, 2012 — We are very happy to present a sample chapter by Aarron Walter from the upcoming printed Smashing Book #3. In this chapter, Aarron explains how sharing our personalities can help us create lasting relationships with users, and how it can improve the bottom line of our business. The sample is also available for free download in PDF, EPUB and MobiPocket. Read more…

March 26, 2012 — When users land on your website, they typically read the content available. Then, the next thing that they will do is to try and familiarize themselves with your website. Most of the time this involves looking for navigation. Read more…

March 22, 2012 — This is a different take on Responsive Web design. This article discusses how we can better embrace what the Web is about by ignoring the big elephant in the room; that is, how we can rely on media queries and breakpoints without any concern for devices. Read more…

March 21, 2012 — It has been said that “we read best what we read most”. This quote was used as a type specimen in Emigre magazine in the late 1980’s by Zuzana Licko. It was written in defense of her typefaces, whose elemental shapes—designed with the strictures of the early HP laser printer in mind—challenged the commonly held notions of what made typefaces legible. Read more…

March 20, 2012 — When users look for information, they have a goal and are on a mission. Even before you started to read this article, chances are you did because you either had the implicit goal of checking what’s new on Smashing Magazine, or had the explicit goal of finding information about “Navigation Design”. Read more…

March 19, 2012 — This article is the fifth in our new series that introduces the latest, useful and freely available tools and techniques, developed and released by active members of the Web design community. The first article covered PrefixFree; the second introduced Foundation, a responsive framework; the third presented Sisyphus.js, a library for Gmail-like client-side drafts and the fourth shared with us a free plugin called GuideGuide. Today, we are happy to present Erskine’s responsive grid generator: Gridpak. Read more…

March 16, 2012 — Effective content marketing holds people’s attention. It gives you a distinctive brand, loyal fans and increased sales. You don’t need a big budget to succeed, which is why good content marketing is the single best way to beat bigger competitors online. Read more…

March 15, 2012 — The admin area is the heart of any WordPress-powered website. It’s where everything is controlled and where admin, editors, authors and contributors publish content to posts, pages and other custom post types. The default features of WordPress are fine for some website owners, although you may find that certain features need to be improved and others need to be added. Read more…

March 15, 2012 — Since Elliot Jay Stocks so poignantly told us to destroy the Web 2.0 look, we’ve witnessed a de-shinification of the Web, with fewer glass buttons, beveled edges, reflections, special-offer badges, vulgar gradients with vibrant colors and diagonal background patterns. The transformation has been welcomed with relief by all but the most hardened gloss-enthusiasts. Read more…