Like all good things, Google Fonts do come with a cost. Each font carries a weight that the web browser needs to download before they can be displayed. Google Fonts are easy to implement, but they can have a big impact on your page load times. With the correct setup, the additional load time isn’t noticeable. However, get it wrong and your users could be waiting up to a few seconds before any text is displayed. In this article, Danny Cooper will explore how we can load them in the most optimal way.
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Take a moment to remember the last time you collaborated in a code review. Did your team overcome feedback resistance and manage time expectations? Fostering a healthy mindset is the key to build trust and sharing knowledge with your colleagues. In this article, Sandrina Pereira will share how this outcome can be changed by changing your mindset during a code review as a team, as an author and as a reviewer.
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How can we improve our keyboard-only (KO) and Assistive Technology (AT) user experiences without affecting the experience for anyone else? In this article, we’ll dig into some specific, practical examples including skip links, navigation menus, modal focusing, and user education components. In this article, Aaron Pearlman is going to go over a few of those affordances that can make your KO/AT user experiences better without really changing the experience for anyone else.
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To make the best of SVG, it’s useful not only to learn its syntax but also to understand how SVG is generated by graphic design software. Let’s take a closer look at the process of generating SVG with popular design apps and how we can use them to our own advantage. In this post, Mikolaj Dobrucki will shed light on three of the most popular design tools: Adobe Illustrator, Sketch, and Figma. There are also other tools available supporting SVG that may have other functionalities and implement other solutions. This article should be enough to deal with the most common use cases.
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We had a wonderful time at the sold-out SmashingConf San Francisco! As always with any Smashing Conference, there were plenty of surprises! We had icecream and cookies, our amazing DJ Tobi Lessnow kept everyone well entertained between talks, and Vitaly opened the conference with just the right amount of balloons! In this article, Rachel Andrew rounds up all of the videos, photos, tweets and resources that were shared on- and offstage. Coming up next: SmashingConf Toronto.
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Many mobile applications require access to location, photos, and even the camera during installation, which isn’t something most customers would be happy to consent to. In this series of articles, Vitaly Friedman talks about privacy-related design patterns. You’ll be exploring some of the respectful ways to approach privacy and data collection, and how to deal with the notorious cookie consent prompts, intrusive push notifications, glorious permission requests, malicious third-party tracking and offboarding experience.
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With so many applications and services and people and machines and chatbots fighting for our attention, staying focused is a luxury that needs to be savored and protected, and so no wonder notifications don’t enjoy a decent reputation these days. More than that, often they feel off the point and manipulative, too. In this series of articles, Vitaly Friedman will talk about privacy-related design patterns. He’ll be exploring some of the respectful ways to approach privacy and data collection, and how to deal with those notorious cookie consent prompts, intrusive push notifications, glorious permission requests, malicious third-party tracking and offboarding experience.
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Now cookie prompts aren’t particularly useful, but they certainly helped raise awareness about privacy and data collection on the web. In fact, users now know that websites track their data, which they weren’t aware of a few years ago. But they often see it as a necessary evil in exchange for accessing the content “for free.” This series of articles is about privacy-related design patterns. Vitaly Friedman will be exploring some of the respectful ways to approach privacy and data collection, and how to deal with those notorious cookie consent prompts, intrusive push notifications, glorious permission requests, malicious third-party tracking and offboarding experience.
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There are a few ways to align elements in CSS. In this article, Rachel Andrew explains what they are with some tips to help you remember which to use and why. She will take a look at the different alignment methods. Instead of providing a comprehensive guide to each, Rachel explain a few of the sticking points people have and point to more complete references for the properties and values. You can go a long way by understanding the fundamental things about how the methods behave, and then need a place to go look up the finer details in terms of how you achieve the precise layout that you want.
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What is Node in the first place? What is the meaning “event-driven” and “non-blocking” anyway, and how does Node fit into the bigger picture of applications, Internet networks, and servers? In this article, Jamie Corkhill will attempt to answer all of these questions and more throughout this series as he takes an in-depth look at the inner workings of Node, learn about the HyperText Transfer Protocol, APIs, and JSON, and more. An introduction to the backend web application development process.
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