In the fast-paced industry that designers and developers work in, it’s important to stay up to date as much as possible. Don’t worry, we’ve got your back with monthly updates to help you stay on top of things. This is the first monthly update that the Smashing team will be publishing, to highlight some of the things we have enjoyed reading over the past month.
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The web has seen an incredible evolution in the last decade: new HTML/CSS features, browser improvements, and design techniques. Ever since releasing Grid Inspector, the Firefox DevTools team has been inspired to build a new suite of tools to solve the problems of the modern web. In this article, Victoria Wang will tell you everything about all 7 tools and take a peek at potential future projects, with stories from the design process and practical steps for trying out each tool.
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Whether it’s you adding Webmentions, removing tracking scripts from a website, recycling plastic, picking up trash from the street to throw it into a bin, or cycling instead of driving to work for a week, we all can make things better for ourselves and the people around us. We just have to do it. For his monthly reading list, Anselm Hannemann summarized what has happened in the web development world in the past few weeks. From browser news and UI/UX to privacy, tooling, work and life.
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The market is filled with site builders that promise to be universal solutions for any design challenge, but when it comes to practice, they fall short on both the design and development side. Only a few tools actually keep their promises. In this article, Nick Babich reviews Webflow — the next-generation tool for building a sophisticated web experience that allows users to design, build, and launch websites visually.
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In this article, Rachel Andrew explores the situations in which you might encounter overflow in your web designs and explains how CSS has evolved to create better ways to manage and design around unknown amounts of content. Rachel will show you how new layout methods and new values in CSS can help us to deal with overflow and create less fragile designs. She’ll also explain one of the fundamental concepts behind the design of CSS — that of avoiding data loss.
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The typical website stack has gotten complex, involving many tools and technologies, and requiring automation to handle its deployment adequately. By automating all the tasks to execute, you will not dread doing the deployment, indeed you may not be even aware of it. In this article, Leonardo Losoviz will take a closer look at Buddy, one of the most comprehensive tools for automating website deployments.
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Switching tools isn’t a decision to be taken lightly. In this article, Buzz Usborne brings you a nuts-and-bolts and behind-the-scenes look at how Help Scout migrated design systems from Sketch to Figma — why we made the switch, a step-by-step walkthrough of what it entailed, and what we got out of it — a story that applies to any team considering a large-scale tool migration.
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In any project that requires any user interaction, there is one critical factor that makes the difference between success and failure: good documentation. This holds true regardless of how small or large your project is. One of the most overlooked aspects of creating and/or maintaining any software library is good documentation. Luckily for you, a new tool on the market is here to make it easy for you to create great documentation for your projects. Whether you like it or not, you will never hear from users who give up after being unable to solve their problem due to inadequate documentation.
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Philippe Hong has made the switch to Figma almost two years ago and he has no regrets so far. In one of his previous blog posts on the topic, he made an in-depth review of Figma, and he’s glad he could help other designers make the switch In this article, let’s take a closer look at what Figma really has to offer. Here are 20 tips on how to work faster and better with this well-known and collaborative interface design tool.
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What happened in the web community in the last few weeks? The web is developing and changing so fast, and we need to acknowledge that we as individual persons can’t know and understand everything. And that’s fine. Choose what you want to do, set your priorities, and, most importantly of all, don’t hesitate to hire someone else for the things you can’t do on your own. In this article, Anselm has summarized the most important happenings in the web community that have taken place over the past few weeks in one handy list for you. Enjoy!
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