Our charming eBooks
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The Smashing Library (68 eBooks)
Since over 12 years, Smashing Magazine is where thousands of designers and developers go to learn about design trends and advanced coding techniques.
That is why we have developed the Smashing Library, a comprehensive access to 68 valuable eBooks. The Library includes our latest releases Success at Scale, Understanding Privacy, Touch Design for Mobile Interfaces, Image Optimization, and TypeScript in 50 Lessons, too!
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Accessibility eBook Bundle (3 eBooks)
We try to build the best experiences we can, but more often than not, we make them for ourselves and users like us. With this eBook bundle, you’ll learn to enrich the web for everyone by removing existing barriers and creating experiences that are usable to more people.
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Business eBook Bundle (8 eBooks)
If you need support when it comes to the business aspects of the web industry, then these eBooks will be a treasure chest for you. Learn to adapt your business to the digital challenges. Get insights into building better products. Read up on how to pitch like a pro and handle your finances properly. Get precious tips on a key issue in your career: communication with clients and partners.
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Content Strategy eBook Bundle (3 eBooks)
With this bundle you will master content and copywriting in no time. Three eBooks contain Smashing Magazine’s best articles on content, carefully prepared, edited and — of course — without advertising. Perfect for those looking to get into the world of content development for online platforms, this eBook expertly pinpoints the key things one must know before beginning a journey into copywriting.
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Front-End eBook Bundle (4 eBooks)
Tailored to the needs of front-end developers, this eBook bundle contains four selected Smashing eBooks on HTML, CSS, responsive web design, and more. A valuable companion to master your daily front-end challenges.
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UX eBook Bundle (12 eBooks)
This eBook collection will guide you into the usability for web design field showing you how to use design elements for each purpose. The various possibilities for developing websites foster not only a designer’s creativity, but also the necessity of applying techniques that enhance the user experience and website’s usability.
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Web Design eBook Bundle (10 eBooks)
Every web designer, whether freelanced or employed, should have a reference literature that accompanies him or her throughout their professional routine. In this bundle you will find ten Smashing eBooks that will help you improve your skills in the web design field. You will be able to apply techniques to adapt your designs for mobile gadgets, combine different typefaces and intensify your professional abilities.
- TypeScript concepts, and how to make sense of them all.
- TypeScript tooling, needed to use the language effectively.
- How to get most out of TypeScript without learning a new language.
- Structural type systems, their semantics, and why they matter.
- Low-maintenance types and how to write types once, and let them grow automatically as code evolves.
- How to bend the type system to make it fit the needs of your projects.
- TypeScript culture and how the language is evolving.
- Connect your brand with customers
- Create connected experiences
- Improve engagement and conversions
- Bring personas and user stories to life
- Take design beyond frameworks
- explain what ethical design is
- justify and prove a business case for ethical design
- grow a sustainable business built on ethical design principles
- strike the balance between data collection and ethics
- embed ethical design into your workflow
- get started with ethical transformation
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Smashing Print #1: Ethics & Privacy
For a long time, we wanted to create a printed magazine that hasn’t existed before. Not a magazine about fleeting design trends or ever-changing frameworks, but topics that would make us all think, and remain useful as time passes by. A magazine exploring topics that often get lost in a myriad of blog posts out there. Written by the community for the community. Jump to table of contents.
We kick off with an issue exploring topics very close to our hearts — ethics, privacy and security, because these issues reach into all our lives, from our personal use of the web through to the advanced applications we develop. We look into tracking, advertising, GDPR and privacy law, data protection and addictive interfaces. We explore how to integrate privacy-driven decisions into our workflows by default and abandon dark UI patterns for good. Download a free PDF preview (3 MB).
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Click! How to Encourage Clicks Without Shady Tricks (eBook)
The web has become a noisy place with millions of companies trying to get users’ attention. No wonder many of them apply increasingly desperate techniques to encourage users to act on their websites. We’ve seen an explosion of dark patterns attempting to manipulate users into handing over personal data or make a purchase. Jump to table of contents.
However, these manipulative techniques come with hidden costs in customer service, maintenance, support, return processing fees, and social media backlash. They cost a fortune and hurt business irrevocably. Download a free PDF sample (17.3 MB) (ePUB, Kindle).
How, then, do we encourage users to act? If dark patterns are not the answer, then what is? How do we increase clicks without shady tricks? These are the questions that Click! answers.
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Image Optimization (eBook)
Images have always been a key part of the web. Our brains are able to interpret images much faster than text, which is why high-quality visuals drive conversions and user engagement.
That said, loading images efficiently at scale isn’t a little project for a quiet afternoon. It requires understanding of compression techniques, loading behavior, image decoding and image CDNs, adaptive media loading and caching.
This book will equip you with everything you need to know to optimize how you compress, serve and maintain images — boosting performance along the way.
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Touch Design for Mobile Interfaces (eBook)
Mobile and touch are the new normal for computing, but there remain a lot of myths, rumors, errors, bias, and out-of-date information on how portable touchscreens are used. Let’s change that!
In our brand-new book Touch Design for Mobile Interfaces, Steven Hoober shares his in-depth research about designing for touch as well as tips, tricks, trends, tendencies, guidelines, and heuristics you can apply to your work immediately to create human-centered mobile interfaces.
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TypeScript in 50 Lessons (eBook)
In TypeScript in 50 Lessons, Stefan Baumgartner breaks down the quirks of TypeScript into short, manageable lessons. You’ll make sense of TypeScript concepts, tooling for TypeScript and how to get most out of it without learning a new language. Everything TypeScript explained, from start to finish.
Written for seasoned and not-so-seasoned developers who know enough JavaScript to be dangerous, or want to dive deeper into TypeScript. With code walkthroughs, hands-on examples and common gotchas, that’s a book you might want to keep close.
You’ll learn:
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Understanding Privacy (eBook)
Privacy is a scary topic? It doesn’t have to be. Our new book Understanding Privacy helps you understand what data privacy is really about beyond scary headlines. It is an introduction to the beliefs, concepts, and ideas that inform privacy as it exists — or has failed to exist — on the open web that we build. Whether you’re a designer, developer, or project manager, this book will equip you with the knowledge you need to put your users first in everything you do and build a better web for tomorrow.
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Art Direction for the Web (eBook)
The web can be more than plain rectangles and perfect circles. Art Direction for the Web exists because we wanted to explore how we all, designers and front-end developers alike, can break out of generic web experiences prevailing today.
In the book, Andy explores original compositions, unexpected layouts, critical design thinking and front-end techniques that will help you create something that stands out.
To achieve this, the book applies art direction to examine a new approach to designing for the web. This book is supposed to make you think, and ask questions, and polish every pixel with clear intent and purpose. It will show you how art direction will:
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Design Systems (eBook)
As the web continues to become more complex, designing static pages has become untenable, so that many of us have started to approach design in a more systematic way. In this book, Alla Kholmatova sets out to identify what makes an effective design system that can empower teams to create great digital products.
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Smashing Book 6: New Frontiers In Web Design (eBook)
Meet Smashing Book 6 with everything from accessibility to CSS Custom Properties, Grid, Service Workers, performance patterns, AR/VR, conversational UIs and responsive art direction.
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User Experience Revolution (eBook)
Many companies try to create a great experience for customers. But few are willing to make the changes required to deliver on that promise. In fact most don’t even realize just how bad their experience can be.
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White Hat UX (eBook)
Most things in life come with a dark side. For years, the online space has acted as a playground for thieves, bandits and murky types who will use every trick in the book to make you do the opposite of what you set out to do. But there is hope. The next generation in user experience is coming.
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Apps For All: Coding Accessible Web Applications
Accessibility is not just about addressing specific disabilities, but making sure as many people as possible have access to the same information.
Written by Heydon Pickering and reviewed by Steve Faulkner.
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Digital Adaptation (eBook)
Nothing is more frustrating than stubborn management entangled in dated workflows and inefficient processes. That’s why we created “Digital Adaptation”, a new practical book on how to help senior management understand the Web and adapt the business, culture, team structure and workflows accordingly.
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Inclusive Design Patterns (eBook)
We make inaccessible and unusable websites and apps all the time, but it’s not for lack of skill or talent. It’s just a case of doing things the wrong way. We try to build the best experiences we can, but we only make them for ourselves and for people like us.
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Making It Right: Product Management For A Startup World
This eBook will empower product managers who work in digital and help them to build better products that make their companies and users more successful.
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The New Hardboiled Web Design
If you’re hungry to learn about how the latest techniques will make your websites more creative, flexible and adaptable, then “Harboiled Web Design” is for you.
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The Sketch Handbook (eBook)
If you’re designing for the web today, you are probably using Sketch. We do, too, so we created “The Sketch Handbook”, filled with many practical examples and tutorials in 12 jam-packed chapters.
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The WebP Manual
In this ebook, you’ll learn all about WebP: what it’s capable of, how it performs, how to convert images to the format in a variety of ways, and most importantly, how to use it.
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A Career On The Web: Assuming Leadership
Fresh ideas and practical advice to help you improve your leadership skills and foster a passionate and agile team.
Taking the step from being a member of a digital team to becoming a leader can be quite overwhelming. Having proven that you excel in the technical aspects of your job is most probably beyond question, but a leadership position will naturally confront you with entirely new challenges which also call for new skills. After all, a team is as good as its leader, right?
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A Career On The Web: On The Road To Success
There comes a time in everyone’s career when changing jobs is the natural next step. But how can you make the most of this situation and find a job you’ll love?
There comes a time in everyone’s career when changing jobs is the natural next step. Perhaps you’re looking for a new challenge or you feel like you’ve hit a wall in your current company? Either way, you’re standing at a crossroad, with an overwhelming amount of possibilities in front of you. But how can you make the most of this situation? How can you find a job you will truly love?
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A Field Guide To Usability Testing
Testing usability is vital to creating a successful website — even more so if it’s an e-commerce website, a complex app or any other complicated project.
Testing usability is vital to creating a successful website — even more so if it’s an e-commerce website, a complex app or any other complicated project. Unlike interviews and focus groups, a well-designed user test measures actual performance.
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A Field Guide To User Research
With this eBook, you will learn to take the guesswork out of your design decisions and base them on real-life experiences and user needs instead.
User research is an effective strategy to gain a deeper understanding of your target audience — a crucial step in order to choose efficient design solutions and build smart products. But what has to be considered when conducting user research? What methods have proven themselves in practice? And how do you finally integrate your findings into the design process? With this eBook, you will learn to take the guesswork out of your design decisions and base them on real-life experiences and user needs instead.
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Behind The Scenes Of Real-Life Projects
The eBook “Behind the Scenes of Real-Life Projects” takes a closer look at the techniques and stories of some folks behind real-life Web projects.
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Clients: Friends You Never Had
The eBook “Clients: Friends You Never Had” provides valuable advice to foster stable relationships and a fruitful cooperation with your clients.
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Content Strategy
This eBook delves into the world of content, providing beginners as well as communications pros with a fundamental understanding of how content strategy works.
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Content Strategy, Vol. 2: Planning, Producing And Maintaining Quality Content
This eBook is your guide through the critical phases of content planning, production and maintenance, your partner in crime to develop a sound content strategy.
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Creating Meaningful Websites
What is it that makes a website stand out from the crowd? What makes it memorable and meaningful? This eBook wants to explore these questions.
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Creativity Lessons For Web Designers
The infamous creative spark isn’t as random as we might think. The creativity lessons in this eBook may help you overcome a creative trough.
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Customizing WordPress
If WordPress got you hooked, and you want to tailor your site more to your needs and ideas, then this eBook is for you.
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Designing Better UX
“Designing Better UX” raises awareness for those little things that add up to an ideal user experience. A valuable resource for your daily UX routine.
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Designing For Email
“Designing For Email” offers practical advice to cater for a flawless and engaging experience on web, desktop, and mobile email clients.
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Effective Copywriting
From avoiding pitfalls to optimizing content and turning words into marketing tools, this eBook highlights the real-word copywriting experiences of Smashing’s authors.
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Emotional Design Elements
Find out how to integrate emotional appeal into your website — a personal touch can make all the difference, if you know how to design it.
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Form Design Patterns (eBook)
Without forms, the web is a passive experience where content is just consumed. But with forms the web can be collaborative, creative and productive. Forms are at the center of every meaningful interaction, so they’re worth getting a firm handle on. Jump to table of contents.
On first glance, forms are simple to learn. Made up of just a handful of inputs, you can create a form in little time. But when we consider the journeys we need to design, the users we need to design for, the browsers and devices of varying sizes, capabilities and bugs being used; and ensuring that the result is simple and inclusive, form design becomes a far more interesting and bigger challenge.
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How To Create Selling E-Commerce Websites, Vol. 2
This eBook takes a look at the challenges that crafting online shopping experiences bring along, and equips you with the necessary know-how on how to deal with them effectively.
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HTML Semantics
You won’t get far without the foundational understanding of HTML semantics. This eBook addresses the importance of semantics in our code.
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Inside Creative Minds: Workflows, Habits And Strategies
In “Inside Creative Minds” experienced influencers and successful designers provide first-hand insights into their workflows, habits and strategies.
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Legacy Of Typography
Typography is everywhere. This eBook introduces historical and cultural aspects of type and how they relate to the web industry.
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Marketing Secrets For Web Designers
Marketing is an essential part of web design and knowing its 101 helps you see your design decisions in a broader context.
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Navigation & Interaction
The foundations of good UX design lie in transparent navigation and interaction patterns and systems. A solid understanding of the rules is as important as knowing when to break them.
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Navigation & Interaction, Vol. 2
The foundation of a solid, frustration-free user experience lies in a well-considered navigation system. But which design decisions have proven themselves in practice?
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Performance Optimization: Techniques And Strategies
Tracking down performance bottlenecks does not only improve loading times but also results in a much snappier experience and a higher user engagement.
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Practical Approaches For Designing Accessible Websites
With the help of this eBook, you will gain a deeper understanding of common accessibility pitfalls and learn to circumvent them to create a better experience for everyone.
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Practical Approaches For Designing Usable Websites
Put your users in the focus and learn about designing flows, optimizing emotional engagement and performing heuristic website reviews.
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Psychology Of Web Design
“Psychology Of Web Design” gives you insights on how the human brain deals with different elements, colors, contrast, symmetry and balance.
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Rethinking UX
Rethinking UX is a springboard for developing a new perspective and for creating future-proof user experiences.
Smart Interface Design Patterns Checklists (Digital)
Every UI component, no matter if it’s an accordion, a hamburger navigation, a data table, or a carousel, brings along its unique challenges. Inventing a new solution to every problem takes time, and very often it’s really not necessary. We can rely on smart design patterns and ask the right questions ahead of time to avoid issues down the line.
Meet Interface Design Patterns Checklists, a deck of 166 cards with common questions to ask when tackling a common interface challenge — carousel, table, date picker, autocomplete, filtering, search, configurator, slider, timeline, map, web forms, testimonials, onboarding, pricing plan, authentication and many others. Created to help us all keep track of the things we need to consider to design better interfaces, faster. Check the preview (PDF, 825KB).
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Smashing Book #5: Real-Life Responsive Web Design (eBook)
Responsive design is a default these days, but we are all still figuring out just the right process and techniques to better craft responsive websites. That’s why we created a new book — to gather practical techniques and strategies from people who have learned how to get things done right, in actual projects with actual real-world challenges.
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Success At Scale (eBook)
Success at Scale is a curated collection of best-practice case studies capturing how production sites of different sizes tackle performance, accessibility, capabilities, and developer experience at scale. Case studies are from industry experts from teams at Instagram, Shopify, Netflix, eBay, Figma, Spotify, Wix, Lyft, LinkedIn, and many more. Guidance that stands the test of time.
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Successful Freelancing For Web Designers
Read up on how to pitch like a pro and handle your finances properly and get precious tips on communicating with clients and partners.
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The Ethical Design Handbook (eBook)
Over the past 20 years, user privacy has become merely a commodity on the web: there, but hardly ever respected — and often swiftly discarded. No wonder ad-blockers and tracking-blockers have gained traction, and in times when ad-blocking, browsers and new legislation (e.g. GDPR/CCPA) introduce constraints on data collection, we need alternative business models that companies can rely on. Models that respect customer choices and are built and designed with ethics in mind. Jump to table of contents.
But how do we get there? Meet The Ethical Design Handbook, our new guide on ethical design for digital products, with practical guidelines on how to help companies leave dark patterns behind and boost business KPIs along the way. 368 pages. Download a free PDF excerpt (5.9 MB) (also as ePUB, Kindle).
You'll learn how to:
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Typography Best Practices
Web design is not just about a flamboyant or simply beautiful website appearance. This eBook is about small — but crucial — typographic details.
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Typography: Practical Considerations And Design Patterns
Learn how to train and sharpen your eyes to recognize specific typographic details which will be sure to guide you in your own projects.
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Unlocking Innovation: How To Generate And Realize Great Ideas
“Unlocking Innovation” goes beyond the mere process of generating ideas and looks at how we can actually bring them to life.
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User Experience Design
“User Experience Design” provides you with insights on how to improve your website based on the most important UX principles.
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UX Design Process
User Experience design isn’t a new field. But sometimes new approaches lead to new perspectives.