Inspiring Desktop Wallpapers To Welcome 2018 (January Edition)

The new year is an opportunity to start over fresh, to overcome routines and rethink processes. And, well, despite all the New Year’s resolutions you might have made, sometimes it’s the small things that work wonders. A tidy desktop and a new, inspiring wallpaper, for example, that caters for a little inspiration shot when you need one. To kick off 2018 with wallpapers that are a bit more distinctive as the usual crowd, artists and designers from across the globe once again challenged their artistic skills and designed unique desktop wallpapers for you to indulge in.

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Making The Transition From After Effects To CSS Transitions And Keyframes

Websites are looking more and more like mobile apps. Users are also increasingly expecting a more app-like experience. From push notifications to offline mode, native web apps are getting there. Once web apps function like native apps, the design interactions would also change to address the use case — namely, the ubiquity of animations. Animations drive interactions in all of our favourite apps, from Uber to Lyft and Snapchat to Instagram.

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A Sneak-Peek Inside The Southeast Asian Web Community

A few weeks ago, Vitaly Friedman (co-founder of this little magazine) and I had the pleasure to join the Mozilla’s Developer Roadshow, traveling through four countries in Southeast Asia in just two weeks. We visited cities that are buzzing with life and met people who share our passion for the web. Our mission: To get up close with the Southeast Asian web community. We wanted to learn how different local communities are compared to Europe and the US.

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Standing Out From The Crowd: Improving Your Mobile App With Competitive Analysis

The mobile app industry is arguably one of the most competitive industries in the world. With around 2.8 million apps available for download in the Google Play store and 2.2 million in Apple’s App Store, getting your app seen, let alone downloaded, can be difficult. With such fierce competition, it is important to make your app the best it can be. One of the most productive ways to do this is by conducting a competitive analysis to see where your competitors are at, what is working for them, what isn’t and what you can do better.

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Productivity Tips And Tricks: The Community Shares Its Piece Of Advice

Productivity tips always make for a popular topic for an article, as everyone is looking for the silver bullet, that one weird trick that turns you into a productivity machine. However, the tips that work well for one person may not work so well for another. We asked the community on Twitter and Facebook to share their best productivity tips, and in this article I’m going to round these up alongside some things I’ve learned that work well for me.

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☑️ The Ultimate Digital Clean-Up Checklist: Are You Prepared For The New Year?

With a couple of days left until New Year’s Eve, it’s just about time to set aside 60 minutes to clean up, sort out and back up your digital footprint, to ensure a good smooth start to 2017. So many little details tend to get forgotten or overlooked every single time, only to get fixed hastily later — but doesn’t it just feel right when everything is in the right place, neatly organized, even if you aren’t a compulsory cleaner or an obsessed perfectionist?

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32 Free And Friendly Office Icons

The web has changed the way we work. Startups rethought what offices look like, and with a laptop in your bag, you can get work done from anywhere anyways — no matter if it’s your desk at home or the cozy coffee shop around the corner. Over are the times of dark and stuffy cubicles — in many companies, at least. To remove the dust from the term “office” and give the visuals revolving around it a fresh and friendly face, too, the creative minds at Vexels designed a set of 32 office-themed icons.

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Building Better UI Designs With Layout Grids

Designers of all types constantly face issues with the structure of their designs. One of the easiest ways to control the structure of a layout and to achieve a consistent and organized design is to apply a grid system. A grid is like invisible glue that holds a design together. Even when elements are physically separated from each other, something invisible connects them together. While grids and layout systems are a part of the heritage of design, they’re still relevant in this multiscreen world we live in.

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Inspiration From Mobile Dating Apps: How To Improve Your Designs

Making improvements to your mobile app’s design isn’t necessarily the easiest of tasks. After all, how much can really be accomplished within such a limited space? You recognize that mobile users’ attention spans are waning and that, consequently, they expect a speedy, convenient and engaging experience when using apps. Realistically, how many other ways can there be to satisfy these expectations that haven’t already been done before? Let’s take mobile dating apps.

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Breaking The Rules: Using SQLite To Demo Web Apps

Most potential users will want to try out the software or service before committing any time and money. Some products work great by just giving users a free trial, while other apps are best experienced with sample data already in place. Often this is where the age-old demo account comes into play. However, anyone who has ever implemented a demo account can attest to the problems associated. You know how things run on the Internet: Anyone can enter data (whether it makes sense or not to the product) and there is a good chance that the content added by anonymous users or bots could be offensive to others.

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The Mystery Riddle Is Resolved: When Purple Plain Meets Felix The Cat

These riddles can be quite addictive and annoying, can’t they? With seven mischievous riddles published over the last few years, we’ve learned a few lessons along the way. At this point, you might be used to endless, mischievous, tricky, mean, time-consuming and intricate Mystery Riddles, and the latest one wasn’t any different. It had to be playful and challenging, and take at least 45 mins to resolve. In the end, the first answer to the new riddle came in after 1h 48minafter the (slightly delayed — sorry about that!

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Monthly Web Development Update 12/2017: Pragmatic Releasing, Custom Elements, And Making Decisions

Editor’s Note: What happened in the web community in the last few weeks? Anselm Hannemann summarizes everything that’s new and important so that you don’t miss out on anything. Enjoy! Today I read an eye-opening article about the current young generation and their financial future. It’s hard to grasp words like “Millenials”, and there’s much talk about specific issues they face, but, for many of us, it’s not easy to understand their struggle — no matter if you’re older or younger than me (I qualify under the Millenial generation).

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An Introduction To Automated Testing Of WordPress Plugins With PHPUnit

WordPress is a popular content management system for building websites because it is easy to get started with and a ton of themes and plugins are available to extend its feature set. The main reason WordPress has a lot of plugins and themes is because it’s easy for developers of any level to start building one. Most of its developers are not experienced, and they do not write tests for their work, perhaps because of the following reasons:

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How Do I Know If Venture Capital Fits My Business?

There is a popular image in the world of software which many young and inexperienced entrepreneurs are becoming infatuated with. It’s the idea that when you come up with an awesome idea, the highest peak to strive for — the ultimate goal — is getting in front of a venture capitalist and receiving a huge lump sum to propel your business to unimaginable heights and bring tremendous personal wealth. Well then, let’s explore what it really means to fund your business with equity capital.

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How To Use Underlined Text To Improve User Experience

(This is a sponsored article.) An underline is a horizontal line immediately below a portion of text. In our everyday experience, we underline to emphasize key sections of text, sometimes drawing an underline by hand below printed text. But underlines have their own place in the world of digital design. In fact, underlined text has become one of the most common, most recognizable features of our online experience. When we see an underlined word or sentence on a web page, we immediately assume it’s a link.

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The New Smashing Mystery Riddle, An Emoji Edition

Oh yes, the infamous mystery riddles are back! To celebrate the relaunch of this little website, we’ve prepared something special yet again — a Smashing Emoji Mystery Riddle. And this time, instead of scouting an answer in a physical place or on Twitter, it’s well hidden somewhere on this website. So, What Can You Win? Among the first readers who tweet @smashingmag all the hidden emoji, we’ll raffle a quite extraordinary, smashing prize (and a couple of other Smashing extras):

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How To Iterate Your Way To A Winning Content-Driven Website

If, like me, you spend most of your days working on content-driven websites, you can feel left out of the cool kid’s party. Best practice like Agile, continual iteration, and user feedback don’t sit quite as well when serving up lots of information, rather than a killer web app. When I talk about a content-driven site, I am referring to any website whose primary aim is to convey information, rather than complete tasks.

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Using Design Workouts To Build World-Class Design Teams

What do the makers of the most successful products in the world, whether digital or physical, have in common? I bet they put design and user experience at the center of everything they do. These companies recognize that the smallest detail can make or break a product. The best design ideas, though, are made not in isolation, but by strong, well-rounded teams. So, how do you cultivate a strong design team?

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Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Prototyping (But Were Afraid To Ask)

Prototypes are my framework for learning new tools, platforms and techniques. A prototype works as hard proof that an idea will or won’t work. It is central to my entire creative process and is the medium I use to relate to the people and businesses I collaborate with. I’m gushy about prototypes because I think they can work wonders, but I also think they don’t get they’re due. Prototyping is usually not incorporated into project timelines at all or, if it is, usually as some tangential deliverable to a larger project.

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Dealing With Stress As A Designer: Here's What Research Says

The world is a stressful place. That’s probably why if you search for articles about dealing with stress you’ll find lots of great advice. But the problem is that most of it is pretty generic. Eat good food. Exercise. Get plenty of sleep. Those are all good general tips — but is there anything more specific to the profession of design? If you’re a designer who feels stressed from time to time, then this article is for you.

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The Evolution Of User Experience Design

(This series of articles is kindly supported by Adobe.) We’re fortunate enough to be working at an incredibly exciting time in our industry. Yes, the challenges are considerable, but the opportunities are – equally – transformational. It’s never been a more exciting time to work as a User Experience (UX) designer. Great designers deliver wonderful, considered and memorable experiences. Doing that isn’t easy and – through this series of articles – I’ll provide a wealth of pointers to ensure you’re on the right track.

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Understanding CSS Layout And The Block Formatting Context

There are a few concepts in CSS layout that can really enhance your CSS game once you understand them. This article is about the Block Formatting Context (BFC). You may never have heard of this term, but if you have ever made a layout with CSS, you probably know what it is. Understanding what a BFC is, why it works, and how to create one is useful and can help you to understand how layout works in CSS.

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How To Iterate Your Way To A Winning Content-Driven Website

If, like me, you spend most of your days working on content-driven websites, you can feel left out of the cool kid’s party. Best practice like Agile, continual iteration, and user feedback don’t sit quite as well when serving up lots of information, rather than a killer web app. When I talk about a content-driven site, I am referring to any website whose primary aim is to convey information, rather than complete tasks.

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Using Design Workouts To Build World-Class Design Teams

What do the makers of the most successful products in the world, whether digital or physical, have in common? I bet they put design and user experience at the center of everything they do. These companies recognize that the smallest detail can make or break a product. The best design ideas, though, are made not in isolation, but by strong, well-rounded teams. So, how do you cultivate a strong design team?

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Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Prototyping (But Were Afraid To Ask)

Prototypes are my framework for learning new tools, platforms and techniques. A prototype works as hard proof that an idea will or won’t work. It is central to my entire creative process and is the medium I use to relate to the people and businesses I collaborate with. I’m gushy about prototypes because I think they can work wonders, but I also think they don’t get they’re due. Prototyping is usually not incorporated into project timelines at all or, if it is, usually as some tangential deliverable to a larger project.

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Dealing With Stress As A Designer: Here's What Research Says

The world is a stressful place. That’s probably why if you search for articles about dealing with stress you’ll find lots of great advice. But the problem is that most of it is pretty generic. Eat good food. Exercise. Get plenty of sleep. Those are all good general tips — but is there anything more specific to the profession of design? If you’re a designer who feels stressed from time to time, then this article is for you.

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The Evolution Of User Experience Design

(This is a sponsored post.) We’re fortunate enough to be working at an incredibly exciting time in our industry. Yes, the challenges are considerable, but the opportunities are – equally – transformational. It’s never been a more exciting time to work as a User Experience (UX) designer. Great designers deliver wonderful, considered and memorable experiences. Doing that isn’t easy and – through this series of articles – I’ll provide a wealth of pointers to ensure you’re on the right track.

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Copyright Law Essentials All Designers Should Know

As software designers or developers, you have the important task of ensuring that a program works the way it is supposed to while being efficient, user-friendly, and unique. After all the creativity that is poured into making a program work just right, it’s fair to say that a well-designed software program is a work of art. From a legal perspective, a software program is a complex work that includes both functional and artistic elements.

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Welcome To The Next Level Of Mobile App Development

(This is a sponsored article.) As users spend 89% of their mobile time inside apps — and 56% of all traffic is now mobile — creating a mobile app has become a top priority for many businesses. Statistics show that the average American spends more than two hours a day on their mobile device. Having a mobile app can be beneficial for your company for a number of reasons. But we all know that building an app from scratch is difficult — the gap between a concept and solution is wide and requires a lot of time, effort and money.

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Debugging CSS Grid Layouts With Firefox Grid Inspector

You may have heard quite a bit of talk about a CSS feature called “Grid” this year. If you are someone who cringes when you hear the words “CSS” and “grid” in the same sentence, then I highly suggest you check out this new CSS module called CSS Grid. Browsers render HTML elements as boxes according to the CSS box model, and CSS Grid is a new layout model that provides authors the ability to control the size and position of these boxes and their contents.

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Customizing Admin Columns In WordPress

(This is a sponsored article.) If you manage a WordPress website, you’ve probably faced a common problem. How do you get insight into all of your content at a glance? WordPress’ admin area does not show you much about your pages, posts, users and comments. That can make it hard to find the right page, to check if all associated fields are properly filled, or simply to get a general sense of your website’s content.

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