Many business models thrive on ingeniously deceptive and manipulative digital products. Not because they have to; mostly because dark patterns have become such an accepted norm. But what happens when ad-blockers, cross-browser tracking protection and data regulation (e.g. GDPR & CCPA) become a norm, too? That's when an honest, ethical design could be a competitive advantage. To grow a sustainable business, we need to learn how to leave dark patterns behind.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/03/ethical-design-handbook-release/

October CMS is flourishing: With over 9000 stars in its GitHub repo, 2000 forks and 300 contributors, it is becoming a major force in the CMS space. It won the popular vote as the Best Flat-File CMS from 2018, new plugins are published on its marketplace almost daily (covering most of the developer needs), and its network of partners is expanding worldwide. Let's see what it is all about. Built in PHP and powered by Laravel (one of the most powerful and developer-friendly PHP frameworks), October CMS is a free open-source Content Management System (CMS).

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/03/october-cms-shopaholic/

In this episode of the Smashing Podcast, we’re talking about an interesting open-source tool called Sourcebit. How can it help our content workflow with JAMstack sites? I spoke to developer Eduardo Boucas to find out. Show Notes Sourcebit Video of Sourcebit in action Eduardo on Twitter and his website Weekly Update “Inspired Design Decisions: Neville Brody Design Cannot Remain Neutral,” by Andy Clarke “When You Find A Good Idea, Look For A Better One,”

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/03/smashing-podcast-episode-11/

Web performance advocates have often advised to add dimensions to your images for best performance to allow the page to be laid out with the appropriate space for the image, before the image itself has been downloaded. This avoids a layout shift as the image is downloaded — something Chrome has recently started measuring in the new Cumulative Layout Shift metric. Well, a dirty, little, secret — not that well-known outside the hard-core web performance advocates — is that, until recently, this actually didn’t make a difference in a lot of cases, as we’ll see below.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/03/setting-height-width-images-important-again/

Google’s multi-language input method, known as Google Input Tools is a good example of a web app that uses transliteration to input non-English characters. The basic idea is to have a text box, in which users spell the words of their own language, using English characters. They usually type those words using an English keyboard. The web app converts the typed English keystrokes into characters of their local (non-English) language, and displays those non-English characters in the text box in real-time.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/03/keyboard-event-related-bugs-browser-based-transliteration/

Like most developers, I have a bad tendency to over-complicate my workflow, especially if there’s some new hotness on the horizon. Why use CSS when you can use CSS-in-JS? Why use Grunt when you can use Gulp? Why use Gulp when you can use Webpack? Why use a traditional CMS when you can go headless? Every so often though, the new-hotness makes life simpler. Recently, the rise of utility based tools like Tailwind CSS have done this for CSS, and now Alpine.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/03/introduction-alpinejs-javascript-framework/

There has been some discussion recently about whether there should be a CSS4, as in a defined “next version” of CSS. In this article, I take a look at the discussions around this, the pros and cons of creating a feature release for CSS, and the potential problems in deciding what goes into it. I’m using the term CSS4 as that is how the discussion was started, and not attempting to discuss what the naming should actually be, should this approach be taken forward.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/03/css4-pros-cons-discussion/

Design is about solving problems. No matter what product we work on, we always try to provide the best possible solution to our users. Product research, ideation, prototyping, and testing are essential steps of the product design process. The ideation phase plays a crucial role in the design process because, during this phase, designers form hypotheses—raw ideas on how to solve the problem. But every hypothesis, no matter how good it might sound, always requires validation.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/03/ideas-prototypes-tips-design-process/

Although I was born in North West England, I grew up in Corby, a steel working town in the middle of the country. From the 1930s, Corby had grown to rely on steel production, with working-class families — a large number of them from Scotland — flocking to the area. During the Second World War, burning oil to produce thick smoke prevented all but a few German bombs, but when I was in my teens, a different toxic cloud, Thatcherism, hung over Corby as it did many industrial and manufacturing centres across the UK.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/03/inspired-design-decisions-neville-brody/

March is here! With the days getting noticeably longer in the northern hemisphere, the sun coming out, and the flowers blooming, we are fueled with fresh energy. And even if spring is far away in your part of the world, you might feel that 2020 has gained full speed by now — the perfect opportunity to bring all those plans you made and ideas you’re carrying around to life! To cater for some extra inspiration this March, artists and designers from across the globe once again challenged their creative skills and designed wallpapers for your desktop and mobile screens.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/02/desktop-wallpaper-calendars-march-2020/

We all have a role to play in the building of a website. Designers create beautiful and interactive interfaces. Copywriters create messaging that gets visitors to take notice and action. Developers bring it all together with code. But there’s one piece of the puzzle that can’t be handed off to just one person. And that’s SEO. If you’re building websites for clients and they’re expecting impressive outcomes in the end (i.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/02/seo-web-design-process/

Handling digital media assets such as audio and video in your application can be tricky because of the considerations that have to be made server-side (e.g. networking, storage and the asynchronous nature of handling file uploads). However, we can use libraries like Multer and Express.js to simplify our workflow on the backend while using Nuxt.js (Vue framework) to build out the front-end interactions. Whenever a web client uploads a file to a server, it is generally submitted through a form and encoded as multipart/form-data.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/02/music-manager-nuxtjs-expressjs/

After years of talk, experimentation, and plateauing smartphone sales, foldable devices are finally entering the market. Samsung, Huawei, and Motorola have all released phones with foldable screens, and tinkering away behind the scenes the likes of Apple aren’t far behind. The ‘foldable web’ is coming. Its devices are taking various forms, from laptops to phones to newfangled dual-screen hybrids. There is no catch-all definition for this new class of gizmos, but most fit into one of two categories.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/02/foldable-web-meaning/

In this episode of the Smashing Podcast, we’re talking about Ethical Design. What does it mean for a design to be ethical, and how do we make improvements in our own projects? I speak to Trine Falbe and Martin Michael Frederiksen to find out. Show Notes The Ethical Design Handbook Trine Falbe’s website and Twitter Martin Michael Frederiksen’s website and Twitter Weekly Update “What To Do If People Hate Your Brand Mascot,”

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/02/smashing-podcast-episode-10/

In the dispensation of CSS libraries and frameworks, a ton of awesome libraries have been built to simplify the work of a developer in the quest to create intuitive interfaces. However, quite a lot of them (Bootstrap, Foundation) impose design decisions that are difficult to undo; they come with predefined components, therefore, eliminating the need for dynamic customization. This is the reason why Tailwind CSS is considered to be a good choice for building 21st-century web interfaces.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/02/tailwindcss-react-project/

The unprecedented rise of cryptocurrencies, and their underpinning blockchain technology, have taken the world by storm — from the humble beginnings of being an academic concept over a decade ago to current increased adoption in various industries. The blockchain technology is receiving a lot of attention because of its ability to enhance security in trustless environments, enforce decentralization, and make processes efficient. Traditionally, Python has been the de facto programming language for blockchain development.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/02/cryptocurrency-blockchain-node-js/

On Friday, January 2007 the world shrank into our palms as three revolutionary products — the iPod, a phone, and a breakthrough internet communicator — were unified to create the smartphones we know and love today. The first iPhone introduced in 2007 marked the fall of Qwerty keypad and stylus. (Large preview) iPhone was built to be comfortably used for one-handed operation, allowing for a smoother thumb movement across the screen.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/02/design-mobile-apps-one-hand-usage/

The drag-and-drop API is one of the coolest features of HTML. It helps us implement drag-and-drop features in web browsers. In the current context, we will be dragging files from outside the browser. On dropping the file(s), we put them on a list and display their names. With the files in hand, we could then perform some other operation on the file(s), e.g. upload them to a cloud server.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/02/html-drag-drop-api-react/

Before consumers sat in front of mobile devices for hours every day, there were numerous browsers and operating systems web designers had to contend with. So, it’s not like the concept of cross-browser testing is new. Because web browsers don’t always render websites the same way or process data in the manner originally intended, cross-browser testing has long been an important part of web design and development. It’s the only way to ensure that what’s built behind the scenes is properly implemented on the frontend of a website.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/02/cross-browser-testing-efficient-lambdatest/

There are a number of reasons why businesses decide to use mascots to represent their brands: They want there to be a friendly and reliable face to welcome visitors to the site. They know they need something more than an inventory of products to make an emotional connection with shoppers. They want a strong and recognizable personality that can tie all of their marketing channels together. While it’s clear that mascots can be invaluable for the business-consumer connection, there’s a very thin line between mascots turning customers into loyal advocates and sending prospects running away in fear.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/02/people-hate-brand-mascot-guide/