Email sending functionality is an integral part of every digital product that involves communication with its users (read: any online service). With so many tools and approaches, email still has a few pain points, both for developers and email marketers. Email is difficult because it has too many aspects to set and a few instances with no common rules to follow. https://smashingmagazine.com/2021/07/email-testing-flow/
When writing front-end tests, you’ll find a lot of pitfalls along the way. In sum, they can lead to lousy maintainability, slow execution time, and — in the worst case — tests you cannot trust. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In this article, I will talk about common mistakes developers make, at least in my experience, and, of course, how to avoid them. Testing doesn’t need to be painful, after all. https://smashingmagazine.com/2021/07/frontend-testing-pitfalls/
The web is single-threaded. This makes it increasingly hard to write smooth and responsive apps. Workers have a bad rep, but can be an important and useful tool in any web developer's toolbelt for these kinds of problems. Let’s get up to speed on Workers on the Web! https://smashingmagazine.com/2021/06/web-workers-2021/
Let’s welcome July with some fresh desktop wallpapers. Designed by artists and designers from around the world, they are available with and without a calendar. Enjoy! https://smashingmagazine.com/2021/06/desktop-wallpaper-calendars-july-2021/
Static Generation is great for performance, but not until the app gets too big and build-times go through the roof. Today, we’ll have a look at how Netlify’s fresh On-Demand Builders can fix that. Additionally, we pair it up with Next.js’ Incremental Static Regeneration for the best user and developer experience. And, of course, benchmark those results! https://smashingmagazine.com/2021/06/breaking-down-bulky-builds-netlify-nextjs/
In this episode, we’re talking about Chakra UI. What is it and how can it help with your React projects? Drew McLellan talks to expert Mike Cavalier to find out. https://smashingmagazine.com/2021/06/smashing-podcast-episode-40/
In this article, Manuel explains why Emmet is one of his favorite productivity tools for writing HTML and CSS, and how you can create custom Emmet snippets in Visual Studio Code to help you improve your front-end workflows even more. https://smashingmagazine.com/2021/06/custom-emmet-snippets-vscode/
This article explains how we can connect different types of content in a Next.js application. With this technique, we can add any kind of one-to-one, one-to-many, or even many-to-many relationship to our projects. https://smashingmagazine.com/2021/06/creating-multi-author-blog-nextjs/
This article is a case study of how a UX audit affects a UI. It explains how a famous educational platform can be analyzed edX against Jakob Nielsen’s usability guidelines. To get started, Mark Lankmiller shares all of the criteria and metrics he used for his UX audit. https://smashingmagazine.com/2021/06/ux-audit-edtech-platform-case-study/
In the dynamic and unpredictable environments in which we work, even the most carefully crafted solutions can have a short shelf life. When we accept that our work is impermanent and our problem-solving abilities are limited, our goal can shift from delivering full solutions to developing tools that empower our users to adaptively design for themselves. https://smashingmagazine.com/2021/06/design-thinking-problem-solving-strategy/