The best and worst thing about solo development is the “solo” part. There’s a lot of freedom in working alone, and that freedom can be inspiring, but it can also become a debilitating hindrance to productivity and progress. Victor Ayomipo shares his personal lessons on what it takes to navigate solo development and build the “right” app. https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/01/solo-development-learning-to-let-go-of-perfection/
We know that browsers do all sorts of different things under the hood. One of those things is the way they not only fetch resources like images and scripts from the server but how they prioritize those resources. Chrome and Safari have implemented a “Tight Mode” that constrains which resources are loaded and in what order, but they each take drastically different approaches to it. With so little information about Tight Mode
HTML attributes are like little instructions that we add to the markup of elements to make them do certain things or behave in certain ways. For example, most of us know that the target attribute with a value of _blank opens the link in a new tab or window. But did you know that you can use it on the form element, too? John Rhea presents several lesser-known uses for common HTML attributes.
https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/01/lesser-known-uses-better-known-attributes/
Product drops and sales are a great way to increase revenue, but these events can result in traffic spikes that affect a site’s availability and performance. To prevent website crashes, you’ll have to make sure that the sites you design can handle large numbers of server requests at once. Let’s discuss how! https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/01/designing-high-traffic-events-cloudways/
We, as human beings, don’t worry too much about making sure the connections land at the right point. Our brain just works that way, declaratively. However, for building AI, we need to be more explicit. Let’s dive in! https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/01/understanding-ai-meaning/
Searching for the most flexible front-end workflows and toolkits, it’s easy to forget how powerful some of the fundamentals on the web have become these days. This post is a journey through new front-end features and what they are capable of. https://smashingmagazine.com/2024/12/new-front-end-features-for-designers-in-2025/
Maybe 2025 has already started as you’re reading this, maybe you’re still waiting for the big countdown to begin — either way, it’s never too late or too early for some New Year’s inspiration! Our new collection of desktop wallpapers has got you covered. https://smashingmagazine.com/2024/12/desktop-wallpaper-calendars-january-2025/
Design leaders are expected to deliver the impossible. Instead of trying, we need to redefine our role from implementor to enabler. https://smashingmagazine.com/2024/12/the-design-leader-dilemma/
There are many ways to elevate a design project from good to incredible. For web and product designers, it’s not just about adding more animations and flair. What it truly comes down to is a reframing of your thought processes starting before the project even kicks off. Olivia De Alba presents three approaches that designers can implement and which will change the way they make their projects more successful. https://smashingmagazine.com/2024/12/three-approaches-amplify-design-projects/
10 years after scroll-driven animations were first proposed, they’re finally here — no JavaScript, no dependencies, no libraries, just pure CSS. https://smashingmagazine.com/2024/12/introduction-css-scroll-driven-animations/