February 9, 2021 — In this episode, we’re talking about HTML controls. Why are they so hard to style, and how might that change in the future? Drew McLellan talks to Microsoft’s Stephanie Stimac and Melanie Richards to find out. Read more…

February 8, 2021 — We use abstractions and conventions to hide away the tricky and error-prone parts, which in turn makes it easier for everyone who needs to do the same task. The ideas Steven Frieson shares here should be actionable in most applications depending on your styling solution and browser support. Migrating to use this system is not very risky since stacking contexts are already scoped individually; you can migrate one context as it already exists at a time. Read more…

February 5, 2021 — Remote work is taking over the world, and the biggest obstacle remote teams face is emulating the natural communication that happens at the office. In this article, Obed Parlapiano shares his advice and tips on how to improve your team’s communication and productivity by creating habits and processes focused on improving collaboration. Read more…

February 3, 2021 — Tooltips are powerful design patterns implemented to enhance the design experience by providing additional information precisely when users need it. The key to designing tooltips that fit seamlessly into the overall design is to plan for them early in the design process. Specifically, designing useful tooltips requires proper timing and proper implementation. In this article, Eric Olive will show you how to design tooltips that will amplify your mobile designs and explain where mobile tooltips are most effective. Read more…

February 2, 2021 — On your list of places where people might access your web app, Teams is probably number “not-on-the-list”. But it turns out that making your app accessible where your users are already working has some profound benefits. In this article, Tomomi Imura and Daisy Chaussee will take a look at how Teams makes web apps a first-class citizen, and how it enables you to interact with those apps in completely new ways. Read more…

February 1, 2021 — The present and future of CSS are very bright indeed and if you take a pragmatic, progressive approach to your CSS, then things will continue to get better and better on your projects, too. Some of the really handy powers CSS gives you might have slipped you by, so in this article, Andy Bell will take a look into masonry layout, :is selector, clamp(), ch and ex units, updated text decoration, and a few other useful CSS properties. Read more…

January 31, 2021 — Let’s make this February more colorful! Apart from a new collection of wallpapers, we also have a little creativity challenge waiting for you this month. It’s the perfect occasion to share your ideas with the world — and win a smashing prize along the way. The wallpapers in this post come with and without a calendar for February 2021, and, as a little bonus goodie, you’ll also discover some familiar faces here and there: February favorites from our archives that are just too good to be forgotten. Read more…

January 29, 2021 — In this article, we look at some of the more advanced features of TypeScript, like union types, conditional types, template literal types, and generics. We want to formalize the most dynamic JavaScript behavior in a way that we can catch most bugs before they happen. We apply several learnings from all chapters of TypeScript in 50 Lessons, a book we’ve published here on Smashing Magazine late 2020. If you are interested in learning more, be sure to check it out! Read more…

January 28, 2021 — What makes a good chatbot experience? Most people think of witty responses and machine learning, but the basis of a chatbot UX is actually rooted in content strategy. In this article Marli Mesibov will answer those questions and identify what you as a content designer can do to make your chatbot successful. A poor chatbot simply says “I’m sorry, I don’t understand” on repeat (or worse “error”.) A good chatbot feels almost-human. Learn how to develop a chatbot that sounds human and engages people. Read more…

January 26, 2021 — The promise of seamless design to code translation goes back to the early WYSIWYG page builders. Despite the admirable goal, their biggest flaw was the code that they generated. Skepticism remains to this day and whenever this idea reappears, the biggest concerns are always related to the quality and maintainability of the code. In this article, Miroslav Bekyarov will show you how to turn our static designs into a live, code-based prototype with real fields, forms, maps, and animations, and in turn, transform this prototype into React code — all integrated into one tool. Read more…