Back in spring 2013, Smashing Magazine sported a <select> menu as its mobile navigation. It wasn’t considered an anti-pattern back then and Marco Hengstenberg still thinks it’s a viable solution to the complex problem of how to build accessible and functional cross-device navigation. Brad Frost wrote a few words about the pros and cons of this pattern on his blog and Marco couldn’t agree more. In this article, Marco will explain how he helped rebuild the mobile navigation in order to enhance the experience for the readers of Smashing Magazine.
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For those of us who use Varnish and also want to move to HTTPS, there is a problem: Varnish doesn’t support HTTPS. If you make the move to SSL, configuring Apache to serve your website securely, then you lose the speed advantage of Varnish. There is a relatively straightforward way to deal with this issue, and that is to stick something in between incoming SSL requests and Varnish, a layer that handles the secure connection and SSL certificates and then passes the request back to Varnish. In this article, Rachel Andrew will show you how to move your website to HTTPS, taking advantage of Varnish Cache.
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In this article, Heydon Pickering mixes old with new, taking a somewhat primitive art and breathing new life into it. With the help of Sass, he streamlines the necessary workflow and hopefully demonstrating that automation can, sometimes, be a friend to creativity. The reason he conceived the technique and wrote the necessary code for this article is because he really wanted to make cel animations of his drawings. There was already a goal. The design part is in determining what we want to make in the first place, for whom, and whether it’s really such a good idea.
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Interactive maps can be intimidating, but they don’t have to be a black box. You can create your own custom SVG maps with open data and software. In no time at all, you will have enhanced your website with a beautiful, fully customizable, interactive map. In this article Chris Youderian will explain how to create your own SVG maps using Natural Earth data and open source tools. You will then be able to create SVG maps of any area of the world, using any projection, at any resolution. As an illustration, he will create an SVG world map.
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Alex Komarov wanted to make dealing with time zone differences less painful. So he started playing around with an iWatch app idea. Yeah, you read that right — 2014 and iWatch, before a watch had ever been announced. When you are trying to bring something new to life, there are risks and uncertainties associated with it. It’s a part of the game. Alex was aware of these risks and decided to take a shot anyway. He doesn’t regret it. History shows that Apple products become more open over time.
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Most of the time, we develop websites without understanding what the browser is actually doing under the hood. How exactly does the browser render our web pages from the HTML, CSS and JavaScript that we create? Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool can be very helpful when trying to profile a web page and find areas for improvement. You simply enter the URL of the page that you want to test, and the tool provides you with a list of performance suggestions. Fortunately, the solution to this problem is simpler than it seems! The answer lies in the way that the CSS and JavaScript are loaded in your web page.
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While animations may have great visual appeal, they also make app experiences more intuitive and engaging. Animation can make an app feel more fluid and responsive by providing feedback on user interaction. This means that, for designers, creating authentic animations is increasingly becoming a part of the job description. Whether you’re a designer, product manager, developer or anyone else working on a product, Keynote is a great way to communicate ideas quickly. The speed, gentle learning curve and quality of output all make it an ideal tool for your arsenal.
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Implementations usually involved either using an external image editor to create multiple images for multiple values of the pie chart, or large JavaScript frameworks designed for much more complex charts. Although the feat is not as impossible as it once was, there’s still no simple one-liner for it. However, in this article, Lea Verou will show you that there are many better, more maintainable ways to achieve it today.
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All too often we forget that applications are built by real people with opinions, ideals and fears. When a whole company is formed around a single product that’s about to get relaunched, there’s a lot of tension — after all, these people rely on that product’s success for their own financial security. This is the story of redesigning the UX for a popular calendar tool on Android: Business Calendar. Günther Beyer & Nino Rapin are sharing this story because everyone’s standing on the shoulders of giants and this is their small contribution to better information design thinking. They hope they’ve learned enough in this project to make you a little smarter, so that you can make us smarter in turn. Thank you.
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