June 17, 2021 — Image placement on the modern web is highly intentional, helping to communicate the overall purpose of a page or view. This means that nearly every image you declare needs to have an alternate description. Nulling an image indicates that it is for decorative purposes only. In this context, decorative means that the image does not visually communicate information that is important to understanding the purpose of the page or view, and why the image is included as a part of that. Read more…

June 16, 2021 — In a new short series of posts, we highlight some of the useful tools and techniques for developers and designers. Recently we’ve covered HTML Emails and SVG Generators. This time we look into different kinds of tools to help you streamline your accessibility testing process. Don’t miss the next one. Read more…

June 15, 2021 — When developing themes and plugins for WordPress, we need to test them in different environments. How can we create multiple testing sites on our computer, quickly and easily, without having to become a sysadmin? If our themes and plugins contain custom blocks, testing them for all different versions is imperative. At the very minimum, we need to worry about two versions of Gutenberg: the one shipped in WordPress core, and the one available as a standalone plugin. Read more…

June 15, 2021 — In this episode of the Smashing Podcast, we’re talking about image optimization. What steps should we follow for performant images in 2021? We talk to expert Addy Osmani to find out. Read more…

June 14, 2021 — Spoiler alert: tooltips, modals, tabs, carousels, and dropdown menus are some of the user interface components that require more than CSS. To ensure accessibility of your interface, JavaScript is a necessary addition to accomplish focus management, respond to keyboard events, and toggle ARIA attributes. Read more…

June 11, 2021 — Design often revolves around visuals, but the other senses deserve love too. In this article, we tune in to audio features that are making sites sing. Most of us have had the misfortune of crossing bad examples (auto-playing videos being a particularly egregious example) but audio can give web experiences a whole new dimension when applied well. What follows are some astounding sounds from the World Wide Web. Read more…

June 10, 2021 — We don’t need to write everything from scratch every single time. With boilerplates and starter kits, we can set up our projects faster, and get to work immediately. We’ve also just recently covered CSS auditing tools, CSS generators, accessible front-end components and VS code extensions — you might find them useful, too.  This collection is by no means complete, but rather a selection of things that the team at Smashing found useful and hope will make your day-to-day work more productive and efficient. Read more…

June 10, 2021 — Building a faster website can be a rocket task these days. There are so many things to consider, so it’s challenging to get everything right. Here are some less-known tools that might help you get there. Read more…

June 9, 2021 — What makes relational selector one of the most requested features and how are we, as developers, working around not having it? In this article, we’re going to check the early spec of the :has selector, and see how it should improve the CSS workflow once it’s released. Read more…

June 8, 2021 — It’s here! For the last year, we’ve been working with Addy Osmani on a new Smashing Book all around image optimization. And now it’s here. Meet “Image Optimization”, our deep-dive guide to understand how to deliver high-quality images on the web fast. 528 pages. From formats and compression to delivery and maintenance. Get the book right away! Read more…