Phones are getting bigger, and some parts of the screen are easier to interact with than others. Having the hamburger menu at the top provides too big of an interaction cost, and we have a large number of amazing mobile app designs that utilize the bottom part of the screen. We need to adjust how we build and design our websites. Is there something to learn from app design and tap bars? Can we fix the mobile navigation of our websites to have a lower interaction cost? In this article, Arturas Leonovas will find out.
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Last year, Rachel Andrew wrote “Take A New Look At CSS Shapes” where she reintroduced readers to the basics of using CSS Shapes. In this new tutorial, Andy Clarke expands on the topic of “Art Direction for the Web” with CSS Shapes to create exciting and inspired new design ideas. Andy is going to show you how to use CSS Shapes to create the following five different types of layout: v-shapes, z-patterns, curved shapes, diagonal shapes, and rotated shapes.
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When inspecting most other grids in DevTools, you’ll notice that column widths are dependent on their parent element. Container units are a specialized set of CSS variables. They mirror the layout functionality found in UI design software where configuring just three values provides your document with a global set of columns and gutters to measure and calculate from. In this article, Russell Bishop will help you understand how to overcome these limitations using CSS variables and how you can start building with container units.
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Tables frequently appear on the web but aren’t easy to design and code. People will expect tables. Not those fancy ones from design inspiration sites but Excel-looking monsters with hundreds of cells and complex interaction. In this case, a designer faces many challenges. With this illustrated guide, Slava Shestopalov explains the table anatomy and how to build a table, keeping in mind its future elaboration.
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Tables are a design pattern for displaying large amounts of data in rows and columns, and have been used for this purpose as early as the 2nd century and when the world started to go digital, tables came along with us. Tables have not yet seemed to fall out of favor, so, in this article, Huijing Chen will take a look at how we can create tables on the web in 2019.
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The Multi-column Layout spec is often overlooked as we use Grid and Flexbox. In this article Rachel Andrew explains why it is different to other layout methods, and shows some useful patterns and sites which showcase it well. Rachel will take a look at Multi-column Layout — often referred to as multicol or sometimes “CSS Columns”. You’ll find out which tasks it is suited for, and some of the things to watch out for when making columns.
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You don’t need to commit to memorizing every CSS Property and Value, as there are good places to look them up. There are some fundamental things, however, which will make CSS much easier for you to use. In this article, Rachel Andrew aims to guide you along your path of learning CSS and outline resources for further reading on key areas of modern CSS development. Many of those are things right here on Smashing Magazine. Her aim is to cover the breadth of modern CSS with a focus on a few key areas, that will help to unlock the rest of the language for you.
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With the advent of responsive web design and the mobile-first approach, it’s been seven wonderful years since any new concepts have compelled us to adapt the way in which we write CSS at the base level. These techniques are at the bedrock of most web developers lives, and they’ve served us well, but alas, times change, and developers constantly iterate. As we increase the efficiency of our methods and the project requirements become more complex, new frustrations emerge. Well, today, Alastair Hodgson has a small surprise. Behold: Generic First CSS.
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In terms of how to handle typography in mobile web design, it appears that simpler and safer works best. In this article, Suzanne Scacca will break down the elements you need to pay attention to in mobile typography and then visit what the research says about how to handle them. She will give you a brief summary of what it is we know about typography in web design, and then see what UX experts and tests have been able to reveal about using typography for mobile.
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Some time ago, designers and developers built the same kinds of websites over and over again, so much so that they were mocked by people in our own industry. Today, the design landscape has changed completely. We’re equipped with new and powerful tools — CSS Grid, CSS custom properties, CSS shapes and CSS writing-mode, to name a few — that we can use to exercise our creativity. In this article, Zell Liew explains how.
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