CSS Cascade Layers Vs. BEM Vs. Utility Classes: Specificity Control

CSS Cascade Layers Vs. BEM Vs. Utility Classes: Specificity Control CSS Cascade Layers Vs. BEM Vs. Utility Classes: Specificity Control Victor Ayomipo 2025-06-19T15:00:00+00:00 2025-06-19T20:32:57+00:00 CSS is wild, really wild. And tricky. But let’s talk specifically about specificity. When writing CSS, it’s close to impossible that you haven’t faced the frustration of styles not applying as…

Read more

Meet Accessible UX Research, A Brand-New Smashing Book

Meet Accessible UX Research, A Brand-New Smashing Book Meet Accessible UX Research, A Brand-New Smashing Book Vitaly Friedman 2025-06-18T16:00:00+00:00 2025-06-19T20:32:57+00:00 UX research can take so much of the guesswork out of the design process! But it’s easy to forget just how different people are and how their needs and preferences can vary. We can’t predict…

Read more

Creating The “Moving Highlight” Navigation Bar With JavaScript And CSS

Creating The “Moving Highlight” Navigation Bar With JavaScript And CSS Creating The “Moving Highlight” Navigation Bar With JavaScript And CSS Blake Lundquist 2025-06-11T13:00:00+00:00 2025-06-12T20:33:08+00:00 I recently came across an old jQuery tutorial demonstrating a “moving highlight” navigation bar and decided the concept was due for a modern upgrade. With this pattern, the border around the…

Read more

Collaboration: The Most Underrated UX Skill No One Talks About

Collaboration: The Most Underrated UX Skill No One Talks About Collaboration: The Most Underrated UX Skill No One Talks About Carrie Webster 2025-06-05T08:00:00+00:00 2025-06-05T21:02:28+00:00 When people talk about UX, it’s usually about the things they can see and interact with, like wireframes and prototypes, smart interactions, and design tools like Figma, Miro, or Maze. Some…

Read more

Smashing Animations Part 4: Optimising SVGs

Smashing Animations Part 4: Optimising SVGs Smashing Animations Part 4: Optimising SVGs Andy Clarke 2025-06-04T08:00:00+00:00 2025-06-05T21:02:28+00:00 SVG animations take me back to the Hanna-Barbera cartoons I watched as a kid. Shows like Wacky Races, The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, and, of course, Yogi Bear. They inspired me to lovingly recreate some classic Toon Titles using…

Read more

Designing For Neurodiversity

Designing For Neurodiversity Designing For Neurodiversity Vitaly Friedman 2025-06-02T08:00:00+00:00 2025-06-05T21:02:28+00:00 This article is sponsored by TetraLogical Neurodivergent needs are often considered as an edge case that doesn’t fit into common user journeys or flows. Neurodiversity tends to get overlooked in the design process. Or it is tackled late in the process, and only if there…

Read more

Reliably Detecting Third-Party Cookie Blocking In 2025

Reliably Detecting Third-Party Cookie Blocking In 2025 Reliably Detecting Third-Party Cookie Blocking In 2025 Mikhail Prosmitskiy 2025-05-28T10:00:00+00:00 2025-05-29T20:32:50+00:00 The web is beginning to part ways with third-party cookies, a technology it once heavily relied on. Introduced in 1994 by Netscape to support features like virtual shopping carts, cookies have long been a staple of web functionality. However, concerns over…

Read more

Data Vs. Findings Vs. Insights In UX

Data Vs. Findings Vs. Insights In UX Data Vs. Findings Vs. Insights In UX Vitaly Friedman 2025-05-27T13:00:00+00:00 2025-05-29T20:32:50+00:00 In many companies, data, findings, and insights are all used interchangeably. Slack conversations circle around convincing data points, statistically significant findings, reliable insights, and emerging trends. Unsurprisingly, conversations often mistake sporadic observations for consistent patterns. But how…

Read more

Smashing Animations Part 3: SMIL’s Not Dead Baby, SMIL’s Not Dead

Smashing Animations Part 3: SMIL’s Not Dead Baby, SMIL’s Not Dead Smashing Animations Part 3: SMIL’s Not Dead Baby, SMIL’s Not Dead Andy Clarke 2025-05-21T08:00:00+00:00 2025-06-05T21:02:28+00:00 The SMIL specification was introduced by the W3C in 1998 for synchronizing multimedia. This was long before CSS animations or JavaScript-based animation libraries were available. It was built into SVG 1.1, which is why we can still use it there today….

Read more

Design System In 90 Days

Design System In 90 Days Design System In 90 Days Vitaly Friedman 2025-05-19T10:00:00+00:00 2025-05-22T21:02:44+00:00 So we want to set up a new design system for your product. How do we get it up and running from scratch? Do we start with key stakeholders, UI audits, or naming conventions? And what are some of the critical…

Read more