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The common rule of thumb is to never “block” the browser’s main thread when running JavaScript tasks. But is this a hard rule? Victor Ayomipo describes a use case he encountered involving a screenshot extension where he made an exception to the rule and decided that blocking the main thread was a...
Many companies assume everyone craves new AI features. But the reality is that most people don't want more AI — at least not in the way most AI leaders envision it. Brought to you by Design Patterns For AI Interfaces, **friendly video courses on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.
The strongest visual concepts don’t start in Figma. They start with the right questions. Explore the pre-concept phase of brand identity design, where teams research brand context, uncover hidden assumptions with stakeholders, and turn shared direction into a visual foundation before a single con...
Many UI trends are designed to capture attention and signal innovation, but those goals often conflict with the needs of mental health apps: reducing cognitive strain, fostering trust, and providing a sense of refuge. Kat Homan introduces an evaluation framework that helps designers assess whethe...
We have been building websites inside boxes for years on WordPress. Let’s take a closer look at [Kirki](https://kirki.com/), the first freeform visual builder with an infinite canvas, and explore how it redefines the experience with cleaner performance, full design freedom, and zero plugin depend...
A closer look at why users don’t need more tools in their daily lives. What they need are seamless integrations of useful features to match already existing, established mental models. Brought to you by Design Patterns For AI Interfaces, **friendly video course on UX** and design patterns by Vita...
We’ve fallen into conversational tunnel vision, defaulting every AI capability into a chat-based interface simply because LLMs are trained on dialogue data. But great UX is about matching modality to users’ context, intent, and cognitive load, so the interface adapts to the user, not the other wa...
Teams can generate UI faster than ever, but they still have to guarantee that what they ship is usable, secure, and maintainable. Accessibility as an operational capability rather than a compliance checklist or end-of-project audit, and what that looks like in practice.
July is just around the corner, and that means... It’s time for some new desktop wallpapers! As every month, the wallpapers in this collection were created by the community for the community and can be downloaded for free. Enjoy!
In a world where AI is informing more design choices, it’s easy to mistake predictions for certainties. This article introduces Probabilistic Design, a mindset that allows UX and product teams to accept uncertainty, decipher AI outputs with nuance, and make smart, adaptive decisions.
We have officially moved past the era of humanoid robots as mere public relations stunts. As they become increasingly lifelike, society may soon face profound social, psychological, and ethical challenges. What happens when the boundary between humans and machines becomes almost impossible to dis...
Findings from an exploratory user research study highlighting the unique insights and practical UX recommendations shared by participants with cognitive disabilities.
Practical guide on how to reduce drifts, minimize mistakes, maintain context, and improve the quality of AI-generated prototypes. Brought to you by Design Patterns For AI Interfaces, **friendly video course on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.
Let’s kick off June — and the beginning of summer — with some fresh inspiration! Artists and designers from across the globe once again tickled their creativity to welcome the new month with a new collection of desktop wallpapers. Enjoy!
Seventy percent of websites still fail basic WCAG contrast checks in 2025. After years of design system tooling, accessibility linters, and JavaScript libraries, nothing moved the needle. We didn’t need better libraries. We needed better CSS. `contrast-color()` is that better CSS.
There’s a moment in almost every usability session where a participant pauses at the login screen, types something, and glances up: checking whether they’re “doing it right.” That pause is a clear sign. They’ve already clocked that this isn’t a real app, and every data point collected after that...
What people say, feel, think, and do are often very different things. To understand the underlying reasons for user behavior, it helps to look beyond the surface and explore hidden motivations, root causes, and the different layers of reality that shape how people act. Brought to you by Measuring...
Meet `sibling-index()` and `sibling-count()`. Staggered cascade effect in one line of CSS without `:nth-child()` rules or JS workarounds. Works for 5 items or 5,000.
Every extra second of friction has a measurable business cost. Carrie Webster shares ten data-backed UX facts that link user experience directly to revenue, retention, and long-term growth.
Why traditional loading patterns like spinners fail in agentic AI experiences, and how interface patterns that reveal the system’s process, status, and decision-making can improve transparency and build user trust.
An honest perspective on building local-first web apps in 2026, written for developers who’ve been doing this long enough to be skeptical of silver bullets.
Design always starts with function — function shapes form. But if that function can’t be made completely invisible and people still have to interact with it, it inevitably becomes part of their experience. In this article, Kyrylo Levashov shares four common software design assumptions.
Streaming UIs are an easy concept on the surface, but are quite complicated in practice. There are many considerations that need to be accounted for, from layout shifts and motion preferences to proper markup and various states, that may not be instantly obvious. What happens if the stream is int...
Let’s welcome May with a new collection of desktop wallpapers! Following our monthly tradition, the wallpapers were created by the community for the community and can be downloaded for free. Enjoy!
AI tools are eliminating the need to “bug” colleagues for help, but the informal interactions they replace are the very scaffolding that builds team trust, belonging, and innovation. Casey Hudetz and Eric Olive explore the research and potential impacts behind that risk and offer practical strate...
In a rush to embrace AI, the industry is redefining what it means to be a UX designer, blurring the line between design and engineering. Carrie Webster explores what’s gained, what’s lost, and why designers need to remain the guardians of the user experience.
Poorly handled session timeouts are more than a technical inconvenience. They can become serious accessibility barriers that interrupt essential online tasks, especially for people with disabilities. Here is how to implement thoughtful session management that improves usability, reduces frustrati...
Practical guidelines for driving UX impact in organizations with legacy systems and broken processes. Brought to you by Measuring UX Impact, **friendly video course on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.
Designing for agentic AI requires attention to both the system’s behavior and the transparency of its actions. Between the black box and the data dump lies a more thoughtful approach. Victor Yocco explores how to map decision points and reveal the right moments to build trust through clarity, not...
Design principles with references, examples, and methods for quick look-up. Brought to you by Design Patterns For AI Interfaces, **friendly video courses on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.
With the new month just around the corner, could there be a better occasion to freshen up your desktop? If you’re looking for some unique and inspiring wallpapers to accompany you on all those adventures that April may bring — and maybe spark some new ideas, too — well, this post has got you cove...
Success in modern UX isn’t about having the most content. It’s about having the most findable content. Yet even with more data and better tools than ever, internal search often fails, leaving users to rely on global search engines to find a single page on a local site. Why does the “Big Box” stil...
Accessibility works best when it blends into everyday design workflows. The goal isn’t a big transformation, but simple work processes that fit naturally into a team’s routine. With Figma variables, testing font size increases becomes part of the design flow itself, making accessibility feel almo...
How to choose between modals and pages, when to avoid modals, and how to determine the right level of interruption or navigation. Brought to you by Smart Interface Design Patterns, a **friendly video course on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.
Design is about pacing and feelings as much as pixels and patterns. Alan Cohen explores Emotion in Flow and Emotion in Conflict, showing how anime like Dan Da Dan and superhero films like James Gunn’s Superman manage emotional shifts and translating those ideas into practical patterns for product...
The way JavaScript handles time has evolved significantly, from the built-in `Date` API to Moment.js and now Temporal. The new standard fills gaps in the original `Date` API while addressing limitations found in Moment and other libraries. Joe Attardi shares practical “recipes” for migrating Mome...
For years, developers have been hacking around the limitations of `border-radius`, using clip-path, SVG masks, and fragile workarounds just to get anything other than round corners. The new `corner-shape` property finally changes that, opening the door to beveled, scooped, and squircle corners.
Some forms stay UI, while others quietly become rule engines. Here’s why these two different approaches exist and how to choose between them.
Many product teams still lean on usability improvements and isolated behavioral tweaks to address weak activation, drop-offs, and low retention – only to see results plateau or slip into shallow gamification. Anders Toxboe updates persuasive design for today’s reality, clarifying what has actuall...
UX design is entering a new phase, with designers shifting from makers of outputs to directors of intent. AI can now generate wireframes, prototypes, and even design systems in minutes, but UX has never been only about creating interfaces. It’s about navigating ambiguity, advocating for humans in...
Our newest Smashing Book, “Accessible UX Research” by Michele Williams, is finally shipping worldwide — and we couldn’t be happier! This book is about research, but you’ll also learn about assistive technology, different types of disability, and how to build accessibility into the entire design p...
What happens if you rebuild a single tooltip using the browser’s native model without the aid of a library? The Popover API turns tooltips from something you simulate into something the browser actually understands. Opening and closing, keyboard interaction, Escape handling, and much of the acces...
Do you need a little inspiration boost? Well, then our new batch of desktop wallpapers is for you. Designed by the community for the community, the wallpapers in this collection are the perfect opportunity to get your desktop ready for spring — and, who knows, maybe they’ll spark some new ideas,...
Meet our brand new conference for designers and UI engineers who love the web. That’s [SmashingConf Amsterdam](https://smashingconf.com/amsterdam-2026), taking place in the legendary Pathé Tuschinski, on April 13–16, 2026.
Every high-resolution hero image, autoplay video, and complex JavaScript animation carries a cost. Sustainable UX challenges the era of “unlimited pixels” and reframes performance as responsibility. In 2026, truly sophisticated design is defined not by how much it adds, but by how thoughtfully it...
