In today’s web development landscape, the concept of a monolithic application has become increasingly rare. Modern applications are composed of multiple specialized services, each of which handles specific aspects of functionality. This shift didn’t happen overnight - it’s the result of decades of evolution in how we think about and implement data transfer between systems. Let’s explore this journey and see how it shapes modern architectures, particularly in the context of headless CMS solutions.

Let’s make the most of the shortest of all months, with a new collection of desktop wallpapers celebrating new opportunities, sweet memories, happy little moments, and everything in between. All of them created with love by the community for the community. Enjoy!

Design systems play a crucial role in today’s digital landscape, providing a blueprint for consistent and user-friendly interfaces. But there’s another tool that deserves equal attention: the digital playbook.

It’s not always the big features that make our everyday lives easier; sometimes, it’s those ease-of-life features that truly enhance our projects. In this article, Brecht De Ruyte highlights two such features: `@starting-style` and `transition-behavior` — two properties that are absolutely welcome additions to your everyday work with CSS animations.

After months of anticipation, debate, and even a bit of apprehension, Svelte 5 arrived earlier this year. Frederick O’Brien caught up with its creator, Rich Harris, to talk about the path that brought him and his team here and what lies ahead.

Alvaro Saburido delves into the current state and challenges of Open-Source authoring, sharing lessons learned from both community- and company-driven initiatives.

A once-revered perk of some tech workplaces, the status of ‘side project time’ seems to have slipped in recent years. Frederick O’Brien believes it deserves a comeback.

Shouldn’t there be a way to keep your apps or project data private and improve performance by reducing server latency? This is what on-device AI is designed to solve. It handles AI processing locally, right on your device, without connecting to the internet and sending data to the cloud. In this article, Joas Pambou explains what on-device AI is, why it’s important, the tools to build this type of technology, and how it can change the way we use technology every day.

How do we determine the most suitable illustration style? How should illustrations complement and reflect your corporate identity? What will resonate most with your target audience? And regarding the content, what type of illustration would best enhance it, and how would it work for the age range it is primarily for? Thomas Bohm shares insightful examples and discusses the key qualities of effective illustrations, emphasizing the importance of understanding your audience.

The best and worst thing about solo development is the “solo” part. There’s a lot of freedom in working alone, and that freedom can be inspiring, but it can also become a debilitating hindrance to productivity and progress. Victor Ayomipo shares his personal lessons on what it takes to navigate solo development and build the “right” app.

We know that browsers do all sorts of different things under the hood. One of those things is the way they not only *fetch* resources like images and scripts from the server but how they [prioritize those resources](https://www.debugbear.com/blog/request-priorities?utm_campaign=sm-7). Chrome and Safari have implemented a “Tight Mode” that constrains which resources are loaded and in what order, but they each take drastically different approaches to it. With so little information about Tight Mode available, this article attempts a high-level explanation of what it is, what triggers it, and how it is treated differently in major browsers.

HTML attributes are like little instructions that we add to the markup of elements to make them do certain things or behave in certain ways. For example, most of us know that the `target` attribute with a value of `_blank` opens the link in a new tab or window. But did you know that you can use it on the `form` element, too? John Rhea presents several lesser-known uses for common HTML attributes.

Product drops and sales are a great way to increase revenue, but these events can result in traffic spikes that affect a site’s availability and performance. To prevent website crashes, you’ll have to make sure that the sites you design can handle large numbers of server requests at once. Let’s discuss how!

We, as human beings, don’t worry too much about making sure the connections land at the right point. Our brain just works that way, declaratively. However, for building AI, we need to be more explicit. Let’s dive in!

Searching for the most flexible front-end workflows and toolkits, it’s easy to forget how powerful some of the fundamentals on the web have become these days. This post is a journey through new front-end features and what they are capable of.

Maybe 2025 has already started as you’re reading this, maybe you’re still waiting for the big countdown to begin — either way, it’s never too late or too early for some New Year’s inspiration! Our new collection of desktop wallpapers has got you covered.

Design leaders are expected to deliver the impossible. Instead of trying, we need to redefine our role from implementor to enabler.

There are many ways to elevate a design project from good to incredible. For web and product designers, it’s not just about adding more animations and flair. What it truly comes down to is a reframing of your thought processes starting before the project even kicks off. Olivia De Alba presents three approaches that designers can implement and which will change the way they make their projects more successful.

10 years after scroll-driven animations were first proposed, they’re finally here — no JavaScript, no dependencies, no libraries, just pure CSS.

SVG arcs demystified! Akshay Gupta explains how to master radii, rotation, and arc direction to create stunning curves. Make arcs a powerful part of your SVG toolkit for creating more dynamic, intricate designs with confidence.

Few things are as frustrating to a user as when a site won’t respond. Unfortunately, it’s also an all-too-common scenario. Many websites and apps depend on so many elements that one of any number of errors could cause the whole thing to fail. As prevalent as such instances may be, they’re preventable through the practice of graceful degradation.

Forms are already notoriously tough to customize and style — to the extent that we’re already starting to see new ideas for more flexible control. But what we don’t often discuss is designing good-form experiences beyond validation. That’s what Jima Victor discusses in this article, focusing specifically on creating multi-step forms that involve navigation between sections.

December is almost here, and that means: It’s time for some new desktop wallpapers! Created with love by creatives from all around the world, they are bound to lighten up the last few weeks of the year and, who knows, maybe even spark new ideas. Enjoy!

From KnockoutJS to modern UI libraries like SolidJS, Vue.js, and Svelte, signals revolutionized how we think about reactivity in UIs. Here’s a deep dive into their history and impact by Atila Fassina.

Many talented professionals hold back from speaking at tech events, believing they need years of experience or expert status first. Drawing from her experience as a first-time speaker at WordPress Accessibility Day 2024, Victoria Nduka discusses how speaking at events benefits both individuals and the tech community.

Discover how AI is reshaping web design, boosting productivity in design, coding, UX, and copywriting while amplifying human creativity in a new article by Paul Boag.

Penpot helps designers and developers work better together by offering a free, open-source design tool based on open web standards. Today, let’s explore its newly released Penpot Plugin System. So now, if there’s a functionality missing, you don’t need to jump into the code base straight away; you can create a plugin to achieve what you need. And you can even serve it from localhost!

It’s the end of the year, and as we look at our inventory, we thought, “Let’s help everyone in our community get ready for the year ahead!” Get friendly pricing on bundles of books and workshops to dive deep into the subjects you care about most. Let’s bundle up and save!

Thomas Bohm rethinks technical illustrations and data visualizations, sharing interesting and uncommon examples of how to present data and information. Bar graphs and pie charts are great, but there’s so much more to explore!

Feeling good with your Lighthouse score of 100%? You should! But you should also know that you’re only looking at part of the performance picture. Learn how Lighthouse scores are measured differently than other tools, the impact that has on measuring performance metrics, and why you need real-user monitoring for a complete picture.

November is just around the corner and that means: It’s time for some new desktop wallpapers! Created with love by the community for the community, they are available in versions with and without a calendar. Enjoy!

There are many myths revolving around Gen Z and how they use tech. Time to take a look at actual behavior patterns that go beyond heavy use of social media. Part of [Smart Interface Design Patterns](https://smart-interface-design-patterns.com) by yours truly.

Victor Ayomipo experiments with the CSS `min()` function, exploring its flexibility with different units to determine if it is the be-all, end-all for responsiveness. Discover the cautions he highlights against dogmatic approaches to web design based on his findings.

Design decisions shouldn’t be a matter of personal preference. We can use reliable design KPIs and UX metrics to guide and shape our design work and measure its impact on business. Meet How To Measure UX and Design Impact, our new video course that helps with just that.

In this third part of the series, you are looking at two models that handle all three modalities — text, images or videos, and audio — without needing a second model for text-to-speech or speech recognition.

RSS is a classic technology that fetches content from websites and feeds it to anyone who subscribes to it with a URL. It’s based on XML, and we can use it to consume the feeds in our own apps. Karin Hendrikse demonstrates how to do exactly that with a static site you can use as your personal RSS reader.

You can’t overstate the importance of accessible website design. By the same token, bottom-up philosophies are crucial in modern site-building. A detail-oriented approach makes it easier to serve a more diverse audience along several fronts. Making the most of this opportunity will both extend your reach to new niches and make the web a more equitable place.

Go behind the scenes with Björn Ottosson, the Swedish engineer who created Oklab color space, and discover how he developed a simple yet effective model with good hue uniformity while also handling lightness and saturation well — and is “okay” to use.

Could there be a better way to celebrate the beginning of a new month than with a collection of desktop wallpapers? We’ve got some eye-catching designs to sweeten up your October. Enjoy!

One of the main laws that applies to almost everything in our lives, including building digital products, is Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” Our goal is to prevent things from going wrong and, if they do, mitigate the consequences. In this article, Victor Ponamarev explores different strategies for preventing users from making mistakes.