WebDev Feed

We're getting new functions for generating random numbers in CSS! But the road to get here has been a long and winding one. The Importance of Native Randomness in CSS originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get the newsletter as well.

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!

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 interrupted? Can users tab through the UI on the keyboard as it shifts? What ARIA attributes might be needed?

The contrast() filter function increases or decreases the contrast of an element. contrast() originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get the newsletter as well.

The contrast-color() function takes a <color> and returns either black or white, whichever is the most contrasting color for that value. contrast-color() originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get the newslette

From painting to immersive design, Sofia Papadopoulou’s path reflects a constant evolution across mediums.

A scroll-driven 3D world built from scratch with Three.js, GSAP, and WebGL — where every technical decision serves a message worth sharing.

A two-person studio working between Bristol and Paris, redefining web design by crafting immersive, spatial experiences that feel less like pages and more like places.

My shim might give the powers that be another reason to say native support isn't necessary, or if lots of people use my :nth-letter hack in the wild, the browser gods might recognize the need to implement it for real. Let’s Use the Nonexistent ::nth-letter Selector Now originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks

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 strategies for maintaining human connection while leveraging AI’s strengths.

A behind-the-scenes look at blending NPR shading, sound, and interaction to shape a meditative WebGL scene.

A look at designing and building the 4WIDE website, exploring how distortion, blur, and motion were used to create an expressive experience while balancing clarity and performance.

Putting CSS’s more recent scrolling animation capabilities to the test to recreate a complex animation of the Apple Vision Pro headset from Apple's website. Recreating Apple’s Vision Pro Animation in CSS originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really

A playful GSAP menu demo exploring how easeReverse makes reversed UI animations feel smoother, snappier, and more intentional.

I use a Markdown Component for two main reasons: (1) It reduces the amount of markup I need to write, and (2) it converts typographic symbols. Here's how it works. Enhancing Astro With a Markdown Component originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get the newsle

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.

A deep dive into building an infinite procedural landscape using WebGPU and Three.js, where compute shaders and indirect drawing bring millions of interactive grass blades to life.

Although Astro has built-in support for Markdown via .md files, I'd argue that your Markdown experience can be enhanced with MDX. Markdown + Astro = ❤️ originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get the newsletter as well.

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 frustration, and helps create a more accessible and respectful web.

A step by step tutorial on creating an immersive Moon story in Instorier with motion, interaction, and 3D scene building.

This issue of What’s !important brings you clip-path jigsaws, a view transitions toolkit, name-only containers, the usual roundup of new, notable web platform features, and more. What’s !important #9: clip-path Jigsaws, View Transitions Toolkit, Name-only Containers, and More originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should

Behind every technology, there should be a guide for its use. While JavaScript modules make it easier to write “big” programs, if there are no principles or systems for using them, things could easily become difficult to maintain. A Well-Designed JavaScript Module System is Your First Architecture Decision originally handwritten and published with love on

A story of how sharing experiments, studying shaders, and pushing animation further helped shape a distinct motion practice.

The hypot() function takes a list of values and returns the square root of the sum of their squares. hypot() originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get the newsletter as well.

A deep dive into four cinematic scenes, exploring how film-inspired ideas evolved into a cohesive and immersive portfolio experience.

One of the best-known examples of CSS state management is the checkbox hack. What if we want a component to be in one of three, four, or seven modes? That is where the Radio State Machine comes in. The Radio State Machine originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really

Craving for a view transition? Sunkanmi has lots of common transitions you can drop into your website right now! 7 View Transitions Recipes to Try originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get the newsletter as well.

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.

A clever approach for selecting multiple dates on a calendar where the :nth-child()'s “n of selector” syntax does all the heavy lifting... even in the JavaScript. Selecting a Date Range in CSS originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get t

The saturate() function increases or decreases the saturation of an element. saturate() originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get the newsletter as well.

The justify-self property aligns an individual element, overriding its parent current align-items value. justify-self originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get the newsletter as well.

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 noise.

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 covered.

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” still win, and how can we bring users back?

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 almost inevitable rather than optional.

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 design.

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 Moment-based code to the new Temporal API.

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 actually held up over the last decade.

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 systems optimised for efficiency, and solving their problems through thoughtful design.

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 process. This thoughtful book will get you thinking about ways to make your UX research more inclusive and thorough, no matter your budget or timeline. Jump to the book

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 accessibility now come from the platform itself, not from ad-hoc JavaScript.

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, too. Enjoy!

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 reduces its footprint.

What makes streaks so powerful and addictive? To design them well, you need to understand how they align with human psychology. Victor Ayomipo breaks down the UX and design principles behind effective streak systems.

Designing for mental health means designing for vulnerability. Empathy-Centred UX becomes not a “nice to have” but a fundamental design requirement. Here’s a practical framework for building trust-first mental health products.

Autonomy is an output of a technical system. Trustworthiness is an output of a design process. Here are concrete design patterns, operational frameworks, and organizational practices for building agentic systems that are not only powerful but also transparent, controllable, and trustworthy.

Prescriptive class name conventions are no longer enough to keep CSS maintainable in a world of increasingly complex interfaces. Can the new `@scope` rule finally give developers the confidence to write CSS that can keep up with modern front ends?

Combobox vs. Multi-Select vs. Listbox vs. Dual Listbox? How they are different, what purpose they serve, and how to choose the right one. Brought to you by Design Patterns For AI Interfaces, **friendly video courses on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.

Let’s make the most of the shortest month of the year with a new collection of desktop wallpapers that are sure to bring a smile to your face — and maybe spark your creativity, too. All of them were designed with love by the community for the community and can be downloaded for free. Happy February!

AI coding tools like agents can be valuable allies in everyday development work. They help handle time-consuming grunt work, guide you through large legacy codebases, and offer low-risk ways to implement features in previously unfamiliar programming languages. Here are practical, easy-to-apply techniques to help you use these tools to improve your workflow.

In CSS, we can create “stacking contexts” where elements are visually placed one on top of the next in a three-dimensional sense that creates the perception of depth. Stacking contexts are incredibly useful, but they’re also widely misunderstood and often mistakenly created, leading to a slew of layout issues that can be tricky to solve.

Developing effective agentic AI requires a new research playbook. When systems plan, decide, and act on our behalf, UX moves beyond usability testing into the realm of trust, consent, and accountability. Victor Yocco outlines the research methods needed to design agentic AI systems responsibly.

Amit Sheen takes a hard look at the “Pixel Perfect” legacy concept, explaining why it’s failing us and redefining what “perfection” actually looks like in a multi-device, fluid world.

CSS relative colour values are now widely supported. In this article, pioneering author and web designer [Andy Clarke](https://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/) shares practical techniques for using them to theme and animate SVG graphics.

How to shape your career path for 2026, with decision trees for designers and a UX skills self-assessment matrix. The only limits for tomorrow are the doubts we have today. Brought to you by Smart Interface Design Patterns, a **friendly video course on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.

[Penpot](https://penpot.app/?utm_source=SmashingMagazine&utm_medium=Article&utm_campaign=MCPserver) is experimenting with MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers, which could lead to designers and developers being able to perform tasks in Penpot using AI that’s able to understand and interact with Penpot design files. Daniel Schwarz explains how [Penpot MCP](https://github.com/penpot/penpot-mcp) servers work, what they could mean for creating and managing designs in Penpot, and what you c

Most developers spend their days fixing bugs, shipping features, and jumping into the next sprint without even thinking about it. After a while, you begin to ask yourself, “Is this still what I want to be doing?” This article looks at how you can move into a new direction in your career without starting from scratch, and how the skills you already use, like problem-solving, communication, and empathy, can open new doors.

Whether 2026 has already begun as you’re reading this or you’re still waiting for the big countdown to start, how about some new wallpapers to get your desktop ready for the new year? We’ve got you covered.

Practical UX guidelines to keep in mind for 466 million people who experience hearing loss. More design patterns in Smart Interface Design Patterns, a **friendly video course on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.

Turn scattered user research into AI-powered personas that give anyone consolidated multi-perspective feedback from a single question.