WebDev Feed

Learn how to build a smooth, infinite 3D carousel where each image drives a reactive, canvas-based background gradient that adapts to its colors.

There are lots of tips for [improving your website performance](https://www.debugbear.com/blog/improve-website-performance?utm_campaign=sm-10). But even if you follow all of the advice, are you able to maintain an optimized site? And are you targeting the right pages? Matt Zeunert outlines an effective strategy for web performance optimization and explains the roles that different types of data play in it.

A few links about headings that I've had stored under my top hat. Headings: Semantics, Fluidity, and Styling — Oh My! originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOce

Learn how stacked grids and 3D transforms can bring heightmaps to life using nothing but the power of CSS.

SVG is one of those web technologies that’s both elegant and, at times, infuriating. In this article, pioneering author and web designer Andy Clarke explains his technique for animating SVG elements that are hidden in the Shadow DOM.

Why should you use a semantic <button> instead of a generic <div>? Accessibility, right? By how exactly does it help accessibility? Explaining the Accessible Benefits of Using Semantic HTML Elements originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part

Let’s dive into the building blocks of UX strategy and see how it speaks the language of product and business strategy to create user value while achieving company goals. Part of the Measure UX & Design Impact (use the code 🎟 IMPACT to save 20% off today).

Learn how to create smooth, realistic 3D animations in Spline using the new Timeline feature — from keyframes and curves to exporting your scene for the web.

A step-by-step guide to building high-performance 3D scroll effects with GSAP, ScrollTrigger, and CSS transform math.

With component variants, design systems become more flexible, letting you reuse the same component while adapting its look or state with ease. In this article, Daniel Schwarz demonstrates how design tokens can be leveraged to manage components and their variations using Penpot, the open-source tool built for scalable, consistent design.

Inside the creative engine redefining what’s possible with WebGPU and real-time design.

Last time, we discussed that, sadly, according to the State of CSS 2025 survey, trigonometric functions are deemed the “Most Hated” CSS feature. That shocked me. I may have even been a little offended, being a math nerd and …

The new month is just around the corner, and that means: It’s time for some new desktop wallpapers! All of them are designed by the community for the community and can be downloaded for free. Enjoy!

Through shaders, storytelling, and a passion for experimentation, Karim brings artful interactivity to life on the modern web.

On mobile, people can lose their sense of context and can’t easily tell where a section begins or ends. Good small-screen design can help orient them using a variety of techniques. Getting Creative With Small Screens originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the

Learn how to recreate Telescope’s smooth, layered zoom scroll animation using GSAP’s ScrollSmoother and ScrollTrigger plugins to achieve a cinematic, depth-filled scrolling experience.

Get structured search data without fighting captchas and build faster with simple, real-time API calls.

Exploring the design and mechanics of Interpol, a minimal library for low-level, time-based animations.

Can we use the <details> element as the foundation for a tabbed interface? Why yes, we can! Pure CSS Tabs With Details, Grid, and Subgrid originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the

Here is a lesson on Iterators. Iterables implement the iterable iteration interface, and iterators implement the iterator iteration interface. Sounds confusing? Mat breaks it all down in the article.

Freshly cherry-picked motion moments from the creative community, ready to spark your next concept.

When we change an element’s intrinsic sizing, its children are affected, too. This is something we can use to our advantage. CSS Animations That Leverage the Parent-Child Relationship originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the

A thorough but approachable lesson on JavaScript expressions excerpted JavaScript For Everyone, a complete online course offered by our friends at Piccalilli. An Introduction to JavaScript Expressions originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the

Motion can be tricky: too much distracts, too little feels flat. Ambient animations sit in the middle. They’re subtle, slow-moving details that add atmosphere without stealing the show. In part two of his series, web design pioneer Andy Clarke shows how ambient animations can add personality to any website design.

Honeypots are fields that developers use to prevent spam submissions. They still work in 2025. But you got to set a couple of tricks in place so spambots can’t detect your honeypot field. Building a Honeypot Field That Works originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the

A simple but powerful mental model for working with AI: treat it like an enthusiastic intern with no real-world experience. Paul Boag shares lessons learned from real client projects across user research, design, development, and content creation.

Research isn’t everything. Facts alone don’t win arguments, but powerful stories do. Here’s how to turn your research into narratives that inspire trust and influence decisions.

Let’s suppose you have N elements with the same animation that should animate sequentially. Modern CSS makes this easy and it works for any number of items! Sequential linear() Animation With N Elements originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the

What can CSS Masonry discussions teach us about the development of new CSS features? What is the CSSWG’s role? What influence do browsers have? What can learn from the way past features evolved? Masonry: Watching a CSS Feature Evolve originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the

From A/B tests to AI slop, the modern web is bleeding out its colour. Standardized, templated, and overoptimized, it’s starting to feel like a digital Levittown. But it doesn’t have to be.

The TL;DR is that stretch does the same thing as declaring 100%, but ignores padding when looking at the available space. We Completely Missed width/height: stretch originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the

One of our favorites, Andy Clarke, on the one thing keeping the CSS contrast-color() function from true glory: For my website design, I chose a dark blue background colour (#212E45) and light t

There are so many creative opportunities for using shape-outside that I’m surprised I see it used so rarely. So, how can you use it to add personality to a design? Here’s how I do it. Getting Creative With shape-outside originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the

SVGs, they scale, yes, but how else can you make them adapt even better to several screen sizes? Web design pioneer Andy Clarke explains how he builds what he calls “adaptive SVGs” using ``, ``, and CSS Media Queries.

Ready to move beyond static mockups? Here is a practical, step-by-step guide to Intent Prototyping — a disciplined method that uses AI to turn your design intent (UI sketches, conceptual models, and user flows) directly into a live prototype, making it your primary canvas for ideation.

Naturally, everything looks like code when I'm staring at a blank canvas. That's whether the canvas is paper, a screen, some Figma artboard, or what have you. Same Idea, Different Paint Brush originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the

How about some new wallpapers to get your desktop ready for fall and the upcoming Halloween season? We’ve got you covered! Following our monthly tradition, the wallpapers in this post were created with love by the community for the community and can be downloaded for free. Enjoy!

Safari 26 adds:75 new features, 3 deprecations, and 171 other improvements. Here's all the CSS goodness you'll want to know about. Touring New CSS Features in Safari 26 originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the

What if your best AI prompts didn’t disappear into your unorganized chat history, but came back tomorrow as a reliable assistant? In this article, you’ll learn how to turn one-off “aha” prompts into reusable assistants that are tailored to your audience, grounded in your knowledge, and consistent every time, saving you (and your team) from typing the same 448-word prompt ever again.

Yegor Gilyov examines the problem of over-reliance on static high-fidelity mockups, which often leave the conceptual model and user flows dangerously underdeveloped. He then explores whether AI-powered prototyping is the answer, questioning whether the path forward is the popular “vibe coding” approach or a more structured, intent-driven approach.

Creating motion can be tricky. Too much and it’s distracting. Too little and a design feels flat. Ambient animations are the middle ground — subtle, slow-moving details that add atmosphere without stealing the show. In this article, web design pioneer Andy Clarke introduces the concept of ambient animations and explains how to implement them.

With digital products moving to incorporate generative and agentic AI at an increasingly frequent rate, trust has become the invisible user interface. When it works, interactions feel seamless. When it fails, the entire experience collapses. But trust isn’t mystical. It can be understood, measured, and designed for. Here are practical methods and strategies for designing more trustworthy and ethical AI systems.

As responsible digital professionals, we are becoming increasingly aware of the environmental impact of our work and need to find effective and pragmatic ways to reduce it. James Chudley shares a new decarbonising approach that will help you to minimise the environmental impact of your website, benefiting people, profit, purpose, performance, and the planet.

From competitive SEO research and monitoring prices to training AI and parsing local geographic data, real-time search results power smarter apps. Tools like SerpApi make it easy to pull, customize, and integrate this data directly into your app or website.

For too long, personas have been created with considerable effort, only to offer limited value. Paul Boag shows how to breathe new life into this stale UX asset and demonstrates that it’s possible to create truly useful functional personas in a lightweight way.

Elastic and bounce effects have long been among the most desirable but time-consuming techniques in motion design. Expressive Animator streamlines the process, making it possible to produce lively animations in seconds, bypassing the tedious work of manual keyframe editing.

Real-time dashboards are decision assistants, not passive displays. In environments like fleet management, healthcare, and operations, the cost of a delay or misstep is high. Karan Rawal explores strategic UX patterns that shorten time-to-decision, reduce cognitive overload, and make live systems trustworthy.

The idea behind this is to share a full, unfiltered look at integrating CSS Cascade Layers into an existing legacy codebase. In practice, it’s about refactoring existing CSS to use cascade layers without breaking anything.

After covering in detail the underlying interaction paradigms of TV experiences in [Part 1](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2025/08/designing-tv-evergreen-pattern-shapes-tv-experiences/), it’s time to get practical. In the second part of the series, you’ll explore the building blocks of the “10-foot experience” and how to best utilise them in your designs.

Could there be a better way to welcome the new month than with a new collection of desktop wallpapers? We’ve got some eye-catching designs to make your September just a bit more colorful. Enjoy!

Prompting is more than giving AI some instructions. You could think of it as a design act, part creative brief and part conversation design. This second article on AI augmenting design work introduces a designerly approach to prompting: one that blends creative briefing, interaction design, and structural clarity.

TV interface design is a unique, fascinating, and often overlooked field. It’s been guided by decades of evolution and innovation, yet still firmly constrained by its legacy. Follow Milan into the history, quirks, and unshakable rules that dictate how we control these devices.

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are a great way to make apps built for the web feel native, but in moving away from a browser environment, we can introduce usability issues. This article covers how we can modify our app depending on what display mode is applied to mitigate these issues.

If you are new to using AI in design or curious about integrating AI into your UX process without losing your human touch, this article offers a grounded, day-by-day look at introducing AI into your design workflow.

AI has introduced huge efficiencies for web designers and is frequently being touted as the key to unlocking sustainable design and development. But do these gains outweigh the environmental cost of using energy-hungry AI tools?

AI tools are improving fast, but it’s still not clear how they fit into a real product design workflow. Nikita Samutin walks through four core stages — from analytics and ideation to prototyping and visual design — to show where AI fits and where it doesn’t, illustrated with real-world examples.

Rodolpho Henrique guides you through the essential aspects of color in digital design and user experience, from the practical steps of creating effective and scalable color palettes to critical accessibility considerations.

Your past shapes who you are as a designer, no matter where your career began or how unexpected your career path may have been. Stephanie Campbell shows how those lessons can sharpen your instincts, strengthen collaboration, and help you become a better designer today.

Prompting isn’t just about writing better instructions, but about designing better thinking. Ilia and Marina explore how advanced prompting can empower different product & design use cases, speeding up your workflow and improving results, from research and brainstorming to testing and beyond. Let’s dive in.

Internationalization isn’t just translation. It’s about formatting dates, pluralizing words, sorting names, and more, all according to specific locales. Instead of relying on heavy third-party libraries, modern JavaScript offers the Intl API — a powerful, native way to handle i18n. A quiet reminder that the web truly is worldwide.

Design systems are more than style guides: they’re made up of workflows, tokens, components, and documentation — all the stuff teams rely on to build consistent products. As projects grow, keeping everything in sync gets tricky fast. In this article, we’ll look at how smart tooling, combined with automation where it makes sense, can speed things up, reduce errors, and help your team focus on design over maintenance.

Talking points. Smart questions. A compelling story. This guide helps you prepare for your UX job interview. And remember: no act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.

Do you need a little inspiration boost? Well, then our new batch of desktop wallpapers might be for you. The wallpapers are designed with love by the community for the community and can be downloaded for free! Enjoy!

The Core Model is a practical methodology that flips traditional digital development on its head. Instead of starting with solutions or structure, we begin with a hypothesis about what users need and follow a simple framework that brings diverse teams together to create more effective digital experiences. By asking six good questions in the right order, teams align around user tasks and business objectives, creating clarity that transcends organizational boundaries.

Web Components are more than just Custom Elements. Shadow DOM, HTML Templates, and Custom Elements each play a role. In this article, Russell Beswick demonstrates how Shadow DOM fits into the broader picture, explaining why it matters, when to use it, and how to apply it effectively.