A while ago, I was working on a website that required a number of icons. “No problem,” I thought. “I know how to handle this. I’ll use an @font-face icon set for high-resolution screens. It’ll be a single file, to reduce HTTP requests, and I’ll include just the icons that I need, to reduce file size.”

“I’ll even use a Unicode character as the base of the icon, so that if @font-face isn’t supported, then the user will still see something like the intended icon.” I felt pretty pleased with myself.

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Some things just don’t change: SmashingConf Freiburg is taking place again this year, on September 15th-16th 2014, in our lovely hometown Freiburg, Germany. Two days, one track, 18 brilliant speakers and 300 fantastic attendees, sharing practical insights into their craft. And the best bit: lots of networking with good ol’ German beers in beer gardens, at the very foot of the legendary Black Forest. Tickets are now on sale.

The main focus of Smashing Conferences has always been hands-on insights and actionable takeaways — things that have actually worked in practice, and the design/development process behind them, including mistakes, failures, critical decisions and eventually successes.

The post When Apples Fall From Trees: SmashingConf Freiburg 2014 appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one—desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd.

This creativity mission has been going on for six years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month. This post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for May 2014. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper!

The post Desktop Wallpaper Calendars: May 2014 appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Argh! Weird browser bugs, inconsistent CSS/JavaScript support, performance issues, mobile fragmentation and complicated nuances such as device pixels, viewports, zooming, touch event cascade, pointer/click events and the 300ms delay. To make sense of it all, we created The Mobile Web Handbook, a new practical book by Peter-Paul Koch to help you understand technical issues on mobile and deal with them effectively.

We have all been there. With Responsive Web Design becoming a convenient strategy for device-agnostic design, we keep running into annoying technical issues that all those quirky (and not so quirky) mobile browsers are raising so very often. However, fixing these issues can be quite easy — once you understand exactly why they come up. The book will be useful for mobile strategists, developers, designers, and everybody willing to better understand the intricacies of mobile — both technical and market-related.

The post Meet “The Mobile Web Handbook”, A New Smashing Book By Peter-Paul Koch (Pre-Sale) appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Working with people can be hard. But get it right, and you’ll be able to produce stunning work more smartly and quickly than ever before. With methodologies such as agile and lean influencing how design teams work, some interesting challenges lie ahead. Iterative and collaborative practices vary greatly across work environments and even projects, and they can, and most likely will, bring your time-honed workflow to its knees.

A shared understanding of the tools (and the way you use them) is crucial, then. By sharing assets, constructing files systematically and generating objects using core techniques, the team is freed to focus on crafting concepts and solving problems, rather than fighting unwieldy file structures and obtuse working practices. This shared understanding should underpin everything the team works on, becoming part of an ever-evolving process of refinement and learning.

The post Collaborating With Adobe Fireworks On Large Design Teams appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Phil Karlton once said, “There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.” This article is about the harder of these two: cache invalidation. It’s directed at readers who already work with Varnish Cache. To learn more about it, you’ll find background information in “Speed Up Your Mobile Website With Varnish.”

10 microseconds (or 250 milliseconds): That’s the difference between delivering a cache hit and delivering a cache miss. How often you get the latter will depend on the efficiency of the cache — this is known as the “hit rate.” A cache miss depends on two factors: the volume of traffic and the average time to live (TTL), which is a number indicating how long the cache is allowed to keep an object. As system administrators and developers, we can’t do much about the traffic, but we can influence the TTL.

The post Cache Invalidation Strategies With Varnish Cache appeared first on Smashing Magazine.