Let’s get ready for September with a fresh collection of desktop wallpapers! Created with love by the community for the community, they come in versions with and without a calendar. Enjoy!

Designing for digital products requires a different mindset than traditional websites. It’s all about continuous adaptation, refining, and iterating as user behavior and needs evolve. Paul Boag reflects on the key differences, including how the frequency of usage impacts your design approach and what you can do about it.

Google Analytics is often on a “need to know” basis, but why not flip the script? Paul Scanlon shares how he wrote a GitHub Action that queries Google Analytics to automatically generate and post a top ten page views report to Slack, making it incredibly easy to track page performance and share insights with your team.

Anticipatory design, powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine learning (ML), and Big Data (BD), promises to transform user experiences by predicting and fulfilling needs before users even express them. While this proactive approach seems revolutionary, many businesses struggle to meet the high expectations it sets. Joana Cerejo delves into the challenges of anticipatory design, highlights key failures, and offers a framework to help designers and businesses succeed in this complex landscape.

Bringing data to life in your application can be done without the usual headaches. Paul Scanlon shows you how you can build beautiful data visualizations using the Google Analytics API, and you won’t have to spend any time “massaging” the data.

Creating ready-to-implement Lottie animations with a single tool is now possible thanks to SVGator’s latest feature updates. In this article, you will learn how to create and animate a Lottie using SVGator, an online animation tool that has zero learning curve if you’re familiar with at least one design tool.

Myriam Frisano explores the basics of hand-coding SVGs with practical examples to demystify the inner workings of common SVG elements. In this guide, you’ll learn about asking the right questions to solve common positioning problems and how to leverage JavaScript so that, by the end, you can add “SVG coding” to your toolbox. You’ll also be able to declare proudly, “I know how to draw literal pictures with words!”

In this age of endless newfangled organizational tools, the spreadsheet holds firm. Frederick O’Brien explains how, from engineering to design, they can still provide a rock-solid foundation for your work.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

Tons of impressive animations as you scroll this One Pager (built with Webflow) for the ‘On Demand’ series from Flow Party. Full Review

Lovely thin-line aesthetic throughout this One Pager (built with WordPress) promoting the Ecommerce audit services of Peek Insights. Full Review

Tidy personal One Pager with a few neat micro-interactions for fullstack dev Dennis Zoma who leads Scio Labs. Full Review

Slick One Pager for Refresh Studio who specialise in UX/UI design. The team “working” section features interactive hot spots above each member to learn who they are and make sure you check out the testimonial slider, very impressive. Full Review

Clean One Pager (built with Webflow) announcing Popcorn, and new global cellular plan. Note, further down the page, the How It Works section combined with a preview + sign up. Full Review

Clean landing page (built with Webflow) helping condo and co-op board members learn about and prepare their building budgets. Worth noting this is a perfect example of a targeted landing page providing value, within a bigger website. The larger service being Daisy, a modern property management company Full Review

Vibrant and colorful One Pager (built with Webflow) for Harbour, who help setup your base in the UAE. Full Review

Fun One Pager showcasing the awesome Figma Plugins by Vijay Verma as game cartridges. Lovely touch with the shooting stars and universe background texture. You can find the Landing Page code on GitHub. ICYMI I interviewed Vijay on the Yo! Podcast. Full Review

Unique One Pager (built with Webflow) promoting the 2 desi ghee laddu boxes on offer by Alpa’s Kitchenverse. Refreshing to see a Single Page capture the personality of the brand/food with color, textures and a non-popular typeface. Full Review

One Pager (built with Tilda) promoting the Busy Status Bar device. What a wonderful, clear looping demo in the hero showing us exactly how easy it is to operate. Full Review

UN Environment Press Release Hundreds of millions of people in Asia rely on rice not only as a staple but as their main source of nutrition. But new research suggests the rice they eat will become less nutritious due to … Continue reading →

Center for Biological Diversity Press Release WASHINGTON – Four commonly used neonicotinoid pesticides can harm bees and other pollinators, according to a new analysis by California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation. The study found that current approved uses of the “neonics” … Continue reading →

By Julia  Conley Common Dreams “Our message as scientists is simple: Our planet’s future climate is inextricably tied to the future of its forest.” With a new statement rejecting the notion that drastically curbing emissions alone is enough to curb … Continue reading →

By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams “This is a wake-up call,” says one Australian marine biologist. “Given sea temperatures usually increase as we get towards March, this is probably conservative.” Delivering yet another “wake-up call” after recent studies have shown that … Continue reading →

By Julia Conley Common Dreams “Nature is not a ‘nice to have’—it is our life-support system.” Scientists from around the world issued a stark warning to humanity Tuesday in a semi-annual report on the Earth’s declining biodiversity, which shows that … Continue reading →

By Jon Queally Common Dreams “This is the stuff that worries me most. We don’t know what we’re doing, not trying to stop it, [and] with big consequences we don’t really understand.” The first global scientific review of its kind … Continue reading →

By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams “We face a stark choice [between] radical, disruptive changes to our physical world or radical, disruptive changes to our political and economic systems to avoid those outcomes.” As people across the globe mobilize to demand … Continue reading →

By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams Far-reaching global assessment details how humanity is undermining the very foundations of the natural world     On the heels of an Earth Day that featured calls for radical action to address the current “age … Continue reading →

By Lauren McCauley Common Dreams At this rate, plastics production will account for 20 percent of total oil consumption and 15 percent of the global annual carbon budget by 2050. The weight of plastic waste clogging the world’s oceans threatens … Continue reading →

The FBI is making news with its recent announcement that it will now track animal abuse in the same way it follows Group A felonies like arson, assault and homicide. Federal statutes define animal cruelty is “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly … Continue reading →

By Andrea Germanos Common Dreams On the heels of clean fuel milestones in Germany and Portugal , a new report finds that the renewable energy industry employed over 8.1 million people worldwide in 2015. According to the International Renewable Energy … Continue reading →

The sky may be the greatest free show on earth. You can look up any time, anywhere and tap into the awe and wonder of this ever-changing natural phenomenon. These videos and infographic provide some basic information to inform your … Continue reading →

By Richard Louv Children & Nature Network A Natural Teacher is anyone who uses the power of nature as an environment for learning – not only about nature, but about any subject. Professional educators, parents, grandparents, librarians, park rangers, the … Continue reading →

By American Rivers Through this lovely video we experience the magic and joy of rivers and their environs through the travels of a young boy, Parker, enjoying the gifts of the northwest’s rivers to the fullest. For more information: American … Continue reading →

By PRNewswire-USNewswire This year, NASA will celebrate Earth Day, April 22, with a variety of live and online activities Thursday and Friday, April 20-21, to engage the public in the agency’s mission to better understand and protect our home planet. … Continue reading →

Concerned by the Flint, Michigan water contamination crisis, 11 year old Gitanjali Rao went to work. She developed a portable and inexpensive device that can identify lead compounds in water. This is Gitanjali’s video submission for the Discovery Education 3M … Continue reading →

The Moscow Flower Show celebrated its sixth International Festival with the theme of ecology, for the enhancement of biodiversity. Here you can see Guest of Honor Claude Pasquer, representing the renowned French International Garden Festival of Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, conduct a … Continue reading →

It seems that nearly every time I’ve sat down to write here on the ol’ blog in the last couple of months, something has gotten in the way. I have untouched ideas and unfinished drafts that I hope to get to at some point. But, it has been a busy…

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been sending my thoughts out here into the void that is the world wide web for a full two decades. But, here I am. Today officially marks the 20th anniversary of this blog. When I wrote those first words, “Welcome to My Site,” all…

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,How I wonder what you are!Up above the world so high,Like a diamond in the sky… Those were the lyrics that my grandfather—Papa, as we call him—were teaching my then two-year-old niece. It was early 2020 or so. A tiny kitten, who had no name at the…

November would’ve made 21 years. Smeagol was with me for over half my life, and pretty much my full adult life to this point. He was with me as I fell in and out of love who knows how many times over the years. He was with me as I…