Tailwind CSS v4.3 is here with first-party scrollbar styling, even more logical property utilities, new zoom and tab-size utilities, better @variant support, and all the v4.2 stuff we shipped while forgetting blogs existed.
GitHub’s leadership blames the 3.5x increase in service load as the cause of degradation – or it might be self-inflicted.
Also: Amazon finally allows engineers to use Claude Code and Codex, Meta forcefully assigns engineers to data labelling work ahead of layoffs, more small “AI-forward” teams, and more
An honest perspective on building local-first web apps in 2026, written for developers who’ve been doing this long enough to be skeptical of silver bullets.
How the cloud changes the way we build applications, and why engineers’ ethical choices matter more than ever. Excerpt from the book, ‘Designing Data-Intensive Applications’, 2nd edition
Design always starts with function — function shapes form. But if that function can’t be made completely invisible and people still have to interact with it, it inevitably becomes part of their experience. In this article, Kyrylo Levashov shares four common software design assumptions.
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?
In the past 2-3 months, spending on AI agents has exploded at many tech companies, Details from 15 of them, including the different ways they are coping with this realization.
Also: Anthropic’s speed run to break devs’ goodwill, big price increases from GitHub Copilot, Mitchell Hashimoto on the “building block economy,” and more
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!
Mario Zechner, creator of Pi, joins Armin Ronacher to explore AI coding’s limits, arguing that human judgment still matters most in an agent-driven world.
A deepdive with the Canonical team into how AI is changing Ubuntu, why they’re betting on local-first LLMs, and a look into other Linux distributions
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.
At Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce and other large companies, devs are purposefully burning tokens (and money!) to inflate their AI usage and hit AI usage metrics which they treat as targets.
Details from 15 tech companies on the rapid growth of token spend, and their responses to it. Also: AI vendors can’t keep up with demand, plummeting morale at Meta, and more.
Martin Kleppmann on scaling, his updated Designing Data-Intensive Applications, and what’s next for AI-era systems.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Availability has dropped to one nine (~90% – !!), partly due to not being able to handle increased traffic from AI coding agents. There’s also no CEO and an apparent lack of direction.
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.
Job postings for Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) have surged, but many professionals don’t want the role because it’s more like solutions engineering than software development.
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?
Next.js 16.2 introduces a stable Adapter API, a public adapter test suite, and a working group for more consistent deployment across platforms.
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.
Turbopack in Next.js 16.2 brings faster builds, SRI support, postcss.config.ts, tree shaking of dynamic imports, Server Fast Refresh, inline loader configuration, and over 200 bug fixes.
Next.js 16.2 ships AGENTS.md in create-next-app, browser log forwarding, dev server lock file with PID, and next-browser for AI agent debugging.
Next.js 16.2 includes Adapters, rendering performance improvements, improved debugging and error pages, and more.
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.
An engineer at Cloudflare rewrote most of Vercel’s Next.js in one week with AI agents. It looks like a sign of how AI will disrupt existing moats and business models. Analysis
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 details or order your copy now.
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.
