CSS can be unpredictable — and specificity is often the culprit. Victor Ayomipo breaks down how and why your styles might not behave as expected, and why understanding specificity is better than relying on !important.
https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/06/css-cascade-layers-bem-utility-classes-specificity-control/
Meet “Accessible UX Research,” our upcoming book to make your UX research inclusive. Learn how to recruit, plan, and design with disabled participants in mind. Print shipping in August 2025. eBook available for download later this summer. Pre-order the book. htt
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) is an inevitability when working on web accessibility. That said, it’s everyone’s first time learning about ARIA at some point. https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/06/what-i-wish-someone-told-me-aria/
In this tutorial, Blake Lundquist walks us through two methods of creating the “moving-highlight” navigation pattern using only plain JavaScript and CSS. The first technique uses the getBoundingClientRect method to explicitly animate the border between navigation bar items when they are clicked. The second approach achieves the same functionality using the new View Transition API.
https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/06/creating-moving-highlight-navigation-bar-javascript-css/
SVG is easy — until you meet path. However, it’s not as confusing as it initially looks. In this first installment of a pair of articles, Myriam Frisano aims to teach you the basics of <path> and its sometimes mystifying commands. With simple examples and visualizations, she’ll help you understand the easy syntax and underlying rules of SVG’s most powerful element so that by the end, you’re fully able to translate SVG semantic tags into a language path understands.
https://smashingmagazine
We often spotlight wireframes, research, or tools like Figma, but none of that moves the needle if we can’t collaborate well. Great UX doesn’t happen in isolation. It takes conversations with engineers, alignment with product, sales, and other stakeholders, and the ability to listen, adapt, and co-create. That’s where design becomes a team sport, and when your ability to capture the outcomes multiplies the UX impact. https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/06/collaboration-most-underrated-ux-skill/
What’s the best way to make your SVGs faster, simpler, and more manageable? In this article, pioneering author and web designer Andy Clarke explains the process he relies on to prepare, optimise, and structure SVGs for animation and beyond. https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/06/smashing-animations-part-4-optimising-svgs/
Designers love to craft, but polishing pixels before the problem is solved is a time-sink. This article pinpoints the five traps that lure us into premature detail — being afraid to show rough work, fixing symptoms instead of causes, solving the wrong problem, drowning in unactionable feedback, and plain fatigue — then hands you a four-step rescue plan to refocus on goals, ship faster, and keep your craft where it counts. https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/06/why-designers-get-stuck-in-details/
Designing for neurodiversity means recognizing that people aren’t edge cases but individuals with varied ways of thinking and navigating the web. So, how can we create more inclusive experiences that work better for everyone? https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/06/designing-for-neurodiversity/
Let’s kick off June — and the beginning of summer — with some fresh inspiration! Artists and designers from across the globe once again tickled their creativity to welcome the new month with a new collection of desktop wallpapers. Enjoy! https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/05/desktop-wallpaper-calendars-june-2025/