📝 Issue #463: Eco-Friendly Websites, PHP 8.0, Common Design System Myths, The State of CSS 2020, and more…

The web is bad for the environment; it uses electricity at a terrifying and exponential rate, which is largely produced by burning fossil fuels. Eric Bailey offers some realistic advice on how to make environmental considerations central to web design, from the usefulness of dark mode, to the benefits of static sites.

If you work with SaaS in your browser, you know how ponderous and laggy it can be when switching between apps. Sidekick is an ultra-fast app based on Chromium that allows you to run multiple apps with unprecedented speed. Use apps from Drive to Asana to Dropbox. There’s a free plan available for individuals.

2020 has been full of surprises, challenges, and pitfalls for web designers. In this regular series we publish the most pressing research for creative professionals, so you can make the right decisions. In the final edition of the year we look back at 2020, and look forward to a number of opportunities in 2021.

It’s always fascinating to review a cross-section of the web development community. In the latest results from this popular annual survey Sacha Greif and Raphaël Benitte roundup the latest trends in CSS, from the technologies to avoid, to the most adopted in 2020, to the ones you should be looking at for 2021.

Design systems are one of the most widely adopted design tools in 2020, but they’re steeped in myths that hamper their use. Lori Alcala looks into the four most common design system myths, from design systems stifling creativity, to design systems serving different teams, and offers some practical advice for getting past them.

PHP 8.0 has just been released. This is a major update to one of the web’s most commonly used languages. It’s probably not bug-free just yet, so don’t update today, but PHP powers hundreds of major apps, including the omnipresent WordPress, so expect to see a cascade of updates being released in the next few months and years.

The design industry’s approach to digital product creation is deeply flawed, thanks in part to our tendency to self-deception. Lisa Angela asks how we start to dismantle and rebuild a system that excludes people by design, and offers some invaluable advice about design education, and the attitudes of the wider industry.

Remake is an open source framework for building web apps with just HTML and CSS. Remake allows you to create apps with persistent data, user accounts, and saved data. You simply tell Remake which data should be editable and it takes care of the rest. It’s a great option for rapid prototyping and there’s a free plan.

Interaction is key to the impression we form of a product, and animation can be used to make those interactions functional and delightful. Nick Babich introduces a range of animation issues, and presents a number of practical solutions to making the most of animation design in mobile UI and UX.