Like Dribbble or Behance, Codepen is a sacred place that attracts and gathers together thousand of creative people of utterly different skill and knowledge levels. Whether you are a highly proficient developer who knows his stuff or just a novice coder who has only embarked on an adventurous journey of converting ideas into digital reality, you will certainly find here something special.

If you are lacking in inspiration, there is a ton of incredible, mind-blowing projects: each one is an interfusion of styles, pioneering techniques, and smart ideas. The great thing is that it is not just a collection of masterpieces that you are only allowed to contemplate excluding unnecessary touching much like in an exhibition in the museum. On the contrary, you are welcome to not only touch, in a figurative manner of speaking but also break any of these pieces of art into fragments and leave no stone unturned in the struggle of getting to grips with the concept. Sharing is caring – is one of Codepen’s doctrine; it is destined to be explored. So why not to make the most out of it?

Today we have compiled a list of pens that is split into two. The first part is dedicated to some innovative and top-notch projects that show that testing the limits can actually bring some spectacular results. It is here where you can get a boost and spur for pushing your boundaries. Maybe some of the examples in this section do not work properly even in all modern browsers, but they certainly have a wow factor. The second part includes code snippets that are down to earth and in some cases are even trivial, but they are practical and sought-after and can be used for solving mundane issues.

For Inspiration

3D Carousel Using TweenMax.js & jQuery

Creator: John Blazek

Chill the Lion

Creator: Karim Maaloul

Infinite Star Field

Creator: Eduardo Lopes

Simple Particle Engine

Creator: Jason Mayes

Morph Character

Creator: Sascha Sigl

Audio Cloud

Creator: André Mattos

Particles-Butterfly

Creator: Timur Bilalov

Canvas Bokeh Generation

Creator: Jack Rugile

The Wave

Creator: Chris Coyier

Star Wars – Polygons of the Galaxy II

Creator: Lloyd James

Ideas/Solutions For Work

A Menu Overlay Simulating a Camera Focus Change

Creator: Chris Arasin

Schedule Template

Creator: Oltika

Responsive Signup/Login form

Creator: Mohamed Hasan

Hero Zoom on Scroll

Creator: Vail

GSAP Cubic bezier page transition

Creator: Maciej Siwanowicz

Image Effects with CSS

Creator: Bennett Feely

CSS Text 3D Effect

Creator: Luke Meyrick

Fully responsive navigation with CSS3 animations and jQuery

Creator: Jan Czizikow

Material Navigation Pure CSS

Creator: Manasseh Pierce

Triangled

Creator: Dronca Raul

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that were posted, so don’t miss out and subscribe to our newsletter and follow the site daily for all the news.

The Current State of Adaptive Design

Material Components by Google

Taking IKEA Out of its Box and Redesigning it for 1.6B Users

“Great” Mac Desktops are on the Way

One Sure-Fire Way to Improve your Coding

Dogs Explain the Mysteries of HTTP Status Codes

30 Best WordPress Themes of 2016

Blox: A Beautifully Minimal 3D Game

Best and Worst Identities of 2016

What We Learned About Web Developers at Adobe?—?just By asking

Front-end Tools: My Favorite Finds of 2016

Web Fundamentals

The Anatomy of a Web Request

Email Design Trends 2017

10 Great Ways to Use White Space in Web Design

CSS Vertical Centering – Everything You Need to Know

Web Design Trends We Can Expect to See in 2017

5 Reasons Why UX Design is not Cheap

Typography in Shared Spaces: A Trend You Need to Know

Luminar: World’s First Photo Editor that Adapts to the User’s Skills

The 42 Best Photoshop Plugins

15 Best New Pieces of Tech for Designers in 2016

Shift: Switch Between Gmail Accounts like a Boss

Preparing to Be Badass Next Year

Voice is the Next Big Platform

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

Bundle of 200+ Highly Customizable Infographics – only $18!

Source

Samantha Zhang:

When web components are modular like Lego bricks down to the elements level, they become more versatile and easier to maintain. We believe it’s the next step to take in modular web design.

It’s a clever system: put a half-gutter around all elements and a half-gutter around the containers. That way no matter what touches what, full gutters are naturally there.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

---

Learning from Lego: A Step Forward in Modular Web Design is a post from CSS-Tricks

Perhaps you’ve heard about the WebP image format? And how it’s a pretty good performance win, for the browsers that support it? Well that’s only for Blink-based browsers, at the moment. Estelle Weyl’s article Image Optimization explains the best image format for each browser:

Browser	Optimal image format
Chrome	WebP
IE 9+ / Edge	JPEG-XR
Opera	WebP
Safari	JPEG-2000

And you can serve these formats through the syntax.

Couple that complexity with the complexity of responsive images, and it really seems like outsourcing image delivery to a dedicated service seems like the way to go. At least above a certain scale.

---

The “Optimal Image Format” for Each Browser is a post from CSS-Tricks

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD.

The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers.

These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today.

So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and enjoy these funny cartoons.

Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below as well as any related stories of your own…

Designer decorated

Photoshop makeover

Subtle hint

Can you relate to these situations? Please share your funny stories and comments below…

Watercolor Christmas Bundle of 350+ Design Elements – only $17!

Source

This is a distinction worth knowing about. They look pretty similar. They can do some of the same things. But, one is very easy to override and the other is not.

Inline styles are likely a bit more familiar:

<div style="width: 300px; height: 300px;">
  Inline styles on an HTML element.
</div>

SVG can do that too:

<svg style="width: 300px;">
 Inline styles on an SVG element.
</svg>

But SVG has this concept of presentational attributes as well, meaning we could do this:

<svg width="300px" height="300px">
  Presentational attributes on an SVG element.
</svg>

The difference?

Presentational attributes are very easy to override in CSS

Any CSS at all will do.

/* These styles will override the presentational attributes */
svg {
  width: 250px;
  height: 250px;
}

Inline styles can only be override by !important styles in CSS

The only way to override an inline style is by using !important rules:

svg {
  width: 250px !important;
  height: 250px !important;
}

A crude diagram to drive the point home

This does actually come up, I find, in day-to-day development. For example, Illustrator asks how you want to style exported SVG:

It also makes good sense to add presentational attributes, especially sizing ones, to SVG to avoid FOUSVG.

---

Presentation Attributes vs Inline Styles is a post from CSS-Tricks

Cloudways, a veteran in managed Cloud Hosting services, has revamped the interface of its platform and sports an illustrious new logo. Apart from the new platform design, some interesting features have also been added. Let’s take a tour of the splendid Cloudways 2.0.

The Cloudways‘ motto “Managed Cloud Hosting for Everyone” actually is appropriate. It has given the users all the freedom they wish for; from choosing the provider to adding team members to their projects, it has it all!

Managed Cloud Hosting Like No Other

You can choose your own provider from an array of options like Amazon, Google, Kyup, DigitalOcean, and Vultr. This means a user can deploy a web app in any of the provided 25+ destinations. The platform contains pretty much every region for its users.

Cloud servers are prone to security threats, but when it comes to Cloudways, a dedicated team of engineers are constantly on the look out to combat these types of threats. Regular OS patches and firmware upgrades by Cloudways engineers makes it safer than the other Managed Cloud Hosting platforms.

Selecting the right app has never been this easy. You can pick from a range of PHP-based development frameworks, content management systems, and ecommerce builders. With easy and speedy deployment, you don’t have to wait long. Choose the CPU, RAM, and Storage according to your requirement. Just wait for some minutes and your cloud server is ready to go. That’s not it!

In this performance-oriented era, Cloudways guarantees swift web page delivery. The specially designed ThunderStack, a powerful combination of web server and cache technologies, cuts loading time by 100%.

ThunderStack is a unique formation. It fuses Nginx,Apache and PHP-FPM web servers with Varnish and Memcached caching system. This cuts web page loading time significantly. Then, there are optional components of this stack, like the choice of database software. You can pick either MySQL or MariaDB. Then, you can enable Redis to replace Memcached.

One-Click Awesomeness

Cloudways is a simplified and unique way to boost your business and take it to the pinnacle of excellence. It guarantees 1-click operations. This means a user can execute tasks in a few simple clicks. You can also manage your database with the help of Cloudways Database Manager.

The platform also comes with free SSL certificates via Let’s Encrypt.

This means that you do not have to purchase these certificates for your web apps. Plus, the cloud servers launched through Cloudways can handle more than one website with or without SSL protection.

Scaling is just a simple bar slide. You can scale the server resources (CPU, RAM, and storage) and bandwidth whenever you require. Launch as many web apps as you want, Cloudways gives you the freedom to do so. You can also set parameters directly from the UI.

Work Together, Grow Together

As they say, “United we stand, divided we fall”. Cloudways gives you the liberty to work with your team. With the latest upgrades, now you can invite your team members whenever you require their help. You can control the roles of your team members.

You can create automated workflows using Git and code deployment tools. This means you will keep your code managed, and under control.

Another aspect that makes Cloudways stand out from the rest is its 24×7 customer support. Any user can start a live chat session from the platform itself. Alternatively, a simple ticket would do and the customer support team will be there to help you with all server related issues.

Suits Every Budget

Considering the type of features, Cloudways looks like a high-end hosting solution as it delivers cloud servers. However, such is not the case with this provider. A production server from Vultr costs only $14 whereas a test server from DigitalOcean costs $5. The billing is done on hourly basis and you get an invoice during the first week of the month.

Like all good cloud solutions, Cloudways works on a Pay-as-You-Go system. A user only pays once an invoice is generated. This means you are never locked in long-term contracts. You can also make your Cloudways account prepaid by adding funds.

Is Cloudways Worth Looking Into?

Well, if you notice at the infrastructure options on Cloudways, you will know that the platform is made for the current times where everything is measured in performance. The datacenters integrated in the platform seldom go offline. On top of it, the platform provides easy-to-use control panel that has no learning curve. If you know website management, you are good to go. When it comes to website performance, ThunderStack from Cloudways makes web apps run a lot faster when compared to traditional hosting solutions.

If you are interested, it would be best to test it for real. Just sign up with Cloudways to get a trial period. From what’s available, Cloudways is the best managed cloud hosting platform in the industry.

Read More at How Every Business Can Benefit From Managed Cloud Hosting

Matt Griffin’s documentary about the web, now available to watch free on Vimeo.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

---

What Comes Next Is the Future is a post from CSS-Tricks

Matt Mullenweg, on the release of a new homepage for WordPress.org, which hasn’t seen a redesign in a long time:

What’s on the page today actually isn’t that important, even though it’s better in many ways, the key is that it’s changing again, the stone has been unstuck and can now keep rolling.

I like that sentiment. With a redesign, sometimes it’s not so much about the new pixels themselves, but the fact that a workflow is now in place for the work to continue.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

---

“the stone has been unstuck” is a post from CSS-Tricks

Vitaly Friedman’s list includes a “Quick Wins” section with the web performance things that can’t be ignored. If you aren’t setting caching headers on assets, optimizing images, and gzipping, you’re leaving some huge and easy performance gains on the table. After you’ve covered those, then you can dig into Brotli, OSCP, tree-shaking, and whatnot.

Speaking of which, I should really look into Brotli, OSCP, tree-shaking and whatnot.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

---

Front-End Performance Checklist 2017 is a post from CSS-Tricks