20 Awesome Christmas Projects Hidden in CodePen

CodePen is an online playground for talented front-end developers, a place where you can always find cool projects to widen your horizons and see what other developers are up to. Year-end holidays are a great time to surprise your loved ones with creative personal projects, or to say thanks to your customers with some cool, cutting edge designs that will help the holiday cheer.

In this post, we will take a peek at 20 awesome Christmas experiments on CodePen, that you can use for inspiration to create your own designs.

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How To Prepare For Christmas Early: 9 Tips For Getting Ready for Christmas

Summer is barely over and the shops are already filling with Christmas garb. But even if you are not the biggest fan of the festive season, it pays to be prepared for it. We are here to show you how to prepare for Christmas early, without breaking a sweat. Preparation is more than half the battle in our opinion. If you know how to be ready for Christmas early, like, well in advance, then by the time the big day rolls around, you will be more chilled than a turkey in January.

Why you should prepare early for Christmas

With October just a few days away, the festive season will be here before you know it. Planning ahead is the best way to save money, headaches, and even your sanity!

Have your family already started having the “Christmas Chat?” Who’s going to host? Where is it going to be? What time will lunch be made? Who is being invited? What are you getting for so-and-so? And so on. If you leave everything till the last minute, or even till just approaching Christmas, you could find yourself stressed out, unhappy, panicking, and not even looking forward to the most wonderful time of the year.

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Resource Website for Developers & Designers

Explore our wide range of content, from articles to tools, references for popular scripting languages, copy and paste examples, and more.

CodeShack provides you with free tutorials, examples, tools, and references for your everyday website development needs. We created CodeShack for all users interested in the web development scene with minimal programming experience.

We are working every day on improving CodeShack, feel free to contact us if you have any questions or feedback that will help us improve it further.

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Try the New Material Design Capabilities for WordPress

If you like to build websites with WordPress, then you’re in for a treat.

Now, for the first time, you don’t need to know how to code to use Google’s popular Material Design system on your WordPress website; the web giant has released a WordPress plugin and theme to import its colors, icons, UI elements, and typography straight into your CMS.

You need to install both the plugin and theme to take advantage of Material Design for WordPress. Using the add-ons, you can tweak your typography via Google Fonts, add-in MD color, and even choose your own icons. If even that’s too much, pick one of the pre-built themes. One of the best features is that the plugin warns you if your customizations break accessibility guidelines, saving you a do-over when you discover it later on. Google calls it ​“an experimental plugin and theme,” which means it’s subject to change. And Google has been quick to emphasize that the plugin is very much a work in progress, asking for feedback to help them direct future development efforts. It’s a really great option for anyone who’s starting on the web, building their first site, or who really wants a nice reliable design system that they can build on in the future. It’s yet another automation tool that has driven WordPress to the top of the technology pile and made it the CMS of choice for 40% of the web. As tech hots up and AI continues to develop, it’s hard to dismiss the idea that one day soon, our only contribution to websites will be paying the hosting bill!

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How To Design A Simple UI When You Have A Complex Solution

Software and apps often solve very complex problems for businesses and consumers in the way of sales, marketing, finances, and so on. But offering a product that solves your users’ problems isn’t enough. If the UI is just as complex as the original problem, user churn is going to be high. Today, we’re going to look at some tips for designing a simple UI regardless of your solution’s complexity.

What is it they say? Complex problems require complex solutions. That is certainly true when developing apps and software.

But how do you ensure that the complex backend doesn’t trickle over to the front end?

A complex UI, in general, is more than enough reason for many people to abandon a website or mobile app. When it comes to paying or subscribed users, though, don’t expect any of them to settle for your software’s complicated interface.

It doesn’t matter how amazing your product is. If the outward appearance of it drives your users crazy, you can expect large amounts of costly user churn in return.

The Flatfile team is very familiar with this problem, having built a successful data importer, which is a technology that many designers have struggled to build on their own. Below, we’re going to look at some of the tips that helped them overcome this UI design challenge and can help you, too.

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Adobe Flash is soon to die (and people are suddenly nostalgic, hmmm)

Adobe has announced the end of its stalwart Flash browser plugin, and there's been an outpouring of emotion (sadness and joy) across the internet. To be fair, this has been coming for the best part of the last decade and it therefore seems apt that 2020 is the year to finish Flash off. 

Flash Player's final days were announced with the release of its final update, named AIR 32. You'll have until 31 December 2020 to enjoy Flash, at which time Adobe will stop supporting it. It will then block content running in Flash Player from January 12, 2021. (For Adobe tools that aren't about to die, check out this Adobe software list.)

The cancellation of one of the internet's most well-known plugins is due to a cacophony of issues including a lack of users and a rise of (more secure) replacement programs. Given Flash Player's buggy, often annoying, performance issues and the fact it's a target for malware, we weren't surprised to see there are many users unbothered by the situation (and see our Adobe Flash Pro CS6 review for a dose of nostalgia).

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Dreaming Of A Magical December

2020 was a year that was anything but ordinary, and, well, the upcoming holiday season will be different from what we all are used to, too. To cater to holiday cheer in these weird times, artists and designers from across the globe got their creative juices flowing and created festive and inspiring wallpapers for December. Following our monthly tradition, they all come in versions with and without a calendar and can be downloaded for free.

We are very thankful to everyone who took the time to create an artwork and shared it with us this month — you are truly smashing! And since so many talented people have helped fill our archives with designs that are just too good to be forgotten in all these years we’ve been running this wallpapers challenge, we also compiled a little best-of from past December editions at the end of this post. Maybe you’ll spot one of your almost-forgotten favorites in there, too? Have a cozy December, everyone, and stay safe!

All images can be clicked on and lead to the preview of the wallpaper.

We respect and carefully consider the ideas and motivation behind each and every artist’s work.

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82 best free fonts for designers

Free fonts may not always be the most brilliant fonts, but there are some truly great ones around – it's just a case of finding them. We know that the search process takes time and effort that you could be spending on other things, so we've done the hard work for you and collated this extensive list.

The best free fonts offer plenty of options for your designs without costing anything. Whether you're looking for a classy serif, a clean sans-serif, vintage fonts, or something completely different, there's no shortage of choice. In fact there, are so many free fonts out there that it can be hard to know where to start looking. Some font libraries offer free fonts and many individual type designers also offer their own creations for free on their websites or portfolios. To make it easier for you to find what you're looking for, we've gathered together the best free fonts that we've found in our regular searches of the web – a massive 89 of them.

All these are fonts that are available free for personal use, and some can be used freely for commercial use too (always check, because in some cases you will need to buy a license for commercial use – we've stated the conditions at the time of writing, but these can change). 

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Life as a Digital Nomad: 10 Designers Share Their Tools

Becoming a digital nomad when you’re already a graphic designer isn’t the easiest thing in the world. While this career path is rewarding due to the sheer freedom—and the traveling is a great bonus—there are numerous challenges you have to master to make the most of becoming a digital nomad. This kind of lifestyle isn’t for everyone, but, for those who have the passion for it, numerous benefits and overall empowerment await. What makes this lifestyle possible is the use of the right tools, which makes all the difference to productivity and delivering fantastic results for your clients. Thanks to the interconnectivity of the web, digital nomads have the same advantages as their counterparts who are based in one location. In other words, distance and remoteness are no longer barriers to delivering high-quality work while living the transient life you want. It comes down to how you empower yourself with the right platforms.

We asked 10 Creative Market shop owners, who are also remote workers, what their go-to tools are. Here’s what they revealed.

1. Identify your skill sets & strengthen them. ...
2. Build a portfolio & start searching job boards. ...
3. Use your skills to make money online. ...
4. Start networking. ...
5. Start simplifying your lifestyle. ...
6. Build your savings. ...
7. Determine your budget & decide on your locations. ...
8. Get travelers insurance.

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Microsoft hits the brakes on Windows 10 updates in December 2020

Don't expect any Windows 10 preview updates in December due to holidays, says Microsoft.

Microsoft has told Windows 10 owners and IT admins not to expect any Windows 10 preview updates in December to give them a break when staffing levels are low over the holiday season.

December will be a break from the usual schedule of Windows 10 updates each month, which include optional previews that arrive after the mandatory Patch Tuesday security updates in the second week of every month. 

"Because of minimal operations during the holidays and the upcoming Western new year, there won't be any preview releases for the month of December 2020," Microsoft said in a support note.

The company will resume monthly servicing with the January 2021 security releases, it said. 

Microsoft releases optional non-security Windows 10 updates to give customers time to test the updates against systems.  

It calls the first week of each month 'A week' and typically issues fixes for Office. The second week is 'B week' or Patch Tuesday. C and D weeks happen on the third and fourth weeks of the month. They're when Microsoft releases optional cumulative updates or previews of non-security fixes for IT pros and admins. 

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