Editorial

Dealing with legacy is hard. The hardest part isn't even the legacy itself, but a decade-old ecosystem that it comes with — dependencies, workarounds, habits, mental models, outdated workflows and zombie features.

So how do we improve legacy code or legacy design? We can't rebuild in ten months what took ten years to refine. In this newsletter, we look at different ways to cope with legacy — from a front-end and UX perspective.

On the Smashing side of things, we are getting ready for our next adventures: SmashingConf Freiburg 2026 ⛵ in our lovely hometown Freiburg, Germany — and plenty of online workshops to choose from:

Meet SmashingConf Freiburg 2026 — a friendly conference for friendly designers and UI engineers.

• Spotting Accessibility Issues Early Free
  with Stéphanie Walter. Sep 1
• Complex UIs and Enterprise UX UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 2–3
• Naming Design Systems DS
  with Samantha Gordashko. Sep 8–22
• Interface Design Patterns Live UX Training UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 11 – Oct 12
• Accessibility For Designers UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Sep 21–29
• Deep Dive on Accessibility Testing Accessibility
  with Manuel Matuzovic. Nov 9 – Nov 23
• How To Measure UX and Design Impact + self-paced course UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Oct 20 – Nov 13
• Design Patterns For AI Products 2026 + self-paced course UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Nov 16–24
• Jump to all workshops →

Until next time, dear friend!

— Vitaly

1. Understanding Legacy Code

How to approach a large, undocumented codebase? What’s the best strategy when code feels impossible to maintain? And what can you do when nobody cares about the technical debt that’s piling up? Dealing with legacy code comes with lots of challenges. To help you tackle them, Nicolas Carlo created Understand Legacy Code, a collection of useful tips and resources for taming the legacy codebase you’ve inherited.

2. Legacy Code Podcast

Legacy code doesn’t have the best reputation, but consider the following: The code you write today is your legacy. That’s the idea behind the podcast Legacy Code Rocks. Hosted by M. Scott Ford and Ray Myers, it attempts to change the way you think about legacy code. While no new episodes are produced, the podcast archive is jam-packed with 162 episodes exploring the ins and outs of modernizing existing software applications.

3. Refactoring Catalog

To prevent technical debt from piling up, it’s a good idea to make refactoring a part of your day-to-day routine. Every time you add an enhancement to your codebase, take the time to look at the existing code and consider if there’s a way to refactor it into a better shape. Martin Fowler published a catalog of refactorings with practical examples of restructuring code without breaking it.

4. Transforming Legacy Systems

Legacy applications power critical tasks in a lot of organizations, whether it’s in healthcare, telecommunications, government services, banks, or transportation. And although it’s apparent that they call for an immediate upgrade, there are often a lot of concerns. So, how to smoothly transform legacy systems? Bansi Mehta explores different approaches and how Enterprise UX can become a competitive advantage.

5. Legacy Modernization eBook

Modernizing legacy systems is a big opportunity for organizations, but it also carries risks. The free eBook Legacy Modernization — A Transformation Opportunity covers everything you need to know to plan and deliver modernization programs. Written by Omar Bashir, Luke Vinogradov, and Shodhan Sheth, it analyzes what makes legacy modernization so challenging and explores strategies and best practices for avoiding common pitfalls and maximizing ROI.

6. Systems Thinking

Sometimes we need to zoom out from our own perspective to see how things connect. Justin Farrugia explores systems thinking tools that help you achieve exactly that. By visualizing the systems behind your designs, they help you align viewpoints, understand root causality, generate options, and simulate design decisions within your product and organization. A great foundation to fuel sustainable and ethical change.

7. Modernizing A Monolithic Application

How to modernize a monolithic application without breaking everything? HH from Justified Code shares an approach that incrementally replaces specific pieces while the legacy system continues to run. He illustrates the modernization process step by step with the example of a monolithic Fintech application that uses a single relational database.

8. Accessible UX Research, Now Shipping 📚

We’ve got exciting news! Our newest Smashing book, Accessible UX Research by Michele A. Williams, is finally shipping worldwide! Get the book right away or order the eBook for instant download.

Meet our brand-new book: “Accessible UX Research” by Michele A. Williams. Printed copies shipping now.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the book right away.

9. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

With online workshops, we aim to give you the same experience and access to experts as in an in-person workshop from wherever you are.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• Spotting Accessibility Issues Early Free
  with Stéphanie Walter. Sep 1
• Design Patterns For Complex UIs and Enterprise UX UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 2–3
• Naming Design Systems DS
  with Samantha Gordashko. Sep 8–22
• Live UX Training UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 11 – Oct 12
• Accessibility For Designers UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Sep 21–29
• Jump to all workshops →

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).