Smashing Magazine is celebrating its fifth anniversary. How time flies on the internet.

I remember when Smashing Magazine first started appearing on my radar, several years ago. My first impression was something along the lines of “that’s a LOT of adverts”. I thought that the few articles I saw seemed like search engine bait posts, and I was generally quite dismissive of the site.

Fast forward a couple of years, SM is in my feed reader permanently and I’m definitely impressed by what I see.

They still have a TON of advertising on the site, but it’s not too intrusive (especially when you read most articles in your feedreader). Hey, everyone has to make money somehow. They post an impressive number of very high quality, full length posts regularly, as well as resources like free WordPress themes, icons, and jQuery plugins, and they’ve put together not one but two books.  And it’s interesting stuff, if you’re a web developer like me of course.

To celebrate their fifth birthday, they’ve put together a free ebook with articles from their back catalogue. Go grab it.

So congratulations Smashing Magazine on your fifth birthday. I wonder where the web will be in another five years?