Smex is an M-x enhancement. And as such, it doesn't deal with paths at all.
Vertico however is a replacement for completing-read. And it therefore enhances ANY use of conpleting-read anywhere in Emacs. Including M-x but also a hundred other places.
BTW, one way to disable Vertico for specific functions like find-file is to use defadvice. Turn vertico-mode off, run the original function, then turn it back on.
@tennoseremel It's a double-edged sword, I think. On one hand, it's a hassle to have your markup interpreted the wrong way because of it not being well-formed. But on the other hand, it allows virtually unlimited extensiveness and future-proofing. We can introduce new HTML tags like <picture> and <source> without breaking older browsers (who will simply render the newer tags they don't recognize as <div>s).
Looks like https://adrianroselli.com/ of @aardrian is a first website where I have to decrease font size slightly 😅 Likely due to main:not(.home) { font-size: 130%; } style as my Firefox default font is IBM Plex Sans 22.