We review recent developments in the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock (SHF) approach for a self-consistent description of nuclear ground-state properties and dynamics. A brief summary of the Skyrme energy functional and additional ingredients (pairing, Coulomb, center-of-mass correction) is given. Strategies for phenomenological calibration of the SHF functional are discussed. Applications to a variety of observables are presented: the bulk properties of nuclei (energy, charge radius, surface thickness), the impact of information on neutron radii, extrapolation to super-heavy elements and fission stability thereof, isotopic shifts of radii, odd nuclei and associated single-nucleon spectra, low-lying surface vibrations together with the ground-state correlations associated with them, and giant resonances (electric as well as magnetic modes).