Jens Meiert

px Is Dead, Long Live px

It’s over. There is no ban on px anymore. The only reason why we as web developers had to adjust coding practices were user agents that failed to meet user agent accessibility guidelines …

¶ February 23, 2010, filed under Web Development, Accessibility.

HTML, CSS, and Web Development Practices: Past, Present, and Future

Articles with a title consisting of more than 15,000 characters don’t need an introduction.

¶ October 15, 2009, filed under Web Development, Accessibility, Usability, User Experience.

Diagnostic Styling Reloaded

Eric cultivated the concept of “diagnostic styling,” meaning using CSS to reveal specific problems within an HTML document. I myself have been working with diagnostic style sheets for quite a while, be it for general quality assurance or to track down specific semantics or maintainability problems …

¶ August 1, 2009, filed under Web Development, Accessibility.

The Greatest Secret in Web Design

Alright I cheated, this isn’t really a secret for professionals. Or an open secret. Or whatever. It’s that web design is a process. Good web design is an ongoing endeavour; and thus, excellent web design an expensive undertaking …

¶ December 1, 2008, filed under Web Development, Accessibility, Usability, Design.

How to Uncover Pseudo-Standardistas

There is a growing and annoying trend that not quite supports healthy attempts for more accessible, faster, more maintainable, and best practice web development: Pseudo-Standardistas. There are several ways to unmask pseudos …

¶ November 20, 2008, filed under Web Development, Accessibility.

Code Responsibly

Exactly: Code responsibly. And contribute if you like to.

¶ October 9, 2008, filed under Web Development, Accessibility, User Experience.

Accessibility Heuristics

Just having updated my German article on accessibility heuristics it looks reasonable to share available though “rough” guidelines here as well, albeit in a short form that basically just grabs and cites respective documentation by W3C and IBM. They come without comments, however …

¶ October 7, 2008, filed under Accessibility.

Web Standards at Google

As an exception, I’m writing as a Googler here: At Google, we care about web standards. Officially, that is no real news, but taking into account all ongoing criticism for the code of our pages, it probably is …

¶ October 2, 2008, filed under Web Development, Accessibility.

The Most Important Thing Is to Get the HTML Right

Why? Because it’s the markup that makes for the most code of a site and is hence key to cost efficiency and maintainability, because it carries meaning and is important for accessibility, because it can have a significant impact on performance, and because it is the prerequisite for online success.

¶ September 26, 2008, filed under Web Development, Accessibility, User Experience.

When Guidelines Should Be Descriptive or Prescriptive

Every time I’m setting up guidelines and standards, mostly within companies, one of the questions I need to ask and answer myself is whether or not they, or which parts of them, should be descriptive or prescriptive. For coding guidelines this would mean the difference between …

¶ September 13, 2008, filed under Web Development, Accessibility, Usability, Design.