Jens Meiert

Punctuation Cheat Sheet

Working with and localizing international sites means an interesting challenge, not just for right-to-left contents. Typographically, there are differences between many locales. To get punctuation right I’m using a simple aid that I like to finally share …

¶ June 3, 2009, filed under Design.

The Result of Maturity Is Simplicity

“Finally, it doesn’t lack some irony considering that web design gets often enough protected by the credo ‘the end justifies the means’ and pragmatism’s paid homage to. The question is whether you’re talking about sick, sanctimonious pragmatism or …”

¶ May 26, 2009, filed under Web Development, Design.

How Much Intelligence Does Good Design Really Require?

Of the definitions for art, design, and decoration I published back in the days, I do believe in the statement that design works – or has to work, respectively – the most. However, one thing’s still challenging me, and that is how much intelligence good, working design requires …

¶ April 28, 2009, filed under Usability, Design.

Website Optimization Measures, Part VI

In this episode: On the utilization of Google Friend Connect, maintenance of Google Analytics, sanity checks, type attributes, charset rules, cite elements, and ICRA labels. Fresh and sexy.

¶ March 10, 2009, filed under Web Development, Usability, Design.

Arial, Helvetica

Kind of quoting myself from some place else, extending my former post on Arial and Helvetica: For those who want or even have to use Arial as their standard font, there is no real point in mentioning Helvetica anywhere in the code …

¶ February 12, 2009, filed under Web Development, Design.

Browser Support: The Two Metrics that Count

There are only two things that matter to determine what user agents – or browsers, simple lingo – to support on any given site: How popular is the user agent in question (key figure)? And what’s the “support threshold”, the distribution percentage that makes a user agent …

¶ January 27, 2009, filed under Web Development, Design.

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.

Website Optimization Measures, Part V

Almost half a year since my last article in that regard it’s about time to present version 5 of some random website optimization measures hopefully being great for your site as well. Short and crispy, to use some equally random German saying …

¶ November 3, 2008, filed under Web Development, Usability, Design.

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.

Updating a Definition of Art

When I once tried to define art, design, and decoration, I described art as: “Art hides. Art has a meaning, and it hides it, on purpose. Art delivers a message, and that message is hidden, on purpose. It is an art to create art. Art is unusable, by definition.” Several months and discussions later …

¶ July 29, 2008, filed under Usability, Design.