Web Development

Building Websites and Building Websites Well

On exercises, orthogonality, and—choice.

Published on March 12, 2024, filed under .

“Web Design as a Process” in Charts: Maintenance, Decay, Tech Debt, and Big Bang Launching

Web design is a process. This process relates to the quality and completeness of a given website, as observed over time. We can chart and understand different types of this process.

Published on February 19, 2024, filed under .

Website Optimization Measures, Part XXII

Web design is a process, running our own websites is awesome, and together it means there’s always something to tweak and improve and optimize. Select things I’ve done over the last few months.

Published on February 4, 2024, filed under and .

My Web Development Wishlist 2024

Respect, UX before DX, quality output that starts with conformance, running one’s own website, and adding as much as necessary, but as little as possible to web standards—five wishes to benefit our field, our users, and us as professionals.

Published on January 7, 2024, filed under .

Stop Closing Void Elements

Some developers believe in closing all HTML elements. Some have to close all HTML elements. Others don’t believe in doing so, or aren’t forced either way. In Upgrade Your HTML IV, I wrote a little about closing void elements.

Published on January 3, 2024, filed under .

Incident, Mitigate, Learn

We can’t just pick two.

Published on December 28, 2023, filed under and .

“HTML First” Is Not HTML First

On what is and what isn’t “HTML First.” (It’s not just a hunch: It should start with HTML.)

Published on December 21, 2023, filed under .

26 Other Web Development Terms You May Not Have Heard Of

From ActionScript (psst) to linearizability to the Z shell.

Published on December 12, 2023, filed under .

The 9 HTML Elements That Have an Attribute of the Same Name, or: The 9 Attributes That Have an Element of the Same Name

There are nine HTML elements that have an attribute of the same name. You’ll never guess what follows next.

Published on November 20, 2023, filed under .

Letter and Spirit of Web Development

In the realm of law, there is the notion of letter and spirit of a law. It seems we could benefit from letter and spirit in web development, too.

Published on November 14, 2023, filed under .

Website Optimization Measures, Part XXI

Who hasn’t had enough of style sheet reviews, editor performance optimizations, ad removals, CTA revisions, pseudo-class refactorings, blocked AI crawlers, custom search engines, social graphics, or server log configs.

Published on November 4, 2023, filed under and .

2023: 0 of the Global Top 100 Websites Use Valid HTML

The latest analysis of HTML and CSS conformance of the most popular websites. The situation is only going to get better once we set higher expectations for the code we ship.

Published on October 31, 2023, filed under .

On the Uniting Power of a Commitment to HTML Conformance

HTML is the language of the Web, there’s a quality standard—expectation—for HTML, but we don’t make use of it, yet if we would, it would come with several advantages, one of them being that it could unite and propel us to master more important challenges, which would be good again for our field and the Web.

Published on October 18, 2023, filed under .

What Happened to Separation of Concerns in Frontend Development

On a story that began around 2010, and in which web standards make separation of concerns easier—and frameworks make it harder.

Published on October 5, 2023, filed under .

The Most Minimal Valid HTML Document

—isn’t that exciting, isn’t even new, but can use repeating in times of conformance neglect and AI-assisted coding.

Published on October 2, 2023, filed under .

Website Optimization Measures, Part XX

Definition issues. Aging content. Debugging. Social graphics. CTAs. DNS entries. SVGs. Filler words. PHP. There’s always something worth tending to.

Published on September 20, 2023, filed under and .

Sustainability and Tech and Us

In tech, we’re exceptionally bad at sustainability. While those of us who focus on sustainability, performance, as well as code minimalism are already contributing to improvements, we can do more. A few thoughts.

Published on September 17, 2023, filed under .

The 10ish Tools I Install on Every New Mac I Get

Are there going to be surprises.

Published on September 14, 2023, filed under .

WebGlossary.info

The Web Development Glossary—now also available as a website. Enjoy exploring.

Published on August 23, 2023, filed under and .

Website Optimization Measures, Part XIX

Dull maintenance drudgery (?), this time covering dependencies, link checks, keyboard navigation, contrast, hidden UI elements, multi-language tag handling, image compression, IndieAuth, and AI crawling.

Published on August 22, 2023, filed under and .

200 Web-Based, Must-Try Web Design and Development Tools

A couple of web-based and free tools to test and improve accessibility, performance, security, conformance, colors and images and typography, SEO and SEM and—more. With an opinion about link lists, and appreciation for well-maintained tool collections.

Published on August 8, 2023, filed under and .

The cover of “The Web Development Glossary 3K.”

The Web Development Glossary 3K—More Than 3,000 Terms and Concepts for the Well-Rounded Developer

Announcing the new edition of The Web Development Glossary, including almost a thousand additional terms as well as major usability updates, like improved source and cross-reference navigation—to provide an overview of web development unlike any other book or site.

Published on July 27, 2023, filed under .

Good Code Is—

On a question everyone does and does not have an answer for.

Published on July 23, 2023, filed under .

Frameworks and Libraries and Leaky Abstractions

“Abstractions save us time working, but they don’t save us—”

Published on June 30, 2023, filed under .

48 Laws, Rules, and Principles of Web Development

In anticipation of the upcoming release of The Web Development Glossary 3K, here are four dozen laws, rules, and principles related to web and software development.

Published on June 7, 2023, filed under .

If you like what you see here, consider the ebook version of all 2005–2015 posts on web design and development: On Web Development.
Interested in web development news and tools? Visit one of my projects, Frontend Dogma, for news and tools for frontend development.