Jens Meiert

How to Order CSS Selectors, a Draft

There are a number of ways to write style sheets. The domain of style guides, many of them go into some detail. What I, despite my work on a number of style guides, including the Google HTML and CSS style guide, have so far missed, is a conclusive reference to sort selectors and rules…

¶ January 30, 2013, filed under Web Development.

The CSS Problem

CSS is growing too large while CSS 2 has not nearly been understood by authors. This non-sustainable growth is a big problem for CSS.

¶ November 12, 2012, filed under Web Development.

Web Development: On Frameworks, Testing, and CSS Performance and Maintainability

Once more, a Google+ recap. Frameworks. I got the question the other day on why we [at Google] went to create a new HTML/CSS framework for a new design that we were deploying, and why that framework had to have a different name than the design that triggered its creation…

¶ June 20, 2012, filed under Web Development.

HTML and Non-Script Styling

If you are to style a document differently based on whether certain technology is available, you should keep two things in mind: HTML itself is static and separation of concerns is important for maintainability …

¶ February 21, 2012, filed under Web Development.

On Maintainability

To make this a little story, for a long time in my career I wasn’t very concerned about maintainability. I was maintaining projects but didn’t really have an idea about whether what I maintained was actually effective to maintain. I got a sense that things weren’t quite right …

¶ January 31, 2012, filed under Web Development.

window.scrollTo() or: When to Stay Clear of User Agents

If you were to ask me whether you as a web designer or developer should tackle user agent issues, my answer was “no.” It’s not your responsibility. You may lack important insight into decisions made on the user agent side. You’re going to inherit technical debt. …

¶ January 24, 2012, filed under Web Development, Usability.

On Semantics in HTML

As web developers we like to talk about “semantic markup,” a somehow inaccurate short form for “markup that is meaningful and used how it’s supposed to be used.” But where is all that meaning coming from? Let’s take a look.

¶ October 26, 2011, filed under Web Development.

Help Lower the Cost of CSS Validation

Validation is a baseline quality attribute. I have emphasized this in the past and recently shared a bit more about the reasons and how you can use validation on Google’s Webmaster Central blog. There are several things you can validate, way beyond HTML and CSS …

¶ September 22, 2011, filed under Web Development.

CSS: On Risk-Taking, Mirroring, Layouts, Resets, and Hacks

A collection of CSS-related posts I published on Google+. I don’t exactly know how to deal with those yet.

¶ August 24, 2011, filed under Web Development.

Print CSS, Showing URLs, Caution

Print style sheets are awesome and easy to write. Site owners and developers caring about print typically have a feel for what to do. Alas there’s one thing that’s getting done rather the wrong than in any right way …

¶ June 14, 2011, filed under Web Development, Design, User Experience.