Web Development × Engineering Management × Philosophy (12)

Articles and books on the craft of web development (with a focus on HTML/CSS optimization and maintainability), engineering management, and philosophy.

Exposing Reset Style Sheets

Finally, a Chrome extension to highlight alternative approaches to CSS.

#143 · May 15, 2011 · development

Driving: Tips and Thoughts

It’s time for a heart-warming post about driving.

#142 · May 11, 2011 · misc

On Correct Punctuation

Let’s speak the unspeakable: Correct punctuation, here referring to the use of the correct characters for quotation marks, apostrophes, dashes, and ellipses, will forever remain a dream online…

#141 · Apr 7, 2011 · design

As the width and height attributes are to remain part of HTML, limit their use. The reason to avoid @width and @height is that they are presentational and hence constitute potential maintainability issues.

#140 · Feb 17, 2011 · development, html, maintainability

My Year in Activities, 2010

31 activities, 0 vacation days. Mr Meiert’s guide on how to make good use of your time and make 1 year feel like 3.

#139 · Dec 30, 2010 · adventure

Testing Tricks: CSS Bookmarklets

On complex development environments and CSS bookmarklets as a testing complement. Complement as in you’ve done everything you can but want to err on the safe side.

#138 · Dec 29, 2010 · development, css

One Photo: Reset Style Sheets

It never gets boring.

#137 · Dec 24, 2010 · development

The Secret of Web Development

Playfulness.

#136 · Oct 27, 2010 · development

CSS: How to Host Right-to-Left Styling

For international projects, don’t use separate style sheets for right-to-left (RTL) styling: use natural (@dir) or artificial (@id, @class) hooks instead. The only exception are unbearable performance issues due to hundreds of RTL rules…

#135 · Sep 30, 2010 · development, css, maintainability

On Solutions

Solutions require problems. If you don’t have a problem, you don’t need a solution. This is exactly why you should, whenever someone proposes a solution—which includes design and technical changes—ask what problem that solution solves…

#134 · Jul 7, 2010 · development, misc

CSS Validation and Vendor Extensions: Throw Warnings, Not Errors

If you understand valid code as a quality baseline, you validate your code. If you validate style sheets, you come across errors like “Property -moz-border-radius doesn’t exist’”…

#133 · Jun 26, 2010 · development, css, conformance

Real Web Developers Don’t Need Debugging Tools

Bottom line: Try to limit your use of web dev debugging tools—like Firebug or Chrome’s Developer Tools—in order to grow your skills.

#132 · May 14, 2010 · development

How to Relocate, the Alternative Guide

If there’s one area of expertise I’m only involuntarily linked with, it’s moving. I moved 25 times so far, spanning cities, countries, and now continents; my career stats mean .81 relocations per year, or 1.24 years per relocation. Some lessons I learned.

#131 · Mar 2, 2010 · misc

“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.

#130 · Feb 23, 2010 · development, css

How to Become a Solid Web Developer, the Short Version

Every once in a while people ping me on how to master web development and design. Given how much there’s still to learn for me this makes me blush. Chronically short on time I typically reply in just a few sentences…

#129 · Feb 12, 2010 · development

WDR #4: Having Conversations in HTTP

The Web Dev Report, issue #4.

#128 · Jan 12, 2010 · development

My Year in Cities, 2009

From Amsterdam to Berlin to Cardiff… all the way to Zurich. The same procedure as at least last year.

#127 · Dec 23, 2009 · adventure

SUS: How to Easily Grade Your Site’s Usability

The System Usability Scale (SUS) is a Likert scale-based questionnaire to grade the usability of systems, which John Brooke created back in the 80s. SUS results yield a score between 0 and 100, with 100 indicating “best” usability…

#126 · Nov 27, 2009 · design, usability

HTML/CSS Frameworks: Useful, Universal, Usable, Unobtrusive

A high quality HTML/CSS framework needs to have four attributes: useful, universal, usable, and unobtrusive. The four U’s.

#125 · Nov 18, 2009 · development, html, css, frameworks, quality

The 3 Ground Rules for Writing HTML

The fundamentals every web developer should know: on respecting syntax and semantics, avoiding presentational and behavioral markup, and leaving out everything that is not absolutely necessary.

#124 · Oct 27, 2009 · development, html, conformance, semantics

Product of the Environment

Philosophy, live from Zurich airport.

#123 · Oct 23, 2009 · philosophy

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.

#122 · Oct 15, 2009 · development, html, css, maintainability

Website Optimization Measures, Part VII

In this episode: Unquoted attribute value syntax, q elements, Google Friend Connect, feed styling, work/life balance. Served in no time.

#121 · Oct 6, 2009 · development, optimization

“HTML 5” or “HTML5”?

It’s “HTML5,” not “HTML 5,” declares the most recent post on the WHATWG blog. A seemingly trivial matter, yet it’s inconsistent.

#120 · Sep 11, 2009 · development, html

The True Advantage of CSS

Despite CSS being around for a long, long time, there are still some myths around it. Reading Mike’s post on CSS evangelism again I couldn’t only relate to Mike’s concerns, I also felt reminded of…

#119 · Sep 8, 2009 · development, css, maintainability

My Top 15 Android Apps

This is a serious post, not one of those “the 1,000 best blah” ones. I think. I’m an Android user for a bit longer than December 2008, and I love my HTC Magic as much as the HTC Dream (aka G1)…

#118 · Aug 12, 2009 · misc

Diagnostic Styling Reloaded

Eric cultivated the concept of “diagnostic styling,” meaning using CSS to track down problems within HTML documents. I’ve been working with diagnostic style sheets for general quality assurance…

#117 · Aug 1, 2009 · development, css, quality

WDR #3: Optional Tags, Unquoted Attribute Value Syntax

The Web Dev Report, issue #3.

#116 · Jul 29, 2009 · development, html

Microformats, Key Flaws

I like the idea behind microformats, but I’m not convinced of the way that idea is brought to life. I see three major flaws that appear to make microformats stand in their own way.

#115 · Jul 16, 2009 · development, html, css

XHTML, RIP

Let’s end this week of morbid posts: The XHTML 2 Working Group is expected to stop their work end of 2009. “Today the Director announces that when the XHTML 2 Working Group charter expires as scheduled at the end of 2009…”

#114 · Jul 4, 2009 · development, html

“handheld” Media Type, RIP?

Website authors don’t use handheld as it’s barely supported; mobile device manufacturers don’t support handheld because it’s barely used. This is kind of the situation I think we’re facing, and it’s a problem.

#113 · Jun 30, 2009 · development, css

Let’s Make The Web Faster

Two weeks after my last outcry regarding slowness on the Web there’s a more proactive response: Google launched code.google.com/speed, subtitled “let’s make the Web faster.”

#112 · Jun 24, 2009 · development, html, css, performance

Maintainability Guide

Maintainability is important in order to deal with change. Good maintainability means making change easier and more affordable, and avoiding change that is not necessary…

#111 · Jun 17, 2009 · development, html, css, maintainability

Punctuation Cheat Sheet

Developing and working with international sites is an interesting challenge, not just because of right-to-left contents. Typographically, there are differences between many locales. To improve punctuation in Google translations I’m using a localization aid…

#110 · Jun 3, 2009 · design, development

CSS: The Maintenance Issue #1 and How You Can Avoid It

The biggest—as most unnecessary—maintenance issue in web development is, as my recent research shows, style sheet naming and integration. Web developers use inadvisable style sheet names and inadvisable ways to integrate style sheets that force them…

#109 · May 27, 2009 · development, html, css, maintainability

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 unhealthy, sanctimonious pragmatism or—”

#108 · May 26, 2009 · misc

Notes on XML, Elements, and Attributes

Knowledge of the design of markup languages is something I consider beneficial for my job as a web professional. A few notes on XML design, inspired by internal and external documentation.

#107 · Apr 23, 2009 · development

Why CSS Needs No Variables

CSS variables and constants are one of the top features web developers are asking for in web development fora, magazines, blogs, and on W3C’s www-style. Following a concept written by Daniel Glazman and Apple’s Dave Hyatt, the WebKit rendering engine…

#106 · Apr 1, 2009 · development, css

The Stupidest Style Sheet Name Ever

The last name you want to pick for your style sheet is “style.css”. Why is “style.css” such a poor CSS file name? The main reason is maintenance…

#105 · Mar 25, 2009 · development, css

CSS: Style the Non-Obvious

One of the qualities you have to acquire as a web developer is to see the non-obvious, and to use that skill to your code’s advantage. Let me explain by two simple examples.

#104 · Mar 18, 2009 · development, css

Presenting… the Google Shoe

They finally arrived, long longed for Google shoes, in this case the “Google j9t” model based on the Adidas ZX700. They’re not for sale but I might share the configuration I used to design them. The “Google j9t” may only be worn for dynamite fishing and important launches.

#103 · Mar 16, 2009 · misc

Performance of CSS Selectors Is Irrelevant

…if you like to have a strict read of Steve Souders’ recent research. We’ve still got few but now a few more numbers backing up what we always suspected, that merely optimizing selectors is micro-optimization.

#102 · Mar 12, 2009 · development, css, performance

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.

#101 · Mar 10, 2009 · development, optimization

When to Split Style Sheets

Three factors influence whether it makes sense to split style sheets: probability, meaning (aka semantics), and granularity.

#100 · Mar 5, 2009 · development, css

Another Survey (Including Website Usability Scale Template)

I’m doing it again: Do you have another 15 seconds to answer a couple of questions? The survey is based on the System Usability Scale (SUS) John Brooke presented in the 80s. Which means nothing less than that there’s another experiment taking place with me testing SUS.

#99 · Feb 25, 2009 · design, usability