On Craft and Responsibility (13)
Object-Oriented HTML, and OOCSS
“Object-oriented CSS” is the idea of treating page elements as objects, giving all these objects classes, treating objects’ classes as single entities in style sheets, and taking it from there. I reviewed the old OOCSS site and Smashing Magazine’s introduction.
#161 · · development, html, css
Goodbye Google, San Francisco, California, and United States
I’m resetting my life. I’ve quit at Google, I’ve quit my apartment in San Francisco, I’ve sold most of what I own and put the rest in storage. I’m now about to backpack the world to pursue my studies and goals and to build a new life somewhere else. Here’s a little story.
#160 · · misc
How to Order CSS Selectors
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 guides, have so far missed, is a reference to sort selectors and rules, as proposed here.
#159 · · development, css
My Year in Activities, 2012
48 more ways to use one’s time.
#158 · · adventure
My Year in Cities, 2012
Beside working and growing and trying new things, I’ve been in the great position to also travel a little. I’m grateful. This year I visited 5 continents, more than 20 different countries, and probably more than 50 different cities…
#157 · · adventure
The CSS Problem
CSS is growing larger and larger while CSS 2 hasn’t nearly been understood by authors. This unsustainable growth is a big problem for CSS.
#156 · · development, css
On Browser Testing
The primary goal for cross-browser testing is to make sure that documents are usable and consistent across different user agents and devices. Even if you understand this to include both functionality and design, the definition of “usable” is interesting.
#155 · · 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…
#154 · · development, html, javascript, maintainability
Maintainability: One Story and Three Concerns
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 have an idea about whether what I maintained was actually effective to maintain. I got a sense that things weren’t quite right…
#153 · · development, maintainability
“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 do anything about user agent issues, my answer was a clear “no.” It’s not your responsibility. You may lack important insight into decisions made on the user agent side…
#152 · · development, javascript
My Year in Activities, 2011
Or: 43 things that make someone who has no idea about anything he’s doing look like he knows everything, the 2011 edition.
#151 · · adventure
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.
#150 · · development, html, semantics
Print Style Sheets and URLs
Print style sheets are awesome. They’re easy to write, too. Site owners and developers who care about print typically know what to do. Alas there’s one thing that’s done rather the wrong than in any right way: printing URLs…
#149 · · development, css, design
Web Development Principles: Develop for What Is, Not What Could Be
For any given project, web developers fare best when focusing on what is, not what could be. To fend off the first misunderstandings, that focus includes what absolutely will be.
#148 · · development
Exposing Reset Style Sheets
Finally, a Chrome extension to highlight alternative approaches to CSS.
#147 · · tools, development, css
Driving: Tips and Thoughts
It’s time for a heart-warming post about driving.
#146 · · 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…
#145 · · design
HTML, “@width”, and “@height”
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.
#144 · · 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.
#143 · · 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.
#142 · · development, css
One Photo: Reset Style Sheets
It never gets boring.
#141 · · development, css
The Secret of Web Development
Playfulness.
#140 · · 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…
#139 · · development, css, maintainability
Teamwork, Democracy, and Decisions
As great as democracy is to prevent negative outcomes, as unsuitable is it to achieve “best” outcomes.
#138 · · management
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…
#137 · · development, management
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’”…
#136 · · development, css, conformance
“Real Web Developers Don’t Need Debugging Tools”
Be mindful of your use of web dev debugging tools—like Firebug or Chrome’s Developer Tools—in order to grow your skills.
#135 · · 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.
#134 · · 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.
#133 · · 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…
#132 · · development
WDR #4: Having Conversations in HTTP
The Web Dev Report, issue #4.
#131 · · 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.
#130 · · 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…
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.
#128 · · 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.
#127 · · development, html, conformance, semantics
Product of the Environment
Philosophy, live from Zurich airport.
#126 · · 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.
#125 · · 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.
#124 · · 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.
#123 · · 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…
#122 · · 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)…
#121 · · misc
Diagnostic Styling Reloaded
Eric cultivated the concept of “diagnostic styling,” meaning using CSS to identify problems within HTML documents. I’ve been working with diagnostic style sheets for general quality assurance…
#120 · · tools, development, css, quality
WDR #3: Optional Tags, Unquoted Attribute Value Syntax
The Web Dev Report, issue #3.
#119 · · 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.
#118 · · 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…”
#117 · · 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.
#116 · · 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.”
#115 · · 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…
#114 · · 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…
#113 · · 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…
#112 · · development, html, css, maintainability