Web Development × Engineering Management × Philosophy (4)

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

HTML Concepts: Kinds of Elements

There are six kinds of elements in HTML: void elements, raw text elements, escapable raw text elements, the template element, foreign elements, and normal elements.

#529 · May 31, 2023 · development, html

Website Issues: On the Relevance of Audience Size and Impact

Website issues—relating to conformance, security, accessibility, performance, content, others—are usually treated with a particular priority, but that priority may not always be understandable, and may also be off. On the perspective we obtain when we consider and chart audience size and impact.

#528 · May 19, 2023 · development, management

CSS Naked Day and the Missing Wikipedia Page

CSS Naked Day has a message—separation of concerns. The event has been around for nearly 20 years, thousands of developers have participated, and it’s still alive. It may not be an event significant enough for Wikipedia, for which this post had been a draft—but it does seem significant for our field.

#527 · May 2, 2023 · development, css, maintainability

Two Underused Arguments for Writing Documentation

Validating our thinking and allowing to scale may not get enough attention.

#526 · Apr 30, 2023 · development, management

On Ageism

One may argue that the big “-isms” go back to speciesism, the idea that one was “better” than other living beings, or that others were inferior. With that idea warranting a post by itself, there are two things that make ageism particularly stupid.

#525 · Apr 16, 2023 · misc

Highlights From “The Social Contract” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

“The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.”

#524 · Apr 14, 2023 · philosophy

Highlights From “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (Max Weber)

“The modern rational organization of the capitalistic enterprise would not have been possible without two other important factors in its development: the separation of business from the household, which completely dominates modern economic life, and closely connected with it, rational book-keeping.”

#523 · Apr 12, 2023 · philosophy, misc

HTML Concepts: Customized Built-In Elements

HTML allows to define custom elements, elements which enable authors to “build their own fully-featured DOM elements.” One special type of custom element is the customized built-in element—a custom element built on an existing HTML element.

#522 · Mar 25, 2023 · development, html

Website Optimization Measures, Part XVIII

Random improvements as always, this time covering ARIA roles, Apache module checks, <guid> elements, CLS rules of thumb, Eleventy, block lists, site licenses, and compression settings.

#521 · Mar 6, 2023 · development, optimization

Conformance and Accessibility

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 are going to obsolete Success Criterion 4.1.1, which had been WCAG’s nod towards conformant HTML output. This is understandable, and it may even be good—to strengthen accessibility as well as conformance.

#520 · Feb 28, 2023 · development, html, conformance, accessibility

Speed Up Your Org: When to Require Approval

Organizations can be slow. One thing that makes them slow is process. One part of process consists of approvals. But approvals aren’t always needed. On default answers, and the severity and probability of failure.

#519 · Feb 22, 2023 · management

My CSS Wishlist

Trim it.

#518 · Feb 11, 2023 · development, css

26 Additional Web Development Terms You May Not Have Heard Of

Web Development has its own, special vocabulary that consists of several thousand terms. No one knows all of them. (Or do they?) Here are 26 more terms you may or may not have heard of—perhaps including AAAA or MAM or YMYL.

#517 · Feb 9, 2023 · development

Challenge Yourself, Even When It’s Art

The paradox of CSS art may suggest an artist had a free pass for the quality of their code. Or does it? I believe there are three possible answers to this.

#516 · Jan 10, 2023 · development, html, quality, design, art

2022

Release of my next book, a new apartment in downtown Hamburg, good news from the football club, a political adjustment, some travels, and preparation for a professional change—some of my highlights in 2022.

#515 · Jan 1, 2023 · misc

A Problem With Link Relationships

It’s easy to get excited about link relationships and similar types of metadata. But link relationships are invisible information, and some invisible information is notoriously hard to maintain—especially on things that decay, describing attributes that change.

#514 · Dec 23, 2022 · development, html

A Brief History of UITest.com

UITest.com just merged with Frontend Dogma, which is asking for select and random screenshots and facts about a site that I ran for 19 years to provide “web-based and free tools for web development and design.”

#513 · Dec 20, 2022 · development

The Reverse A-Hole Rule of Social Media

A delayed note about that point at which our defense against disagreeable viewpoints and people becomes an offense.

#512 · Dec 15, 2022 · misc

Website Optimization Measures, Part XVII

Encoding declarations. Conditionals. Ahrefs. ErrorDocument directives. Mastodon links. Mastodon citizenship. Bitbucket. Eleventy. Action.

#511 · Dec 15, 2022 · development, misc, optimization

Upgrade Your HTML IV

HTML forms the heart of the Web. The beautiful thing is, HTML is easy to learn. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to master. In the Upgrade Your HTML series, I’m taking examples of HTML, discuss these examples, and make them a little better. I’m excited to announce the fourth book of the series.

#510 · Nov 27, 2022 · books, development, html, minimalism, optimization

HTML Concepts: Unstyled Documents

There’s unstyled and there’s fully unstyled. And then there’s also styled “in a manner that is useful for a developer.”

#509 · Nov 22, 2022 · development, html, css

Website Optimization Measures, Part XVI

Spaces, HTTP headers, site generator exports, cite elements, variable fonts, social logos, no-break spaces, metadata—life is never boring when you run your own websites.

#508 · Nov 12, 2022 · development, optimization

10 Quick Tips for a Great Mastodon Experience

Mastodon is a great alternative to Twitter, feeling refreshingly healthy. Here are 10 things that can help you get off to a great start—from finding a suitable server and interesting people to follow, to useful tooling and mindsets.

#507 · Nov 8, 2022 · misc

Minimal Dark Mode

What’s the easiest and fastest way to set up dark mode? Depending on the setup, something from one declaration to two rules.

#506 · Nov 4, 2022 · development, css, minimalism

Vegan Web Developers

If you’re a vegan and a web developer, why not join us on a humble list of vegan web developers?

#505 · Oct 24, 2022 · development, misc

Redo Websites Less Often (to Become a Better Developer)

You want to redo websites: The advantages are great, and the ability to put a website on a new foundation is a useful one to acquire. But—you also want to iterate, which means to constantly make small improvements over long periods of time. On how a bias for iteration contributes to becoming a better developer.

#504 · Oct 18, 2022 · development, maintainability

HTML 2022: 20 Additional Observations From Analyzing the Web Almanac Data

After the initial analysis for the HTTP Archive’s 2022 Web Almanac, here are 20 more observations about HTML as it’s being used today. From (no) doctypes to conditional comment zombies to verbose form markup to viewports to javascript: links.

#503 · Oct 10, 2022 · development, html

A Short Story of the Google Error Page

Why is the Google error page the way it is? Why is it so plain? What drove development and design decisions? Anecdotes and notes from the time when the page was built.

#502 · Oct 6, 2022 · misc

Website Optimization Measures, Part XV

Automated lossless image compression, mini dark modes, favicon references, prerender, flat image folders, modest product promotions, compact navigation, theme colors—improvements to my own projects, maybe (or maybe not) of interest to your own.

#501 · Oct 4, 2022 · development, optimization

HTML Concepts: Browsing Contexts

Welcome to another episode of HTML Concepts! Today, browsing contexts—what is that?

#500 · Sep 30, 2022 · development, html

2022: 0 of the Global Top 100 Websites Use Valid HTML

When you looked at the top websites in 2021, you learned that 98% of them included invalid HTML. When you do the same for the Top 100 globally, this year, would things have improved? Updated data, with a look at our field’s inability to produce valid HTML output.

#499 · Sep 12, 2022 · development, html, css, conformance

An Attempt at Outlining the Many Factors Influencing Developer Experience

When looking at DX naively, it can seem that it depends on only one factor—DX = ƒ(x). But Developer Experience depends on many factors, and needs to be approached holistically. A quick attempt at sketching just what factors, each of which can tip the scale.

#498 · Sep 6, 2022 · development

11 Tips to Read More and Read Faster (After Reading 791 Books in 9 Years)

Are you content with your reading? Here’s a collection of tried and tested ideas to help you read more—from switching to ebooks to reading everywhere to establishing routines to embracing short books to varying your reading speed.

#497 · Aug 17, 2022 · misc

One-Dimensional Website Optimization Considered Harmful

There are many website optimization vectors—SEO, performance, accessibility, &c.—, but optimizing on only one dimension may not only be expensive, but also counter-productive. On optimizing optimizations.

#496 · Aug 4, 2022 · development, optimization

Website Optimization Measures, Part XIV

About link relationships, Twitterbot, dark mode, tags, addresses, social markup, color-scheme, and—FLoC.

#495 · Jul 21, 2022 · development, design, optimization

Minimal Social Markup

Every website and app these days relies on so-called “social markup,” metadata for a richer and prettier display in social media and messaging tools. On the absolute minimum you may need.

#494 · Jul 14, 2022 · development, html, minimalism

Thoughts on an Accessibility “Get Well” Plan

Have you ever wondered how to anchor accessibility in an engineering team, one that isn’t yet producing accessible sites or apps? Some options to start with, for further refinement and discussion.

#493 · Jun 29, 2022 · development, accessibility

The Machine-Illustrated Life of a Frontend Developer

You may know DALL·E, what you can do with it, what others do with it, and… be intrigued by that, too. And you may wonder, how would AI depict frontend developers?

#492 · Jun 20, 2022 · development, misc

HTML Concepts: Focusable Areas

When you hear “focusable area,” what comes to your mind? Anchors and form elements that receive focus when being “tabbed through,” i.e., that are highlighted and that can be interacted with? That’s not a bad description!—but also not a complete one.

#491 · May 30, 2022 · development, html

“The One With the Biggest Hammer Wins”

On a game we could stop playing.

#490 · May 24, 2022 · philosophy, misc

Write HTML, the HTML Way (Not the XHTML Way)

You may not use XHTML (anymore), but when you write HTML, you may be more influenced by XHTML than you think. You are very likely writing HTML, the XHTML way.

#489 · May 17, 2022 · development, html, minimalism

Two Approaches to Accessibility on the Web

One can distinguish two approaches to accessibility on the Web: to produce accessible websites and apps (active accessibility), and to produce accessible-making software (passive accessibility). On how largely using one approach would stand in the way of a greater vision for web accessibility.

#488 · May 10, 2022 · development, accessibility