Jens Oliver Meiert

Web Development × Engineering Management × Philosophy (8)

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

Living Websites, Living Books

To me, websites are living objects. They require regular care and maintenance. Such care starts with monitoring, from uptime control to visual site tests, demands technical quality control, and ends with content checks…

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Website Optimization Measures, Part VIII

Eight years. Eight years has it been since the last episode of this series, “Website Optimization Measures.” In October of 2009, I last talked about more or less random things I did on my own websites…

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On Adventure

While I’m not nearly as adventurous these days as in past years, the idea that adventure is about being open and curious and easily ready to try activities and localities seems sound to me. On what adventure can mean to us.

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Web Development: How Making Our Own Lives Difficult Is More Important Than We Think

Many moons ago I wrote that web developers wouldn’t need debugging tools. I was half joking and half serious. We were just coming out of the dark ages of web development, so to speak, undernourished of useful tools, frameworks, libraries…

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Frameworks, Libraries, and the Modern Web Developer: Web Development, Overdone

We are raising tool-dependent rather than self-reliant developers. Aren’t we.

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What I Learned Building Google’s Web Frameworks

On building Google’s Go and Maia HTML/CSS frameworks, and succeeding and failing as a tech lead.

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Boyscout Code

Of course, always leave code better than you found it.

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Stop Using Resets: Visual Examples of the Practical Nonsense of Resets and Normalizers

Or, when Jens found out that he could just collect websites that use reset style sheets and the like, disable those style sheets, document the results and write a post with the diffs for visual evidence. All because “we ran after this mirage for more than a decade.”

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Highlights From Martin’s “The Behavior of Crowds”

“When most of our neighbors are motivated by certain ideas, those ideas become part of the social environment to which we must adjust ourselves. In this sense they are ‘real,’ however ‘crazy.’”

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Highlights From Dewey’s “How We Think”

“The very importance of thought for life makes necessary its control by education because of its natural tendency to go astray, and because social influences exist that tend to form habits of thought leading to inadequate and erroneous beliefs.”

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Two Paradigms of Web Development

On a sunny Tuesday in Düsseldorf a few weeks back, at Beyond Tellerrand, I had a pleasant recorded conversation with the team of Working Draft. In our discussion we briefly touched on the idea of web development paradigms…

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The Great Web Maintainability Survey Results

Four weeks ago I started a survey about good and bad practices when it comes to the maintenance and maintainability of websites. Participation was amazing, and here are the first results.

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Why I’m Suspending Interviews With U.S. Companies

Over the last few quarters I was in conversations to move back to the United States. Over the last few weeks I noticed that that would feel like endorsing U.S. policy, and contradict my principles and values.

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The Simple Answer to Our Terrorism Problems

How about we stop invading countries and murdering people. How about we allow those who are too afraid to live in freedom to live in supermax prisons (for free). And how about we finally remove from office who ever proposes to violate a human right.

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Regarding the Fermi Paradox

When not finding signs of extraterrestrial intelligence says more about us than them.

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70% Repetition in Style Sheets: Data on How We Fail at CSS Optimization

Looking at data for some of the most popular websites, we repeat ourselves too much in CSS; using declarations just once is often one solid avenue to avoid repetition; together, we need to put more focus on style sheet optimization.

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The Great Web Maintainability Survey

The maintenance and economics of websites is a much-neglected topic in the web development community. Here are three questions for developers, to gather practices as well as resources.

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On Work

On work, retirement, definitions, and mixing things up.

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Highlights From Lippmann’s “Public Opinion”

“Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion? Was it the man who told you, or the man who told him, or someone still further removed? And how much was he permitted to see?”

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Highlights From Wattles’s “The Science of Getting Rich”

“Man is a thinking center, and can originate thought. All the forms that man fashions with his hands must first exist in his thought; he cannot shape a thing until he has thought that thing.”

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My Top 10 Android Apps

Years ago, in 2009, I wrote an enthusiastic post about my then-favorite apps for Android. More for fun than anything I decided to write a follow-up.

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Foreigners Are Heroes

Foreigners to our countries—expats, immigrants, refugees—are heroes. Foreigners, people like you and I, add to our lives and our cultures. Foreigners deserve our respect and our support.

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On Socialization

Several months back, to myself, I noted how we may have all already been what we’ve later wished to be: for example, authentically curious, open, unbiased, worry-free, joyful, happy, confident, loving. Then, I thought, came socialization.

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Principles of Web Development

Web development, at more than 20 years of age, is becoming an increasingly mature profession. Web development is yet also subject to constant change, and the field produces more of that change, out of itself. More technological standards…

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HTML Statistics: 5 Take-Aways

A few quick comments on Catalin Rosu’s interesting follow-up analysis of his sampling of eight million websites. Some practices are wonderful to note, others have been commented on, yet one or the other point drowned.

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10 Photos IV

Continuing the x-monthly series, here are yet again ten of my photographic favorites.

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A Digital Charta

When we think about it, although we live in a time of rights violations we don’t lack good intent, nor good law. That leads us to a particular initiative, the Digital Charta.

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The Great Neglect

What is most important for us to learn in our lives? Are we learning it? Teaching it? On “one of the greatest motive powers in the world,” and “the noblest of possessions.”

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Highlights From Atkinson’s “Thoughts Are Things”

“Thoughts strive to take form in action. Thoughts strive ever to materialize themselves in objective material form.”

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Highlights From Emerson’s “Nature”

“Each creature is only a modification of the other; the likeness in them is more than the difference, and their radical law is one and the same.”

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Highlights From Smiles’s “Character”

“The very sight of a great and good man is often an inspiration to the young, who cannot help admiring and loving the gentle, the brave, the truthful, the magnanimous.”

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The Constructivist Preference

When we are presented with conflicting beliefs and ideas, which ones are we to support or assume? That question, in our age of scientism, is usually answered with “those that are true,” or “those that are more realistic”…

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On Quality and Logistics

Clearly, quality requires quality thinking. But then it requires a lot more, like definitions, criteria, tools, planning, enforcement, &c. pp. And it relies on some organizational foundation.

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Apocryphal Apostrophes

Oh, typography. How have you been.

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CSS Shorthand Syntax Considered Important

CSS shorthands are no anti-pattern, just as little as universal selectors, just as little as !important, and just as little as no-js would not be one. Now we learn that shorthands were an anti-pattern. No, they’re not. Yes, they are! No they’re not.

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Why I Don’t Use CSS Preprocessors

A tribute to Roger Johansson as well as the craft of web development.

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Contradictions: A Problem of Logic, a Feature of Reality?

On my list of research topics and article drafts is one that covers root assumptions: assumptions at the core of what we assume about our two realities, psychical and physical reality. One of these root assumptions covers logic…

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Highlights From Myer’s “Oldest Books in the World”

“Study on a subject before giving an opinion” and other truly old realizations.

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Highlights From Scovel Shinn’s “Your Word is Your Wand”

Short excerpts that convey a rather unconventional view on our realities. “Happiness and health must be earned by absolute control of the emotional nature.”

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“Don’t Believe Everything You See, Sophie”

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About the Mindset for Quality

In my view, quality starts with quality thinking. Quality thinking is broad, but it quickly leads to a quality mindset. This mindset, now, I’ve long regarded as critical…

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Stop Using the Old “Clearfix”

I had thought the old method of clearing through .clearfix:after { clear: both; content: ''; } long dead, but then I spotted it quite alive and even being taught to developers.

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Privacy, Obscurity: Randomizing New Tabs

You want to leave a less predictable online trail? I wrote a little browser extension for Chrome that accomplishes that: the New Tab Traffic Randomizer. The extension requests a random URL every time a new tab is opened…

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Living and Mistakes

We can’t make a mistake living our own lives. A counter to the fear of doing wrong, the harmful idea of guilt, as well as unhelpful doubt, the statement’s power lies in the realization that it’s impossible for us to live our lives “incorrectly.”

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Why Philosophy Matters

Philosophy is a field that once combined all the sciences and had considerable influence. Over time that influence waned, to an extent that philosophy is now simply one of the humanities, a “second order” discipline that some people wonder what it’s useful for…

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Cover: The Little Book of Website Quality Control.

New Book: “The Little Book of Website Quality Control”

The hallmark of a professional is not the pursuit of activity, but the expertly pursuit thereof. What’s worth doing is worth doing well; and what’s done well exemplifies quality. A professional website is no exception, and there are criteria and tools to help.

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Highlights From Paine’s “Common Sense”

“Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.”

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Highlights From Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”

Launching a new series of highlights and factoids from public domain books, classic or not, that had piqued my interest, and perhaps excite yours. Here from American polymath Henry David Thoreau.

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Accelerated Mobile Pages, a Critical View

Last year Google introduced AMP and the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project. Independent of suggesting tech paternalism when AMP gets treated preferably in search rankings, I’ve been concerned about what the AMP spec entails exactly.

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10 Photos III

Establishing a three-, four-, or five-monthly series, here are ten more of my photographic favorites as of late. Of my own works, sure; if it was public what one liked on EyeEm I’d happily disclose which 4.200 photos…

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