Website Optimization Measures, Part XIII
Published on MarĀ 5, 2022 (updated AugĀ 27, 2023), filed under development (feed). (Share this on Mastodon orĀ Bluesky?)
A fresh installment of the series, today some notes and observations on improving SVG and HTML, styling emphasis and code, and making better use of images. (If youāre new to these entries, here is where I casually share improvements to my personal projects.)
Adding
title
s to SVG files. Quite randomly poking at and optimizing SVGs in my projects, I noticed how many of them had no metadata, no nothing about their contents. That looked like a missed (accessibility) opportunity, and after validating a few tests I decided to make sure each SVG, starting with logos, had atitle
element that could represent the image. Is it good practice? I believe yes.Revisiting html-minifier settings. I have a standard config for html-minifier, however as Iām constantly studying HTML (and completed the pilgrimage!), I questioned and reviewed the old setup. You can check the latest in the Eleventy config for Frontend Dogma. (Iām taking note to talk more about special cases, like not removing all quotes, and not always minifying HTML.)
Reviewing use of
@autocomplete
. Iām collecting string for these posts for months, and in this case I donāt know anymore what I didĀ š But, Iām sure, it led to better use of theautocomplete
attribute.Adjusting styling for
strong
elements. As a great exercise in semantics, Iāve run a few projects where I styledem
andstrong
elements the same way. (This way, you canāt go by appearance, you have to go by meaning.) But for design reasons, on this website, I changed this, so that bothem
andstrong
are still using italics, butstrong
emphasis also gets a background color. What do you think?Styling code blocks! I thought about this for many years but couldnāt get myself to add the needed code (minimalism). Then, running into highlight.js (and āinheritingā Prism from my Eleventy projects), I thought about it again. And I added highlight.js to meiert.com, injected only when a code block is actually present, and leaving it to highlight.js to figure out the type of code. That finally reconciled my preference for minimal code with the added usability of syntax-highlighted code samples.
Adding back favicon markupĀ ā ļø How ironic, no, given how I had written that the ideal favicon markup consists of nothing. But the user agents you yourself are using are powerful, and Firefox on Android has this issue of not using (or discarding) smaller-size favicons. Yet favicons serve a purpose and theyāre useful, and therefore I grudgingly andāoh please, dear All That Is!ātemporarily added
link
elements to my projects, pointing to each of their favicons.Switching to large social images. For every personal project, I prepare one large āsocial logo.ā For historic reasons, however, I used markupāthe most minimal social markup I could identify at the timeāthat didnāt take advantage of that. At first suspecting problems with the specific dimensions of these images, it turned out that, for Twitter, all I had to do was to switch from
<meta name=twitter:card content=summary>
to
<meta name=twitter:card content=summary_large_image>
Done. You can see said āmost minimal social markupā in action on any of my projectsālike in the Eleventy base template of Frontend Dogma [and in a later article].
This is a part of an open article series. Check out some of the other posts!
About Me
Iām Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and Iām a web developer, manager, and author. Iāve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager for small and large enterprises, Iām an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for OāReilly and Frontend Dogma.
I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)