Blog
Jens Oliver Meiert on web development and design (and sometimes philosophy, art, and adventure). Writing about quality code and world views since 1999.
2018
A retrospective.
On Performance Visions, or: Performance Optimization Is a Process
It’s smart to have a vision for what one wishes to achieve for the performance of a site or app. Yet even the soundest approaches to performance visions have their problems, and in them we recognize that performance, or performance optimization, is indeed a process.
Should Designers Code
Arguments for a “no” to a recurring question: Why we may want to give designers all freedom in the world, not to be limited in what they’re trained to do best.
Performance Rule #1: Do What You Need to Do—But Not More
Web Performance has over the age of the Web not only turned into a discipline by itself, but also a complex one at that. While important much less so for revenue but for user experience and accessibility reasons, there’s a particular angle at performance that makes the matter very simple: the pragmatic angle.
How to Configure Lighthouse for Balanced Quality Websites
Google’s Lighthouse is a great tool even though it has some issues. Fortunately, it’s possible to configure Lighthouse to one’s own views on what matters. Here’s the config that I like to use.
The One Thing We May Really Want to Research
My back-burner philosophical work revolves around one idea: that what creates and makes for our reality, in quite practical terms, is what we believe. That idea is profound and requires more: research.
Highlights from The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels)
“This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves.”
A Short Guide to Minimal Web Development
There’s an art and even a bit of magic around simple frontend code. Writing such code comes with a few preconditions: perhaps a firm understanding of core technologies, a lot of practice, public scrutiny, and then some. Thoughts.
Web Development and the GDPR
Who shares or presents code has a special responsibility, because for both the uninitiated and the quality-minded such code should be of a considerable standard. European privacy legislation ups the ante.
37 Theses on CSS and Web Development
CSS Optimization Basics ends with a list of key ideas. From acknowledging that we don’t always write perfectly efficient and maintainable and understandable code to leading by example.
AMP, a Strategy
There are problems with AMP. My recommendations: Avoid AMP; or use it, exclusively, on the most relevant pages; or go all-in, for AMP-only.
The Craft of CSS
When we type down CSS like we’ve done 20 years ago, and when we work with ever more abstractions, what does that mean for our craft?
The Dangers of Being a Web Developer
Video, slides, and resources for my talk at beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf.
CSS Optimization Basics
My latest little book, covering mindsets needed for writing effective style sheets, optimization options during operation and for production, and useful resources to aid and inform the work with CSS. (Pay what you want.)
User-Centered Web Development
When we think of user focus we easily think of usability tests, following a usually strong wish to produce something that’s actually useful. For us as web developers, focus on the user has a tendency to appear distant though…
HTML, CSS, and Dependency Direction
Adam Wathan wrote one of the most interesting web development articles I’ve read in the last few months: CSS Utility Classes and “Separation of Concerns.” At least until “Phase 3” there’s much to learn about current web development…
How Declaration Repetition Developed over Time, a Statistically Insignificant Sample
We know that there’s excessive declaration repetition in the Web’s style sheets, that each declaration is on average repeated 2–3 times, often needlessly. We know that this repetition is a little less bad on tech sites…
Highlights from Cobbett’s Advice to Young Men
“The first thing to be required of a man is, that he understand well his own calling, or profession; and, be you in what state of life you may, to acquire this knowledge ought to be your first and greatest care.”
On Loyalty
We should be protective of our greatest possession—our values.
The Compact Guide to Web Maintainability: 200 Tips and Resources
The result of reviewing, normalizing, rephrasing, sorting, and testing 134 responses to a maintainability survey that yielded more than 500 data points, to form a new guide, a new and more definite guide to web maintainability.
Oh WTF My Tone, or: On Germans Speaking English
Anecdote. When I was working at Google, shortly after I had made one of my first bigger contributions, I experienced one of my more memorable performance reviews. You’ll never guess what happened next.
Highlights from The Elements of Style (William Strunk Jr.)
“Consciously or unconsciously, the reader is dissatisfied with being told only what is not; he wishes to be told what is.”
On Material Design
When Google introduced Material Design back in 2014, I was happy; I was happy for the team and I was happy for Google to mark another milestone on the long way of improving the aesthetics of their products. But, I was also concerned.
Static Site Tricks: Social Network Propagation with IFTTT
Automation is critical for work efficiency and productivity. Everything helps.
The Two Extremes of Writing CSS, and What We Can Learn from Them
Extremes can be useful. In practice they help get the maximum out of a given approach, and in theory they can show what we’re headed to. Compare two ways of writing CSS—like Tachyons or Atomic CSS, and 2000’s idealistic engineering.
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Biography
Jens Oliver Meiert is a developer and author (sum.cumo, W3C, O’Reilly). He plays with philosophy, art, and adventure.
As a developer Jens is specialized in the management and quality assurance of complex international websites (Google), works on standards (W3C), and writes for technical publishers (O’Reilly: Webdesign mit CSS, The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks, Coding Guidelines, and Website Quality Control; cf. On Web Development and CSS Optimization Basics).
As a philosopher, Jens focuses on metaphysics. He emphasizes self-responsibility (How to Work on Oneself). As an artist Jens plays with (moving) photography; as an adventurer he explores activities (100 Things I Learned as an Everyday Adventurer) and localities (Journey of J.).