Jens Oliver Meiert
Articles and books on the craft of web development (specifically, HTML and CSS optimization and maintainability) as well as on engineering management and leadership. (Exceptions prove the rule.)
Website Optimization Measures, Part XXVIII
What is it this time? Medium links, font smoothing, Eleventy templates, Bluesky handles and support, post automation, front matter quotes, and Twitter/X links. In this order.
The Image Compression Challenge Results
How many projects cannot losslessly be compressed further, how much would I donate for the challenge I invited to?
Where Has All the Valid HTML Gone
When we look at the state of HTML… how much of it actually is HTML?
What I Learned About That Difficult Childhood
On a changing—and perhaps transcending—perspective on pain.
1 + 2 Engineering Team Priorities
Are great teams “just doing the work”?
8 AI Tips for Web Developers (and Their Careers)
AI is everywhere and comes with many problems and challenges. Yet as web developers, we need to adapt to a reality with AI. A few ideas on how we can make use of AI to the benefit of our work and our careers.
When You Are Rich
On what you do as a person who is very rich.
3 Things to Note About Democracy
If we think democracy can do without education, constructive intentions, and quality candidates, I believe we’re not getting democracy—and risk it.
Everyone Can Set You Up for Failure, Not Everyone Sets You Up for Success
On a conscious choice that we can make, and that we best make sure others make.
The Image Compression Challenge (Donating Money for Excess-Free Projects)
Here’s a frontend challenge. Run an image compression tool capable of near-losslessly compressing PNG, JPG, GIF, WebP, and AVIF images over one of your main projects. Share if nothing could be compressed. I donate money for each of such projects.
Website Optimization Measures, Part XXVII
On improvements involving Eleventy (3), Lightning CSS, Imagemin Guard, early hints, ads, creator metadata, and custom/programmable search engines.
Results = Ć’(Competence Ă— Time)
On a model that can tell us something about how we work, and how we could work.
Growth
A rant.
Boring Web Development
Web development is boring—or should be more boring. On us tending to celebrate the wrong side of web development.
HTML/CSS Frameworks, in Their Own Words (by Word Cloud)
Checking in on Bootstrap, Tailwind, Foundation, Bulma, Milligram, Pure, and UIkit.
JS Frameworks, in Their Own Words (by Word Cloud)
Handing the microphone to React, Vue.js, Angular, Svelte, Express, Meteor, and Next.js.
Automatable Defensive Core Image Compression With Imagemin Guard 4 (Now With No Imagemin)
The Imagemin Guard package was just updated to move away from the unmaintained Imagemin family, and to improve code, tests, documentation, and usability. If you like to avoid unnecessary image payload, even in your repos, especially in environments where not everyone pays attention to it, this is a good update to try.
What Germany May Not Have Learned From the Holocaust
No matter who is being violated, learning from a genocide means fighting against any genocide.
Not Knowable
Casual appreciation about our dealing with knowledge.
Untrained Engineering Managers
Web development has always had a developer training issue, but it also has one on the management and leadership side. On a challenge we’re all familiar with but rarely talk and do something about.
Website Optimization Measures, Part XXVI
Optimizations related to the Google docs viewer, dependency management, English terms in German copy, Prettier, AWS, SEO bots, Eleventy, and DreamHost.
On Ticket Management
Issue tracking tools like Jira, GitHub Issues, or Bugzilla are essential for managing bugs and tasks (that is, issues). However, not everyone finds ticket management convenient or convincing. A perspective on why tickets matter, and how they can be used well.
The Assessment Paradox
For any individual or group we may think that it can assess itself best because it knows itself best. Yet this is not reliable. We may then think it’s other individuals or groups interacting with that first individual or group who may be able to assess it. This is not so, either.
2024: 0.5% of the Global Top 200 Websites Use Valid HTML
The annual HTML conformance analysis, validating 200 home pages of the most popular websites. Despite improvements, there is no signal of commitment to valid output as a quality baseline to benefit end users as well as web development as a profession.
On Disagreement
From discomfort that can lead to shortcuts to challenges that may yield transformations.
About Me
I’m Jens Oliver Meiert (short: Jens), and I’m a frontend engineering leader and tech author/publisher.
Apart from engineering management and leadership, I specialize in focused frontend development, contribute to web standards, and write technical books, like The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks, On Web Development, CSS Optimization Basics, the Upgrade Your HTML series, and The Web Development Glossary.
I also study and write about philosophy.
Get a good look at web development? Try WebGlossary.info—and The Web Development Glossary 3K. With explanations and definitions for thousands of terms of web development, web design, and related fields, building on Wikipedia as well as MDN Web Docs. Available at Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play Books, and Leanpub.