Jens Oliver Meiert
Articles on the craft of web development, particularly on HTML and CSS optimization.
HTML Concepts: The “Nothing” Content Model
There’s a content model in HTML that contains—nothing. Details on what this means, and how it relates to “empty” or void elements.
Reasons to Listen to Whom You Don’t Agree With
Our culture has become one of canceling, of reacting to what we disagree with and whom we dislike by ignoring, unfollowing, blocking, banning, ostracizing. Camouflaged as non-violent protest, it can well be passive-aggressive intolerance of views and people.
Thoughts for the Aging Web Developer
There may be a time when you’ll feel “too old” for web development. When you begin to feel that, here are a few thoughts. They might not be all you need but—maybe they are of use.
CS:GO on macOS, an Amateur Setup
After a 20-year break, a collection of settings and thoughts on Counter-Strike.
2% of the Top 100 U.S. Websites Use Valid HTML (in 2021)
Is frontend development in the bad shape it’s said to be? Is it hyperbole when frontend developers are accused of poor quality work? When you look at the code of the most popular websites, the answer is clear.
Upgrade Your HTML III
If you care about HTML as a craft, if you consider yourself an HTML minimalist, if you believe in pushing for boundaries (and sometimes overdoing it), then this is a right book (and a right book series) for you—with 10 fresh examples from the field that get inspected and improved.
Engineering Management ×12
Ideas and principles for managing engineering teams: From “competence, caring, conviction” and googliness to systems and processes to communication and delegation to team focus and health to trust and humility.
HTML Concepts: “Body-Ok”
“body-ok” relates to link type keywords, and denotes what link elements are okay to be used in the document body.
Code in Quarantine
In the current paradigm, we often work with components and have a 1:1 relationship of HTML to CSS. This makes maintenance more predictable. However, it also pronounces the problem of rarely used code—which can be useful to put in quarantine.
The Choice to F Up
On the things we are doing and not doing, how these things are not and cannot be accidents, and how it all revolves around choice.
33 Additional Web Development Terms You May Not Have Heard Of
As you know, Web Development has its own, special vocabulary that easily consists of several thousand terms. Do you like to try your knowledge again, on how many of the following 33 terms you know?
5 Tips for Your Next Promotion or Salary Raise
How do you approach promotions and salary raises? Are these tied to a cyclical event or do they depend on your initiative? Do you invest into building your case, or do you wing it? Here are a few ideas on what can improve your position and chances.
The Internet Shedding a Free-Rider Problem
With more and more software and regulation limiting the data that we pay with for contents and services, we are, in a way, requiring these contents and services to be made truly free. This doesn’t appear sustainable, and the Web is likely to change.
HTML: The 16 Content Categories and Their Elements
HTML puts elements into content categories. This article serves as a boring, brief, but updated overview over the broad and overlapping categories of HTML, and which elements fall into them.
In Critical Defense of Frontend Development
The field of frontend development is in another crisis, largely due to an incomplete, misinterpreted definition and a bizarre mess created by “web development as a commodity” and “web development as software development.” How frontend development is more than development, and what we can (and should) do.
2020
2020 has been a strange year, a year of challenges, but overall a—good year. Personal notes, professional highlights, a few numbers.
Ignore AMP
In 2018, my recommendation was to avoid AMP, to use AMP for the most relevant pages, or to use AMP only. In 2020 my recommendation is to ignore it, because AMP largely appears meaningless now. Upgrade Your HTML II gives an opinionated idea why.
Website Optimization Measures, Part XI
Welcome to another round-up of possible website improvements, this time going from several types of link updates to table of contents CSS upgrades to CDN integration and privacy policy checks.
Notes on HTML 3.2
Would it still be useful to read the HTML 3.2 specification—from 1997? A few observations.
Upgrade Your HTML II
If you care about HTML as a craft, if you consider yourself an HTML minimalist, if you believe in pushing for boundaries (and sometimes overdoing it), then this is a right book (and a right book series) for you—with 10 new examples from the field that get inspected and improved.
On HTML (and HTML in 2020)
What seems noteworthy about HTML, and how we’re doing on that in the year 2020.
People Care
It seems easy these days to lose faith in people. We’re destroying the planet, elect the least competent and least humane of our peers for presidents, kill our own people when we don’t kill people in other countries, etc.—and yet we all care.
A Day Is a Day
On a personal preference for Inbox 0, and doing, delegating, and deferring.
Custom Properties: Questioning :root
For custom properties (aka CSS variables) we got into the habit of declaring variables in a rule with a :root selector. Yet unless you’re working in an environment in which style sheets serve several document types (and roots), question this use of :root.
Love
Love is the essence, love is the emotion. Yet it’s striking how we talk about love, as if there was just one type of love. Aldous Huxley comes to mind, and After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.
About Me
I’m Jens Oliver Meiert, and I’m an engineering manager and author. I love trying things, sometimes including philosophy, art, and adventure.
As an expert in web development, I specialize in getting the maximum out of HTML and CSS, contribute to technical standards, and write books (like The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks, On Web Development, CSS Optimization Basics, the Upgrade Your HTML series, as well as The Web Development Glossary).
In philosophy I’m most interested in metaphysics (even in How to Work on Oneself). When it comes to art I play with photography. For adventure I enjoy exploring both places (Journey of J.) and activities (100 Things I Learned as an Everyday Adventurer).