Blog
Jens Oliver Meiert (sum.cumo, W3C, O’Reilly) on web development and design, and sometimes philosophy, art, and adventure. Writing about quality code and world views since 1999.
Understanding Image Compression: Tooling and Context
Image compression is an important part of performance optimization. It seems straight-forward but is a little deceptive, however, because it consists not of one but two parts—and it’s usually lack of understanding of one part that causes problems.
A Crime Called Favicon
16×16, 30×30, 32×32, 48×48, 57×57, 60×60, 64×64, 70×70, 72×72, 76×76, 90×90, 96×96, 114×114, 120×120, 128×128, 144×144, 150×150, 152×152, 160×160, 167×167, 180×180, 192×192, 195×195, 196×196, 228×228, 256×256, 270×270, 310×310, 558×558.
How Can We Make Website Maintenance Work More Visible?
The maintenance and maintainability of websites is a much neglected topic. This is problematic because: We cannot not maintain. Yet primarily we may deal with a visibility problem that we could explore more options for.
Counter the Happiness Assumption
It may be rather clear that life is not all about being happy.
199 Love Haiku (the Book)
In 2016, I wrote 1,000 short poems, haiku-style. I wrote those poems to challenge myself as a writer. I launched a website for the haiku and I shared the story. Today, I’ve published the 199 haiku that a few friends and I liked the most as a book.
Print Styling, the 3 Basics
Many sites are not prepared for print, and yet our users print, and they save through print. Therefore: Have a print style sheet, and be it a negative one. Hide what’s not usable or useful. Always test, and tweak when you want better.
Optional @lang
The lang attribute is one of HTML’s global attributes. If one doesn’t simply take it for granted, it begs a number of questions—and these suggest to drop W3C requirements around it, and to demand software to do the job.
What Happened on Google+, the Web Development Archives
Following a few philosophy posts to be archived, here are past entries related to web development. Nothing more, nothing less.
What Happened on Google+, the Philosophy Archives
Google+ is shutting down, pulling everything with it. I’ve used Google+. And although I’ve changed and would put a few things differently now, I decided to archive a few of the somewhat philosophical Google+ posts.
HTML and Performance: Leave Out Optional Tags and Quotes
As experts we should know what code is optional and leave it out, and our production systems should do a better job assisting us with that. After all the years of neglecting basic HTML optimization, let’s think about taking the next step and not ship optional HTML markup.
Google Lighthouse and PWA
A review of Lighthouse’s PWA audits and the PWA category as a whole. Just in time to see it be superseded by Lighthouse 4, the major update that solves some (unfortunately not all) of those issues.
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.)
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About Jens
Jens Oliver Meiert is a technical lead and author. He loves trying things, including in the realms of philosophy, art, and adventure.
As a web 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 and poetry (199 Love Haiku); as an adventurer he explores activities (100 Things I Learned as an Everyday Adventurer) and localities (Journey of J.).