Jens Oliver Meiert
Articles on the craft of web development, particularly on HTML and CSS optimization.
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, and 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 maybe 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 quite 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.
Website Optimization Measures, Part X
9 TILs that I applied to my personal projects.
The Anti-Reset
I advise against resets. You don’t need them. (We don’t need them.) Yet what’s the opposite of a reset? Of all resets? The anti-reset. It looks something like this—
33 Web Development Terms You May Not Have Heard Of
Web Development has its own, special vocabulary that easily consists of several thousand terms. Even if you’re an experienced developer you’re unlikely to know all of them. Still, do you like to try your knowledge? How many of the following terms do you know?
On Disclosing Our Salaries
For a year now I’ve been toying with the idea of publicly disclosing my salary, as well as my financial assets. Not because of me, but because I’ve come to believe that this step, if taken by others, too, would be a step towards more transparency.
The 25 Boolean Attributes of HTML
What is a Boolean, what is a Boolean attribute, how does a Boolean attribute work, and what Boolean attributes are there? Meet the Boolean attributes, from allowfullscreen to truespeed.
5 Tips to Get Your Dev Blog Running
If you know what you can deliver, if you keep at it, if you make it easy for your peers, if you talk about the effort, and if you measure and improve and employ a process, you’re likely to do well: thoughts on technical outreach.
The 4 Pillars of Good Embed Code
Embed code is third-party code to be integrated on websites and apps, like ads or social media widgets. There have been many problems with embed code for a very long time. This post covers the essence of what makes for good embed code.
The Web Development Glossary (More Than 2,000 Key Terms for Developers)
What is a BHO? Goanna? Hooking? How about a principal box? Or the Ten-Second Rule? Covering more than 2,000 terms ranging from A11Y to Zsh, and including explanations from Wikipedia and the MDN Web Docs, I’m very happy to release the The Web Development Glossary.
About Me
I’m Jens Oliver Meiert, and I’m a web developer (engineering manager) and author. I love trying things, sometimes including philosophy, art, and adventure.
As a web developer 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).