Jens Oliver Meiert
Articles on the craft of web development, particularly on HTML and CSS optimization.
HTML Concepts: Indicators for Layout Tables
You use tables for data, and therefore not for layout purposes (as was popular in the past). But how would you recognize a layout table? That’s what we’re looking at today in “HTML Concepts.”
5 Eleventy Tweaks That Make My Sites Better (and Maybe Yours)
Currently setting up my third site with Eleventy, I’ve run into a few things that proved useful. Here are five of them, including centrally defined layouts, title sorting, and easier hiding of posts.
One Favicon to Rule Them All
I think the situation around favicons sucks. For an HTML minimalist, the ideal world consists of this when it comes to defining a website or app icon: one image file—no code. This is the minimalist’s dream, and we aren’t there yet—or are we?
HTML Concepts: Constraint Validation
When a form element has attributes that define requirements for the element’s value, then these requirements—constraints—are being validated by the user agent. On the validation of constraints, validity states, and a link to CSS.
CSS: “:has()” and the Lost Paradigm
On the :has() pseudo-class and the forgotten school of ID- and class-less development.
The 3-Second Frontend Developer Test
“Do you validate?” Be a frontend developer who ships valid HTML and CSS; hire frontend developers who ship valid HTML and CSS. End the time of unconditionally accepted sloppiness in professional frontend development.
Use the “i” Element, and Use It Appropriately
“Use em instead of i” is in the Top 25 of bad advice you can get in HTML development. The two elements have different meanings, the blunt rule ignores all context, and i is a valid element with legitimate use cases.
Website Optimization Measures, Part XII
Content security policies. Promotions. Words. Tracking. Link types. Meta information. VG WORT. Social markup. Living the dream.
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.
98% of the Top 100 U.S. Websites Use Invalid 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.
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). I love trying things.