Blog
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.
The HTML History and Optimization Cheat Sheet
Compare elements and specifications, check on void elements and optional tags.
Notes on Setting Up a Static Website With AWS (Route 53, S3, ACM)
…and whether doing so is worth it. (There are pos and cons, and they all seem pretty dramatic.)
Notes on Hooking Up a Website With Cloudflare
I played around with Cloudflare.
Imposing on Hearing
On the sense that we may be able to defend the least.
Why I Don’t Block AI Scrapers
“The Tortoise and the Hare,” human/AI edition.
We Always Knew Anyone Could Take Our Content
From “I show your content, but you get the click” to “I show your content” to “here’s other people’s content based on your content.”
Website Optimization Measures, Part XXV
On caching headers, capitalization, social graphics, download priorities, logical properties, Cloudflare, viewport metadata, obsolete markup, and calls to action.
Categories
- Adventure (29)
- Design (67)
- Development (367)
- Everything Else (147)
- Management (27)
- Philosophy (68)
Archives
By Year
Blogroll
- Barker, Michelle
- bij de Weg, Henk
- Comeau, Josh W.
- Evans, Julia
- Fung, Kaiser
- Heilmann, Christian
- Krugman, Paul
- Lawson, Nolan
- Leatherman, Zach
- Merchant, Amit
- Meyer, Eric A.
- Ockerman, Stephanie
- Orosz, Gergely
- Osmani, Addy
- Roselli, Adrian
- Schneier, Bruce
- Shadeed, Ahmad
- Sterling, Bruce
- Suzanne, Miriam Eric
- Van Damme, Bramus
- Verou, Lea
- Wodtke, Christina
Is it possible to find fault with everything? Try The Problems With All the Good Things (2023). In a little philosophical experiment, I’m making use of AI to look into this question—and what it means. Available at Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play Books, and Leanpub.
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.