ā2018ā
2018
A retrospective.
#28 Ā· misc
Survival of the Primitive
Is ours a highly evolved culture?
#27 Ā· Ā· philosophy, misc
7 Questions for Jens Oliver Meiert About the GDE and Chrome Dev Summits 2018
#26 Ā· Ā· interviews, development
On Visions for Performance, or: Performance Optimization Is a Process
Itās 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.
#25 Ā· Ā· development, performance, optimization
Should Designers Code
Arguments for a ānoā to a recurring question: Why we may want to give designers all freedom in the world, not to be limited in what theyāre trained to do best.
#24 Ā· Ā· design, development
Highlights From āFlatlandā (Edwin Abbott Abbott)
āYet I exist in the hope that these memoirs, in some manner, I know not how, may find their way to the minds of humanity in Some Dimension, and may stir up a race of rebels who shall refuse to be confined to limited Dimensionality.ā
#23 Ā· Ā· design, philosophy
Performance Rule #1: Do What You Need to DoāBut 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, thereās a particular angle at performance that makes the matter very simple: the pragmatic angle.
#22 Ā· Ā· development, performance
How to Configure Lighthouse for Balanced Quality Websites
Googleās Lighthouse is a great tool even though it has some issues. Fortunately, itās possible to configure Lighthouse to oneās own views on what matters. Hereās the config that I like to use.
#21 Ā· Ā· development, quality
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.
#20 Ā· philosophy
Highlights From āThe Communist Manifestoā (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels)
āThis 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.ā
#19 Ā· philosophy
A Short Guide to Minimal Web Development
Thereās 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.
#18 Ā· Ā· development, minimalism
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.
#17 Ā· development
37 Theses on CSS and Web Development
CSS Optimization Basics ends with a list of key ideas. From acknowledging that we donāt always write perfectly efficient and maintainable and understandable code to leading by example.
#16 Ā· Ā· development, css
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.
#15 Ā· Ā· development, maintainability
The Craft of CSS
When we type down CSS like weāve done 20 years ago, and when we work with ever more abstractions, what does that mean for our craft?
#14 Ā· Ā· development, css
Why Being a Digital Nomad Sucks (to Me)
For countless years has it been a thing to romanticize the lifestyle of digital and global nomads, of people who live and work remotely. I believe thereās also much to question.
The Dangers of Being a Web Developer
Video, slides, and resources for my talk at beyond tellerrand in DĆ¼sseldorf.
#12 Ā· development
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.
#11 Ā· Ā· books, development, css, optimization
User-Centered Web Development
When we think of user focus we easily think of usability tests, following a usually strong wish to produce something thatās actually useful. For us as web developers, focus on the user has a tendency to appear distant thoughā¦
#10 Ā· Ā· development, usability, accessibility, performance
HTML, CSS, and Dependency Direction
Adam Wathan wrote one of the most interesting web development articles Iāve read in the last few months: CSS Utility Classes and āSeparation of Concerns.ā At least until āPhase 3ā thereās much to learn about current web developmentā¦
#9 Ā· Ā· development, html, css
How Declaration Repetition Developed Over Time, a Statistically Insignificant Sample
We know that thereās excessive declaration repetition in the Webās style sheets, that each declaration is on average repeated 2ā3 times, often needlessly. We know that this repetition is a little less bad on tech sitesā¦
#8 Ā· Ā· development, css
Highlights From āAdvice to Young Menā (William Cobbett)
āThe first thing to be required of a man is, that he understand well his own calling, or profession; and, be you in what state of life you may, to acquire this knowledge ought to be your first and greatest care.ā
#7 Ā· misc
On Loyalty
We should be protective of our greatest possessionāour values.
#6 Ā· misc
The Compact Guide to Web Maintainability: 200 Tips and Resources
The result of reviewing, normalizing, rephrasing, sorting, and testing 134 responses to a maintainability survey that yielded more than 500 data points, to form a new guide, a new and more definite guide to web maintainability.
#5 Ā· Ā· development, html, css, maintainability
Oh WTF My Tone, or: On Germans Speaking English
Anecdote. When I was working at Google, shortly after I had made one of my first bigger contributions, I experienced one of my more memorable performance reviews. Youāll never guess what happened next.
#4 Ā· misc
Highlights From āThe Elements of Styleā (William Strunk Jr.)
āConsciously or unconsciously, the reader is dissatisfied with being told only what is not; he wishes to be told what is.ā
On Material Design
When Google introduced Material Design back in 2014, I was happy; I was happy for the team and I was happy for Google to mark another milestone on the long way of improving the aesthetics of their products. But, I was also concerned.
#2 Ā· design
The Two Extremes of Writing CSS, and What We Can Learn From Them
Extremes can be useful. In practice they help get the maximum out of a given approach, and in theory they can show what weāre headed to. Compare two ways of writing CSSālike Tachyons or Atomic CSS, and 2000ās idealistic engineering.
#1 Ā· Ā· development, css