A Problem With Link Relationships

It’s easy to get excited about link relationships and similar types of metadata. But link relationships are invisible information, and some invisible information is notoriously hard to maintain—especially on things that decay, describing attributes that change.

Published on December 23, 2022, filed under Development.

A Brief History of UITest.com

UITest.com just merged with Frontend Dogma, which is asking for select and random screenshots and facts about a site that I ran for 19 years to provide “web-based and free tools for web development and design.”

Published on December 20, 2022, filed under Development.

Website Optimization Measures, Part XVII

Encoding declarations. Conditionals. Ahrefs. ErrorDocument directives. Mastodon links. Mastodon citizenship. Bitbucket. Eleventy. Action.

Published on December 15, 2022, filed under Development and Everything Else.

The Reverse A-Hole Rule of Social Media

A delayed note about that point at which our defense against disagreeable viewpoints and people becomes an offense.

Published on December 15, 2022, filed under Everything Else.

Upgrade Your HTML IV

HTML forms the heart of the Web. The beautiful thing is, HTML is easy to learn. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to master. In the Upgrade Your HTML series, I’m taking examples of HTML, discuss these examples, and make them a little better. I’m excited to announce the fourth book of the series.

Published on November 27, 2022, filed under Development.

HTML Concepts: Unstyled Documents

There’s unstyled and there’s fully unstyled. And then there’s also styled “in a manner that is useful for a developer.”

Published on November 22, 2022, filed under Development.

Website Optimization Measures, Part XVI

Spaces, HTTP headers, site generator exports, cite elements, variable fonts, social logos, no-break spaces, metadata—life is never boring when you run your own websites.

Published on November 12, 2022, filed under Development.

10 Quick Tips for a Great Mastodon Experience

Mastodon is a great alternative to Twitter, feeling refreshingly healthy. Here are 10 things that can help you get off to a great start—from finding a suitable server and interesting people to follow, to useful tooling and mindsets.

Published on November 8, 2022, filed under Everything Else.

Minimal Dark Mode

What’s the easiest and fastest way to set up dark mode? Depending on the setup, something from one declaration to two rules.

Published on November 4, 2022, filed under Development.

Vegan Web Developers

If you’re a vegan and a web developer, why not join us on a humble list of vegan web developers?

Published on October 24, 2022, filed under Development and Everything Else.

Redo Websites Less Often (to Become a Better Developer)

You want to redo websites: The advantages are great, and the ability to put a website on a new foundation is a useful one to acquire. But—you also want to iterate, which means to constantly make small improvements over long periods of time. On how a bias for iteration contributes to becoming a better developer.

Published on October 18, 2022, filed under Development.

HTML 2022: 20 Additional Observations From Analyzing the Web Almanac Data

After the initial analysis for the HTTP Archive’s 2022 Web Almanac, here are 20 more observations about HTML as it’s being used today. From (no) doctypes to conditional comment zombies to verbose form markup to viewports to javascript: links.

Published on October 10, 2022, filed under Development.

A Short Story of the Google Error Page

Why is the Google error page the way it is? Why is it so plain? What drove development and design decisions? Anecdotes and notes from the time when the page was built.

Published on October 6, 2022, filed under Everything Else.

Website Optimization Measures, Part XV

Automated lossless image compression, mini dark modes, favicon references, prerender, flat image folders, modest product promotions, compact navigation, theme colors—improvements to my own projects, maybe (or maybe not) of interest to your own.

Published on October 4, 2022, filed under Development.

HTML Concepts: Browsing Contexts

Welcome to another episode of HTML Concepts! Today, browsing contexts—what is that?

Published on September 30, 2022, filed under Development.

2022: 0 of the Global Top 100 Websites Use Valid HTML

When you looked at the top websites in 2021, you learned that 98% of them included invalid HTML. When you do the same for the Top 100 globally, this year, would things have improved? Updated data, with a look at our field’s inability to produce valid HTML output.

Published on September 12, 2022, filed under Development.

An Attempt at Outlining the Many Factors Influencing Developer Experience

When looking at DX naively, it can seem that it depends on only one factor—DX = ƒ(x). But Developer Experience depends on many factors, and needs to be approached holistically. A quick attempt at sketching just what factors, each of which can tip the scale.

Published on September 6, 2022, filed under Development.

11 Tips to Read More and Read Faster (After Reading 791 Books in 9 Years)

Are you content with your reading? Here’s a collection of tried and tested ideas to help you read more—from switching to ebooks to reading everywhere to establishing routines to embracing short books to varying your reading speed.

Published on August 17, 2022, filed under Everything Else.

One-Dimensional Website Optimization Considered Harmful

There are many website optimization vectors—SEO, performance, accessibility, &c.—, but optimizing on only one dimension may not only be expensive, but also counter-productive. On optimizing optimizations.

Published on August 4, 2022, filed under Development.

Website Optimization Measures, Part XIV

About link relationships, Twitterbot, dark mode, tags, addresses, social markup, color-scheme, and—FLoC.

Published on July 21, 2022, filed under Development and Design.

Minimal Social Markup

Every website and app these days relies on so-called “social markup,” metadata for a richer and prettier display in social media and messaging tools. On the absolute minimum you may need.

Published on July 14, 2022, filed under Development.

Thoughts on an Accessibility “Get Well” Plan

Have you ever wondered how to anchor accessibility in an engineering team, one that isn’t yet producing accessible sites or apps? Some options to start with, for further refinement and discussion.

Published on June 29, 2022, filed under Development.

The Machine-Illustrated Life of a Frontend Developer

You may know DALL·E, what you can do with it, what others do with it, and… be intrigued by that, too. And you may wonder, how would AI depict frontend developers?

Published on June 20, 2022, filed under Development and Everything Else.

HTML Concepts: Focusable Areas

When you hear “focusable area,” what comes to your mind? Anchors and form elements that receive focus when being “tabbed through,” i.e., that are highlighted and that can be interacted with? That’s not a bad description!—but also not a complete one.

Published on May 30, 2022, filed under Development.

“The One With the Biggest Hammer Wins”

On a game we could stop playing.

Published on May 24, 2022, filed under Philosophy and Everything Else.