Website Optimization Measures, Part XXVIII

What is it this time? Medium links, font smoothing, Eleventy templates, Bluesky handles and support, post automation, front matter quotes, and Twitter/X links. In this order.

Published on November 29, 2024, filed under Development.

The Image Compression Challenge Results

How many projects cannot losslessly be compressed further, how much would I donate for the challenge I invited to?

Published on November 27, 2024, filed under Development.

Where Has All the Valid HTML Gone

When we look at the state of HTML… how much of it actually is HTML?

Published on November 21, 2024, filed under Development.

What I Learned About That Difficult Childhood

On a changing—and perhaps transcending—perspective on pain.

Published on November 17, 2024, filed under Philosophy and Everything Else.

1 + 2 Engineering Team Priorities

Are great teams “just doing the work”?

Published on November 14, 2024, filed under Management.

8 AI Tips for Web Developers (and Their Careers)

AI is everywhere and comes with many problems and challenges. Yet as web developers, we need to adapt to a reality with AI. A few ideas on how we can make use of AI to the benefit of our work and our careers.

Published on November 12, 2024, filed under Development.

When You Are Rich

On what you do as a person who is very rich.

Published on November 10, 2024, filed under Everything Else.

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.

Published on November 6, 2024, filed under Everything Else.

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.

Published on November 2, 2024, filed under Philosophy and Management.

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.

Published on October 30, 2024, filed under Development.

Website Optimization Measures, Part XXVII

On improvements involving Eleventy (3), Lightning CSS, Imagemin Guard, early hints, ads, creator metadata, and custom/programmable search engines.

Published on October 24, 2024, filed under Development.

Results = ƒ(Competence × Time)

On a model that can tell us something about how we work, and how we could work.

Published on October 23, 2024, filed under Management.

Growth

A rant.

Published on October 20, 2024, filed under Everything Else.

Boring Web Development

Web development is boring—or should be more boring. On us tending to celebrate the wrong side of web development.

Published on October 15, 2024, filed under Development.

HTML/CSS Frameworks, in Their Own Words (by Word Cloud)

Checking in on Bootstrap, Tailwind, Foundation, Bulma, Milligram, Pure, and UIkit.

Published on October 11, 2024, filed under Development.

JS Frameworks, in Their Own Words (by Word Cloud)

Handing the microphone to React, Vue.js, Angular, Svelte, Express, Meteor, and Next.js.

Published on October 11, 2024, filed under Development.

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.

Published on October 9, 2024, filed under Development.

What Germany May Not Have Learned From the Holocaust

No matter who is being violated, learning from a genocide means fighting against any genocide.

Published on October 8, 2024, filed under Everything Else.

Not Knowable

Casual appreciation about our dealing with knowledge.

Published on September 29, 2024, filed under Philosophy.

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.

Published on September 27, 2024, filed under Development and Management.

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.

Published on September 19, 2024, filed under Development.

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.

Published on September 17, 2024, filed under Development and Management.

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.

Published on September 14, 2024, filed under Philosophy and Management.

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.

Published on September 11, 2024, filed under Development.

On Disagreement

From discomfort that can lead to shortcuts to challenges that may yield transformations.

Published on September 8, 2024, filed under Everything Else.