AI Paradox

Have you outrun your headlights yet?

Published on August 18, 2024, filed under Development and Management.

Now Available: “Rote Learning HTML & CSS,” the Most Boring Free Ebook Ever

The book you never thought you wanted. The rough and raw skeleton of HTML and CSS. Elements, attributes, selectors, properties. No explanations, no examples, no context. Not a New York Times bestseller (it’s free).

Published on August 14, 2024, filed under Development.

A Node and Command Line Tool to Find Obsolete HTML

Ever wondered if and where you have obsolete HTML in your code base? Of course, there’s a tool for that.

Published on August 12, 2024, filed under Development.

On Mapping the World of Frontend Development

What if we had easy access to many—thousands—of the most useful, interesting, influential frontend development posts from 2000–2019? If you took care of it, how would you go about it, what challenges would you face, what would excite you? Here are some impressions, doing this work, for Frontend Dogma.

Published on July 30, 2024, filed under Development.

Thoughts on CSS in 2024

What I appreciate, what I don’t need (so far)—light and casual and certainly subjective notes on contemporary CSS.

Published on July 15, 2024, filed under Development.

Transitive Optimization Considered—Interesting

Transitive optimization means that if we improve A to optimize B, and optimizations of B also optimize C, then improving A should also lead to an optimization of C. But now what?

Published on July 10, 2024, filed under Development.

Know the “search” Element

Let’s talk about element #112.

Published on June 19, 2024, filed under Development.

Website Optimization Measures, Part XXIV

On AVIF tests, book prices, AI experiments, Eleventy performance, IE scripts and styles, domain registrations, site headers, and (old) document functionality that can better be handled by native HTML elements than by handmade scripts.

Published on June 11, 2024, filed under Development and Design.

Website Optimization Measures, Part XXIII

Affiliate marketing and ads and Brave Rewards. HTML elements and dotenv and Git. Spellings and designs and stuff.

Published on May 29, 2024, filed under Development and Design.

We Need to Talk More About Conformance, if We Want to Stop Fantasy HTML

Conformant and valid HTML is the exception on websites and in apps, even though valid output is a sign of professional web development. Given how rarely the topic is being discussed these days, we benefit from raising more awareness for HTML conformance and validation.

Published on May 21, 2024, filed under Development.

Now Available: Upgrade Your HTML V!

The newest part of the ebook series for HTML craftspeople and minimalists, touching on past, present, and future of the greatest document language ever specified.

Published on May 8, 2024, filed under Development.

April 24 Is JS Naked Day

Every year on April 9 we, a part of our field, do without CSS; from this year on, on April 24, there’s an opportunity to temporarily swear off JavaScript.

Published on April 21, 2024, filed under Development.

Building Websites and Building Websites Well

On exercises, orthogonality, and—choice.

Published on March 12, 2024, filed under Development.

“Web Design as a Process” in Charts: Maintenance, Decay, Tech Debt, and Big Bang Launching

Web design is a process. This process relates to the quality and completeness of a given website, as observed over time. We can chart and understand different types of this process.

Published on February 19, 2024, filed under Development.

Website Optimization Measures, Part XXII

Web design is a process, running our own websites is awesome, and together it means there’s always something to tweak and improve and optimize. Select things I’ve done over the last few months.

Published on February 4, 2024, filed under Development and Design.

My Web Development Wishlist 2024

Respect, UX before DX, quality output that starts with conformance, running one’s own website, and adding as much as necessary, but as little as possible to web standards—five wishes to benefit our field, our users, and us as professionals.

Published on January 7, 2024, filed under Development.

Stop Closing Void Elements

Some developers believe in closing all HTML elements. Some have to close all HTML elements. Others don’t believe in doing so, or aren’t forced either way. In Upgrade Your HTML IV, I wrote a little about closing void elements.

Published on January 3, 2024, filed under Development.

Incident, Mitigate, Learn

We can’t just pick two.

Published on December 28, 2023, filed under Development and Management.

“HTML First” Is Not HTML First

On what is and what isn’t “HTML First.” (It’s not just a hunch: It should start with HTML.)

Published on December 21, 2023, filed under Development.

26 Other Web Development Terms You May Not Have Heard Of

From ActionScript (psst) to linearizability to the Z shell.

Published on December 12, 2023, filed under Development.

The 9 HTML Elements That Have an Attribute of the Same Name, or: The 9 Attributes That Have an Element of the Same Name

There are nine HTML elements that have an attribute of the same name. You’ll never guess what follows next.

Published on November 20, 2023, filed under Development.

Letter and Spirit of Web Development

In the realm of law, there is the notion of letter and spirit of a law. It seems we could benefit from letter and spirit in web development, too.

Published on November 14, 2023, filed under Development.

Website Optimization Measures, Part XXI

Who hasn’t had enough of style sheet reviews, editor performance optimizations, ad removals, CTA revisions, pseudo-class refactorings, blocked AI crawlers, custom search engines, social graphics, or server log configs.

Published on November 4, 2023, filed under Development and Design.

2023: 0 of the Global Top 100 Websites Use Valid HTML

The latest analysis of HTML and CSS conformance of the most popular websites. The situation is only going to get better once we set higher expectations for the code we ship.

Published on October 31, 2023, filed under Development.

On the Uniting Power of a Commitment to HTML Conformance

HTML is the language of the Web, there’s a quality standard—expectation—for HTML, but we don’t make use of it, yet if we would, it would come with several advantages, one of them being that it could unite and propel us to master more important challenges, which would be good again for our field and the Web.

Published on October 18, 2023, filed under Development.