Development (2)

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 .

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 .

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 .

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 and .

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 .

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 .

What Happened to Separation of Concerns in Frontend Development

On a story that began around 2010, and in which web standards make separation of concerns easier—and frameworks make it harder.

Published on October 5, 2023, filed under .

The Most Minimal Valid HTML Document

—isn’t that exciting, isn’t even new, but can use repeating in times of conformance neglect and AI-assisted coding.

Published on October 2, 2023, filed under .

Website Optimization Measures, Part XX

Definition issues. Aging content. Debugging. Social graphics. CTAs. DNS entries. SVGs. Filler words. PHP. There’s always something worth tending to.

Published on September 20, 2023, filed under and .

Sustainability and Tech and Us

In tech, we’re exceptionally bad at sustainability. While those of us who focus on sustainability, performance, as well as code minimalism are already contributing to improvements, we can do more. A few thoughts.

Published on September 17, 2023, filed under .

The 10ish Tools I Install on Every New Mac I Get

Are there going to be surprises.

Published on September 14, 2023, filed under .

WebGlossary.info

The Web Development Glossary—now also available as a website. Enjoy exploring.

Published on August 23, 2023, filed under and .

Website Optimization Measures, Part XIX

Dull maintenance drudgery (?), this time covering dependencies, link checks, keyboard navigation, contrast, hidden UI elements, multi-language tag handling, image compression, IndieAuth, and AI crawling.

Published on August 22, 2023, filed under and .

200 Web-Based, Must-Try Web Design and Development Tools

A couple of web-based and free tools to test and improve accessibility, performance, security, conformance, colors and images and typography, SEO and SEM and—more. With an opinion about link lists, and appreciation for well-maintained tool collections.

Published on August 8, 2023, filed under and .

The cover of “The Web Development Glossary 3K.”

The Web Development Glossary 3K—More Than 3,000 Terms and Concepts for the Well-Rounded Developer

Announcing the new edition of The Web Development Glossary, including almost a thousand additional terms as well as major usability updates, like improved source and cross-reference navigation—to provide an overview of web development unlike any other book or site.

Published on July 27, 2023, filed under .

Good Code Is—

On a question everyone does and does not have an answer for.

Published on July 23, 2023, filed under .

Frameworks and Libraries and Leaky Abstractions

“Abstractions save us time working, but they don’t save us—”

Published on June 30, 2023, filed under .

48 Laws, Rules, and Principles of Web Development

In anticipation of the upcoming release of The Web Development Glossary 3K, here are four dozen laws, rules, and principles related to web and software development.

Published on June 7, 2023, filed under .

HTML Concepts: Kinds of Elements

There are six kinds of elements in HTML: void elements, raw text elements, escapable raw text elements, the template element, foreign elements, and normal elements.

Published on May 31, 2023, filed under .

Website Issues: On the Relevance of Audience Size and Impact

Website issues—relating to conformance, security, accessibility, performance, content, others—are usually treated with a particular priority, but that priority may not always be understandable, and may also be off. On the perspective we obtain when we consider and chart audience size and impact.

Published on May 19, 2023, filed under and .

CSS Naked Day and the Missing Wikipedia Page

CSS Naked Day has a message—separation of concerns. The event has been around for nearly 20 years, thousands of developers have participated, and it’s still alive. It may not be an event significant enough for Wikipedia, for which this post had been a draft—but it does seem significant for our field.

Published on May 2, 2023, filed under .

Two Underused Arguments for Writing Documentation

Validating our thinking and allowing to scale may not get enough attention.

Published on April 30, 2023, filed under and .

HTML Concepts: Customized Built-In Elements

HTML allows to define custom elements, elements which enable authors to “build their own fully-featured DOM elements.” One special type of custom element is the customized built-in element—a custom element built on an existing HTML element.

Published on March 25, 2023, filed under .

Website Optimization Measures, Part XVIII

Random improvements as always, this time covering ARIA roles, Apache module checks, <guid> elements, CLS rules of thumb, Eleventy, block lists, site licenses, and compression settings.

Published on March 6, 2023, filed under .

Conformance and Accessibility

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 are going to obsolete Success Criterion 4.1.1, which had been WCAG’s nod towards conformant HTML output. This is understandable, and it may even be good—to strengthen accessibility as well as conformance.

Published on February 28, 2023, filed under .

If you like what you see here, consider the ebook version of all 2005–2015 posts on web design and development: On Web Development.
Interested in web development news and tools? Visit one of my projects, Frontend Dogma, for news and tools for frontend developers.