Web Development (3)

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 and .

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 .

Thoughts on an Accessibility “Get Well” Plan

Have you 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 .

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 it, too. And you may wonder, how would AI depict frontend developers?

Published on June 20, 2022, filed under and .

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 .

Write HTML, the HTML Way (Not the XHTML Way)

You may not use XHTML (anymore), but when you write HTML, you may be more influenced by XHTML than you think. You are very likely writing HTML, the XHTML way.

Published on May 17, 2022, filed under .

Two Approaches to Accessibility on the Web

One can distinguish two approaches to accessibility on the Web: to produce accessible websites and apps (active accessibility), and to produce accessible-making software (passive accessibility). On how largely using one approach would stand in the way of a greater vision for web accessibility.

Published on May 10, 2022, filed under .

The CSS Art Paradox

The fanciest CSS, standing on the shoulders of bloated HTML.

Published on April 28, 2022, filed under and .

3 Books to Become a Better Developer

When a frontend developer chooses A Philosophy of Software Design, The Pragmatic Programmer, and Clean Code.

Published on April 20, 2022, filed under .

HTML Concepts: Commands and Facets

On what you think they are, and something that what you think they are has.

Published on March 29, 2022, filed under .

What Makes You a Professional Web Developer

On a starting point that involves committing to high standards (including validating, and exercising control over oneself), acting ethically, practicing, learning, taking care of oneself, and taking care of others.

Published on March 16, 2022, filed under .

Website Optimization Measures, Part XIII

Lessons from running multiple websites, this time covering SVGs, HTML optimization, auto-completion, semantics tricks, code styling, favicon markup, and social images. Happy Saturday.

Published on March 5, 2022, filed under .

25 Additional Web Development Terms You May Not Have Heard Of

__qems, cyclomatic complexity, homogenous migrations, NUIs, OOPIFs, and everything the web and software developer needs.

Published on February 1, 2022, filed under .

On the Peculiarities of Counting the Number of HTML Elements

How many HTML elements are there? What looks like a fairly simple question, isn’t one, because there isn’t one number of HTML elements.

Published on January 17, 2022, filed under .

Reduce the Pressure on Young and Inexperienced Developers

Lower the expectations on young and inexperienced developers, and raise the expectations on their mentoring and coaching: on running gags, unrealistic expectations, and healthier hiring.

Published on January 6, 2022, filed under and .

HTML Concepts: Form Owners

Today in “HTML Concepts”: form owners. It’s not what you are when you put a form on a page. What are form owners? In essence, form elements that so-called form-associated elements are tied to.

Published on December 18, 2021, filed under .

Web Frameworks, Coding Guidelines, Quality Control, and the Craft of Web Development

“Good frameworks aim to be tailored, usable, and extensible”? “Coding guidelines must be communicated, enforced, and reviewed”? “No website should go without a plan for quality control”?

Published on December 1, 2021, filed under .

The 6 Ways of Writing HTML (and Their Combinations)

There are 6 general ways of writing HTML: unsystematic, valid, semantic, accessible, required-only, and hyper-optimized. These types make for 19 combinations—the ways we write HTML.

Published on November 23, 2021, filed under .

HTML Concepts: Common Idioms

Welcome to another brief post in the “HTML Concepts” series. Today we’re going to look at common idioms: popular design patterns for which HTML doesn’t have dedicated elements, but makes suggestions.

Published on November 2, 2021, filed under .

The cover of “The Little Book of Little Books.”

The Little Book of Little Books

Buy now (only $7.99) Tip: EPUB and PDF, with updates, at Leanpub. In 2015 and 2016, I produced a series of “Little Books” for O’Reilly: The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks, The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines, and The Little Book of Website Quality Control. While I soon liked the idea …

Published on October 29, 2021, filed under .

Making the Web Developer’s Pilgrimage

Have you read the HTML specification? Have you marked highlights, taken notes, and reviewed what you learned? Have you reported issues and made suggestions to the HTML working group, giving back and improving the standard? On our field’s â€śpilgrimage.”

Published on October 21, 2021, filed under .

Declaring Page Language—and Declaring Changes in Language

Popular screen readers don’t seem to pick up changes in language automatically. We may need a push on screen readers to improve detection of changes in language, and a shift of attention from declaration of page language to marking up changes in language.

Published on September 29, 2021, filed under .

Comparing Page Language Declaration Setups in Screen Readers

One best practice in web development is to declare the document language via the lang attribute, on the html start tag. That is useful, but also not the only option. How well are different setups supported in screen readers? A few data points.

Published on September 28, 2021, filed under .

Not Releasing Late on Fridays, a Matter of Courtesy

Why don’t we, in engineering departments, prefer not to release late on Fridays—or late on others days? Occasionally, developers and stakeholders believe that’s because of a lack of confidence in our code and our systems. The true reason is not that:—

Published on September 24, 2021, filed under and .

HTML Concepts: Indicators for Layout Tables

You use tables for data, and therefore not for layout purposes (as was popular in the past). But how would you recognize a layout table? That’s what we’re looking at today in “HTML Concepts.”

Published on September 13, 2021, filed under .

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