Web Development (8)

Apocryphal Apostrophes

Oh, typography. How have you been.

Published on January 8, 2017, filed under and .

CSS Shorthand Syntax Considered Important

CSS shorthands are no anti-pattern, just as little as universal selectors, just as little as !important, and just as little as no-js would not be one. Now we learn that shorthands were an anti-pattern. No, they’re not. Yes, they are! No they’re not.

Published on December 21, 2016, filed under .

Why I Don’t Use CSS Preprocessors

A tribute to Roger Johansson as well as the craft of web development.

Published on December 14, 2016, filed under .

About the Mindset for Quality

In my view, quality starts with quality thinking. Quality thinking is broad, but it quickly leads to a quality mindset. This mindset, now, I’ve long regarded as critical…

Published on November 17, 2016, filed under .

Stop Using the Old “Clearfix”

I had thought the old method of clearing through .clearfix:after { clear: both; content: ''; } long dead, but then I spotted it quite alive and even being taught to developers.

Published on November 14, 2016, filed under .

The cover of “The Little Book of Website Quality Control.”

New Book: “The Little Book of Website Quality Control”

The hallmark of a professional is not the pursuit of activity, but the expertly pursuit thereof. What’s worth doing is worth doing well; and what’s done well exemplifies quality. A professional website is no exception, and there are criteria and tools to help.

Published on September 27, 2016, filed under .

Accelerated Mobile Pages, a Critical View

Last year Google introduced AMP and the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project. Independent of suggesting tech paternalism when AMP gets treated preferably in search rankings, I’ve been concerned about what the AMP spec entails exactly.

Published on August 18, 2016, filed under .

WordPress Themes and Web Development

Like everyone on this planet I work with WordPress. Just setting up a new project I ended up using and building on one of their default themes, Twenty Sixteen. Had I better not?

Published on July 31, 2016, filed under .

The Anatomy of a Coding Guideline

Coding guidelines produce consistency, help (code) usability, collaboration, and maintainability, and lead to quality. That is what we all typically learn in development practice. Now, what does a guideline consist of?

Published on July 18, 2016, filed under .

On Tailoring and Web Frameworks

After building early frameworks for GMX and Google I had rushed to squeeze my experience into a (literally) little book. In it there’s emphasis on a priority I’ve always deemed critical for us developers: the idea of tailoring…

Published on July 13, 2016, filed under .

That’s in a Guideline

About two weeks ago I ended a little lottery to give away signed copies of my last book, The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines. Here are feedback and winners.

Published on May 17, 2016, filed under .

What’s in a Guideline? Win a Copy of the Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines!

I give away five signed copies, and to win one just comment or tweet (to @j9t), until April 30, why you deem coding guidelines important or what you find to be the most useful coding guideline.

Published on April 14, 2016, filed under .

Coding Guidelines, the Gist

What’s not to ♥ about coding standards.

Published on January 13, 2016, filed under .

The Law of Maintainability

One cannot not maintain. This is an important axiom, critical even when we recognize how little understanding and prioritization this topic enjoys in our industry…

Published on January 6, 2016, filed under .

The cover of “The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines.”

New Book: “The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines”

Out of the blue! My latest book, The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines, is now available. It’s a brief introduction into the theory and practice of coding standards. Emphasis, as the title suggests, is on HTML and CSS, and furthermore on Google’s guidelines…

Published on December 14, 2015, filed under .

What I’ve Hated and What I’ve Loved About Web Development

In On Web Development and in other contexts I’ve alluded to wrapping up, ending my old career. That’s only correct to an extent. (In keeping with the intelligence community, always put everyone at risk by adding backdoors.)

Published on September 30, 2015, filed under .

The Problem of “Fire and Forget” in Web Design

If I were to pick the main issue in web design… I couldn’t answer immediately. I don’t think there are so many, but there are a few, they are very different, they operate on different scales, and so they’re hard to compare. One, however, is “fire and forget.”

Published on September 17, 2015, filed under and .

The Law of User-Generated Code

Whenever you allow users to edit code of your website, you’re doomed. It’s only a matter of time until you need to give up and redo the entire website—and, adding insult to injury, alienate your users.

Published on August 4, 2015, filed under .

Analytics: Only When We Actually Use It

Here’s something so obvious, it isn’t anymore. Which is: We should only use analytics software when we actually use it. Not when we think we could might want to need it. And not when we only glance at it, every now and then.

Published on July 27, 2015, filed under .

The cover of “On Web Development.”

New Book: “On Web Development”

I wrote another book. On Web Development. On Web Development is an ebook that collects most of the articles about web development (and web design) that I wrote between 2005 and 2015. Most articles as in most useful, most important, and also most controversial.

Published on July 1, 2015, filed under .

Web Standards: We’re F’ing It Up

It’s a problem to just change specs. But it’s an increasingly bigger problem not to clean and prune them. The intimidating complexity of web standard specs should precisely be a motivation, not a threat, to come up with a plan. It follows the populist version.

Published on May 18, 2015, filed under .

A Vision of Web Development

There is one thing every web developer should aspire to: writing the most minimal, semantically appropriate, valid HTML, and then never changing it. “Never” not in a sense of denial and refusal, but in the sense of a guiding light…

Published on May 13, 2015, filed under .

The Two Ground Rules for Using a Framework

Follow the documentation, don’t overwrite framework code. These two rules are golden.

Published on March 26, 2015, filed under .

Remember: April 9 is CSS Naked Day

CSS Naked Day is coming up! Why the excitement? Because CSS Naked Day is a magnificent custom; the magnificent custom to, on one day of the year, strip websites of all styling. It’s awesome because—

Published on March 19, 2015, filed under .

The Truth About “!important”

Sometimes I wake up at night, full of agony, tears in my eyes. The Holiest Alliance Against !important is haunting me. I see their countless crusaders gallop at innocent web developers with merciless force, incessantly blowing their deafening horns…

Published on March 10, 2015, 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 development.