The Most Minimal Valid HTML Document
Published on October 2, 2023 (ā» October 12, 2023), filed under Web Development (RSS feed for allĀ categories).
āis still this:
<!DOCTYPE html><title>ā£</title>
(āā£ā is a placeholder, as the title
element canāt be empty. The code represents the valid/required-only HTML writing style, leaving out everything that can be left out.)
Why āstillā?
Because weāve covered this many years ago, in 2008 (2014 gist, 2020 pen), though back then it was more about demonstrating universality and maximum reusability (contrasting heavily with templates like HTML5 Boilerplate) than promoting conformant minimalism.
Why repeat āthisā?
Because of ChatGPT, which canāt yet optimize HTML:
Anyone checking their HTML on conformanceāvalidatingāwould find the problems with the ChatGPT output and be able to deduce this most minimal document. But commercially, unfortunately, the data says that modern web development teams donāt focus on conformance *.
Thatās why āthisā seems worth repeating even more.
* Should they? For professionals, I absolutely think so.
About Me
![Jens Oliver Meiert, on September 30, 2021.](https://d3rdtowr0c5lpf.cloudfront.net/media/meiert-20210930.jpg)
Iām Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and Iām a frontend engineering leader and tech author/publisher. Iāve worked as a technical lead for companies like Google and as an engineering manager for companies like Miro, Iām close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for OāReilly and FrontendĀ Dogma.
I love trying things, not only in web development (and engineering management), but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views andĀ experiences.
If youād like to do me a favor, interpret charitably (I speak three languages, and they do collide), yet be critical and give feedback for me to fix issues, learn, and improve. ThankĀ you!
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