Most Popular

Loved, hated, or important weblog entries.

2020

• How Running Your Own Website Is Much Better for You Than You Think

2019

• An HTML Optimizer’s Config for html-minifier
• When to Open Links in a New Tab
• CSS: When to Use Logical Properties
• Upgrade Your HTML (the Booklet)
• On Writing Better Markup
• The Developer’s Fallacy of Close Collaboration with Designers
• “Must Work Without JavaScript”
• Optional HTML: Everything You Need to Know
• When to use img, img@srcset, and picture and source
• 13 Leadership Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
• Image Compression: How to Super-Easily Set Up Automated Base Optimization
• The Problem with Web Development Checklists, or: The Frontend Checklist, Revised
• 3 Reasons Against Ad Blockers
• A Crime Called Favicon
• Counter the Happiness Assumption
• 199 Love Haiku (the Book)
• Print Styling, the 3 Basics
• Optional @lang
• HTML and Performance: Leave Out Optional Tags and Quotes
• Google Lighthouse and PWA

2018

• On Performance Visions, or: Performance Optimization Is a Process
• Should Designers Code
• Performance Rule #1: Do What You Need to Do—But Not More
• How to Configure Lighthouse for Balanced Quality Websites
• A Short Guide to Minimal Web Development
• AMP, a Strategy
• CSS Optimization Basics
• User-Centered Web Development
• HTML, CSS, and Dependency Direction
• How Declaration Repetition Developed over Time, a Statistically Insignificant Sample
• The Compact Guide to Web Maintainability: 200 Tips and Resources
• Oh WTF My Tone, or: On Germans Speaking English
• On Material Design
• The Two Extremes of Writing CSS, and What We Can Learn from Them

2017

• On Writing 1,000 Poems
• Expert Web Development: A 3^rd Key Differentiator
• Performance of CSS Selectors Is Still Irrelevant
• On Big Picture Thinking in Web Development
• CSS: The Reason Why Selectors Should Be Ordered, Too
• The Scientific Irony
• DRY CSS: How to Use Declarations Just Once, Effectively
• 5 Reasons Against Resets, Normalizers, Reboots
• The 3 Levels of Code Consistency
• Understandable-Simple vs. Minimal-Simple Code
• What Happens When You Email the Companies That Are Responsible for 71% of All Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• Freedom = ƒ(Money)?
• Destroying Is Not Arguing, or: Why It Would Be Bad If Jesus Was Here
• The Cost of Frameworks, Illustrated
• CSS @-Rules, an Overview
• In Defense of Bad Luck
• What We Should Teach Up-and-Coming Developers
• What Kills and What Will Save Content Management Systems
• Living Websites, Living Books
• Web Development: How Making Our Own Lives Difficult Is More Important Than We Think
• Frameworks, Libraries, and the Modern Web Developer: Web Development, Overdone
• What I Learned Building Google’s Web Frameworks
• Boyscout Code
• Stop Using Resets: Visual Examples of the Practical Nonsense of Resets and Normalizers
• Why I’m Suspending Interviews with U.S. Companies
• The Simple Answer to All Our Terrorism Problems
• Regarding the Fermi Paradox
• 70% Repetition in Style Sheets: Data on How We Fail at CSS Optimization
• My Top 10 Android Apps
• Foreigners Are Heroes
• Principles of Web Development
• The Great Neglect

2016

• CSS Shorthand Syntax Considered Important
• Why I Don’t Use CSS Preprocessors
• Contradictions: a Problem of Logic, a Feature of Reality?
• Stop Using the Old “Clearfix”
• Security, Obscurity: Randomizing New Tabs
• Why Philosophy Matters
• New Book(let): The Little Book of Website Quality Control
• Accelerated Mobile Pages, a Critical View
• WordPress Themes and Web Development
• The Anatomy of a Coding Guideline
• On Tailoring and Web Frameworks
• The Dilemma of the Kind Person
• New Book(let): How to Work on Oneself
• “HTML 5,” “CSS 3,” and Expert Web Developers
• 198 Methods of Nonviolent Protest and Action
• Conditional Boycott
• The Reminder Trick
• Stream Theory
• The Law of Maintainability
• Endless Peace

2015

• New Book: The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines
• Philosophy Factoids
• Media: The Choice Between Misinformation and Uninformation
• What I’ve Hated and What I’ve Loved About Web Development
• The Problem of “Fire and Forget” in Web Design
• Several Lives
• New Book: Journey of J.
• The Law of User-Generated Code
• New Book: On Web Development
• Germany, America: On Standing by When Your Country Is Murdering People
• Web Standards: We’re F’ing It Up
• A Vision of Web Development
• Business Practices, Reframed
• On the Problems and Limits of Science
• The Two Ground Rules of Using a Framework
• Remember: April 9 is CSS Naked Day
• What to Carry When Traveling the World
• 180 Little Stories After Traveling the World for 18 Months
• The Truth About !important
• New Book: The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks
• A Population Control Primer
• On Taking Life
• Web Design and Principles
• On the Deterioration of HTML/CSS Practices

2014

• The One Assumption About Our Reality
• The Problems of Working with Web Agencies
• CSS and Specificity
• Questioning Electronic Data as Evidence
• Google and HTML/CSS Code Quality
• CSS, DRY, and Code Optimization
• On Privacy
• On America
• How to Travel the World and Stay Healthy
• How to Travel the World and Stay Safe
• HTML and Specifying Language
• How to Prepare to Travel the World
• All Code Is Not Equal: On Research and Production Code
• The Law of Travel
• The 6 Most Useful Books I’ve Ever Read
• CSS: When to Use Generated Content
• Lessons from Writing a Dream Journal
• A Word on Contemporary Web Design
• HTML Explained in 123 Tweets: The Google #htmltuesday Archive
• How to Just Quit and Travel the World

2013

• On Writing a Book with Google Docs and Amazon KDP
• How to Become an Everyday Adventurer
• CSS, HTML, and the Problem of Spec Fragmentation
• No to DRM in HTML
• New Book! 100 Things I Learned as an Everyday Adventurer
• The Curious Case of Breadcrumbs in HTML
• About Cost in Web Development
• The Meanings of Googliness
• Goodbye Google, San Francisco, California, and United States
• How to Order CSS Selectors, a Draft

2012

• The CSS Problem
• window.scrollTo() or: When to Stay Clear of User Agents

2011

• On Semantics in HTML
• Web Development Principles: Develop for What Is, Not What Could Be

2010

• Testing Tricks: CSS Bookmarklets
• CSS: How to Host Right-to-Left Styling
• CSS Validation and Vendor Extensions: Throw Warnings, Not Errors
• px Is Dead, Long Live px

2009

• HTML/CSS Frameworks: Useful, Universal, Usable, Unobtrusive
• The 3 Basic Rules for Writing HTML
• HTML, CSS, and Web Development Practices: Past, Present, and Future
• The Real Advantage of CSS
• My Top 15 Android Apps
• Diagnostic Styling Reloaded
• Microformats, Key Flaws
• Let’s Make The Web Faster
• Maintainability Guide
• Punctuation Cheat Sheet
• CSS: The Maintenance Issue #1 and How You Can Avoid It
• Why CSS Needs No Variables
• The Stupidest Style Sheet Name Ever
• CSS: Style the Non-Obvious
• When to Separate Style Sheets
• Performance and RFC 2396
• 5 Cool Ways to Support the W3C

2008

• HTML vs. XHTML: Why HTML Wins
• The Greatest Secret in Web Design
• 5 CSS Tips Every Web Developer Should Know About
• An Exercise for Emerging CSS Experts: Avoid IDs and Classes
• Accessibility Heuristics
• Web Standards at Google
• The Most Important Thing Is to Get the HTML Right
• To Be Clear (on Conditional Comments and Resets)
• Best Practice for ID and Class Names
• A Few Words on HTML/CSS Frameworks
• Yes, You Can Use HTML 5
• 10 Measures for Continuous Website Maintenance
• When Validation Becomes Unimportant
• Web Design: 10 Additional Research Findings You Should Know
• Optional Tags in HTML 4
• CSS: Simple Rules for Better Organization and More Efficiency
• The World’s Best HTML Template
• Why “Reset” Style Sheets Are Bad
• CSS: All Properties from CSS 1 to CSS 3 (Index)
• Great CSS Techniques and the Simple Truth Behind Them
• The Secret of Maintainability
• “helvetica, arial”, Not “arial, helvetica”

2007

• Choke Web Development Framework 1.0
• User Agent Style Sheets: Basics and Samples
• Microformats Would Benefit from a Pseudo-Namespace
• 20 (Alternate) + 7 Additional Ways to Focus on Users
• Are You a Web Designer or a Web Decorator?
• HTML: All Elements from HTML 1 to XHTML 2.0 (Index)
• Load Time, the UX Factor: Facts and Measures
• Requirements for Website Prototypes (and Design Systems)
• Principles of Art, Design, and Decoration
• 10 Steps to Create a High-Quality Website
• Revitalizing SUS, the System Usability Scale
• .htaccess: 7 Useful Ingredients (Plus Bonus)
• 25 Excellent Usability/UX Articles and Resources
• CSS Practice: Pseudo-Namespaces in Complex Projects
• “Valid CSS” and Similar Claims Are Unprofessional
• Hire Only Web Designers with a Website
• Print Style Sheets: The Basics (for No Excuses)
• Why “Conditional Comments” Are Bad, Repeat: Bad
• QA: On Errors, and Why Paying for Errors Pays Off
• Web Design: 15 Important Research Findings You Should Know