Most Popular

Loved, controversial, important weblog entries.

Contents

1. 2025
2. 2024
3. 2023
4. 2022
5. 2021
6. 2020
7. 2019
8. 2018
9. 2017
10. 2016
11. 2015
12. 2014
13. 2013
14. 2012
15. 2011
16. 2010
17. 2009
18. 2008
19. 2007

2025

• Speed, Cost, Quality, Choose 2 = Pragmatism, Passion, or Perfectionism
• Ethics: On the Suspicion That Utilitarianism Is Failing Us
• The Magic of the Most Minimal HTML Possible (and Why We Don’t Make Use of It)
• 10 Things I Learned Applying to 200 Positions in 1 Year
• How Often Should We Speak About HTML Conformance?
• Eleventy: A GitHub Workflow to Check if an Automated Dependency Update Would Break Your Site
• Empathy
• New Book: Tara (A Utopia)
• Micro-Scrum
• Where to Put a Mouse or Trackpad
• A Moratorium on Men Making Major Decisions
• On Ethics in Web Development (With a Brief Overview of Ethical Theories)
• New to Web Development? Run Your Own Website
• On Deciding Who We Are
• Testing 10 JavaScript Frameworks on Their HTML Defaults
• On Making Sure Everyone Is Taken Care Of
• The Donkey and the Rabbit
• My 18-Months Rule for Open-Source Contributions
• An Overview of the 50 Highest-Ranking Web Design and Development Glossaries

2024

• The CSS Reset Contradiction
• HTML Conformance: A Comparison of 6.5 npm Validator Packages (With 1.5 Recommendations)
• What Is HTML Optimization? What Is It Not?
• Where Has All the Valid HTML Gone
• What I Learned About That Difficult Childhood
• 8 AI Tips for Web Developers (and Their Careers)
• When You Are Rich
• 3 Things to Note About Democracy
• Everyone Can Set You Up for Failure, Not Everyone Sets You Up for Success
• Results = ƒ(Competence × Time)
• Growth
• Boring Web Development
• What Germany May Not Have Learned From the Holocaust
• On Ticket Management
• 2024: 0.5% of the Global Top 200 Websites Use Valid HTML
• The HTML History and Optimization Cheat Sheet
• Notes on Setting Up a Static Website With AWS (Route 53, S3, ACM)
• Why I Don’t Block AI Scrapers
• AI Paradox
• Now Available: “Rote Learning HTML & CSS,” the Most Boring Free Ebook Ever
• A Node and Command Line Tool to Find Obsolete HTML
• Calling Someone “Too Old” Is Ageist
• Thoughts on CSS in 2024
• The Essence of Veganism
• Know the search Element
• Death by Experience
• We Need to Talk More About Conformance, if We Want to Stop Fantasy HTML
• The Great Tech and People Hypocrisy
• Now Available: Upgrade Your HTML V!
• Critical Feedback: Four Approaches and One Twist
• Exploitation
• On the Gift of OKR for Company Culture
• Building Websites and Building Websites Well
• “Web Design as a Process” in Charts: Maintenance, Decay, Tech Debt, and Big Bang Launching
• Why I Like Scrumban
• Performance and Stay Questions in 1:1s
• My Web Development Wishlist 2024
• Stop Closing Void Elements

2023

• “HTML First” Is Not HTML First
• Why Online Communication Is So Not-Great
• 14 Tips for Becoming an Indie Author
• 2023: 0 of the Global Top 100 Websites Use Valid HTML
• On the Uniting Power of a Commitment to HTML Conformance
• What Happened to Separation of Concerns in Frontend Development
• The Most Minimal Valid HTML Document
• Valve, Counter-Strike, macOS, and How Not to Relaunch Software
• The Good Things About All the Problems
• WebGlossary.info
• 200 Web-Based, Must-Try Web Design and Development Tools
• The Web Development Glossary 3K—More Than 3,000 Terms and Concepts for the Well-Rounded Developer
• Good Code Is—
• New Book: “The Problems With All the Good Things”
• Give
• On Working on Vacation
• 48 Laws, Rules, and Principles of Web Development
• Website Issues: On the Relevance of Audience Size and Impact
• CSS Naked Day and the Missing Wikipedia Page
• Conformance and Accessibility
• Speed Up Your Org: When to Require Approval
• My CSS Wishlist
• Challenge Yourself, Even When It’s Art

2022

• A Problem With Link Relationships
• The Reverse A-Hole Rule of Social Media
• Upgrade Your HTML IV
• 10 Quick Tips for a Great Mastodon Experience
• Minimal Dark Mode
• Redo Websites Less Often (to Become a Better Developer)
• HTML 2022: 20 Additional Observations From Analyzing the Web Almanac Data
• A Short Story of the Google Error Page
• 2022: 0 of the Global Top 100 Websites Use Valid HTML
• An Attempt at Outlining the Many Factors Influencing Developer Experience
• 11 Tips to Read More and Read Faster (After Reading 791 Books in 9 Years)
• One-Dimensional Website Optimization Considered Harmful
• Minimal Social Markup
• Thoughts on an Accessibility “Get Well” Plan
• Write HTML, the HTML Way (Not the XHTML Way)
• Two Approaches to Accessibility on the Web
• The CSS Art Paradox
• What Makes You a Professional Web Developer
• On the Peculiarities of Counting the Number of HTML Elements
• Reduce the Pressure on Young and Inexperienced Developers

2021

• The 6 Ways of Writing HTML (and Their Combinations)
• Making the Web Developer’s Pilgrimage
• Comparing Page Language Declaration Setups in Screen Readers
• Not Releasing Late on Fridays, a Matter of Courtesy
• One Favicon to Rule Them All
• CSS: :has() and the Lost Paradigm
• The 3-Second Frontend Developer Test
• Use the i Element, and Use It Appropriately
• Reasons to Listen to Whom You Don’t Agree With
• Thoughts for the Aging Web Developer
• CS:GO on macOS, an Amateur Setup
• 2021: 98% of the Top 100 U.S. Websites Use Invalid HTML
• Upgrade Your HTML III
• Engineering Management ×12
• Code in Quarantine
• The Choice to F Up
• 5 Tips for Your Next Promotion or Salary Raise
• HTML: The 16 Content Categories and Their Elements
• In Critical Defense of Frontend Development

2020

• Ignore AMP
• Notes on HTML 3.2
• Upgrade Your HTML II
• On HTML (and HTML in 2020)
• Custom Properties: Questioning :root
• The Anti-Reset (to Reset to User Agent Styles)
• The 26 Boolean Attributes of HTML
• 5 Tips to Get Your Dev Blog Running
• The 4 Pillars of Good Embed Code
• The Web Development Glossary (More Than 2,000 Key Terms for Developers)
• The Frameworks Paradox
• On the Responsibility That Comes With Good JavaScript Support
• Round Table
• 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
• 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 Visions for Performance, or: Performance Optimization Is a Process
• Should Designers Code
• Performance Rule #1: Do What You Need to Do—But Not More
• 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 3rd 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
• Freedom = ƒ(Money)?
• 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 Saves 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
• Regarding the Fermi Paradox
• 70% Repetition in Style Sheets: Data on How We Fail at CSS Optimization
• 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”
• Why Philosophy Matters
• New Book: “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: “How to Work on Oneself”
• The Reminder Trick
• Humanity and “The Other Manifesto”
• Stream Theory
• The Law of Maintainability

2015

• New Book: “The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines”
• 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”
• Web Standards: We’re F’ing It Up
• A Vision of Web Development
• On the Problems and Limits of Science
• The Two Ground Rules for Using a Framework
• 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”
• 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
• Electronic Data as Evidence
• Google and HTML/CSS Code Quality
• CSS, DRY, and Code Optimization
• 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

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 Ground Rules for Writing HTML
• HTML, CSS, and Web Development Practices: Past, Present, and Future
• The Real Advantage of CSS
• Diagnostic Styling Reloaded
• Microformats, Key Flaws
• 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 Split 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 Practices 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 Properties 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 Namespace
• 20 [Alternative] + 7 Additional Ways to Focus on Users
• Are You a Web Designer or a Web Decorator?
• HTML Elements 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: 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