Web Development
Astro: How to Set Up More Powerful HTML Minification (in 31 Seconds)
On improving HTML as well as CSS, JS, and SVG minification in Astro projects.
#443 · · html, optimization
Website Optimization Measures, Part XXXVI
In this action-packed episode, improvements around GitHub Actions, article headings, CDNs, spellchecking, stale branches, acronym handling, Bing authentication, Eleventy performance, and site searches.
#442 · · optimization
On AI-Readying Engineering Organizations
What challenges increasing AI quality and proliferation bring for us as engineering leaders.
#441 · · management, ai
Eleventy: How to Work Around the “git Last Modified” Performance Bottleneck
On speeding up Eleventy sites when commit dates are too useful to drop.
#440 · · performance
Compressor.js Next
Optimizing the JavaScript image compressor and converter.
#439 · · tools, javascript, performance, optimization
The Beautiful Web
It’s not Web4 and it has always been there.
#438 · · design
How to Improve Your HTML Game
On moving beyond unsystematic HTML by choosing a deliberate writing style, committing to validation, and regularly consulting the specification.
#437 · · html
HTML Minifier Next 5, a Quick Upgrade Guide
A checklist to work through the breaking changes of this major update.
#436 · · tools, html, performance, optimization
7 Ways to Manage Large-Scale Taxonomies
An experience-based, practical guide to controlling hundreds or thousands of tags.
#435 · · maintainability
Moving Away From US Services: A Few Favorites
On increasing the price for disrespecting international law and the international community, by changing our choices on who gets our attention and our money.
Website Optimization Measures, Part XXXV
On markup for tags, Basecoat and Tailwind, Eleventy passthroughs, quotes, loops, links, Markdown code blocks, GitHub Actions, and Markdown indentation.
#433 · · optimization
The Largest Web Development Glossary, Now as a JetBrains IDE Plugin
Thousands of web development terms, at your fingertips.
#432 ·
HTML Minifier Next: Even Faster, JavaScript Minification With SWC, SVG Minification
On making HMN better and better.
#431 · · tools, html, javascript, performance, optimization
Open-Source Funding: Do We Need a “No Maintenance” Month?
FOSS February, Maintainer May, Hacktoberfest, and—No-Maintainence December?
#430 ·
HTML Minifier Next: Presets, New Config Options, Minification Sharing, and Type Definitions
A quick overview of some recent improvements to one of the oldest and most versatile HTML minifiers.
#429 · · tools, html, performance, optimization
Comparing HTML Minifiers
How do HTML Minifier Next, HTML Minifier Terser, htmlnano, @swc/html, minify-html, minimize, and htmlcompressor.com compare in terms of effectiveness, speed, and maintenance?
#428 · · html, performance, optimization
HTML Semantics: The Short Descriptions of All 113 Elements
A complete overview: How the HTML spec defines the meaning of all current HTML elements.
Eleventy: How to Set Up Effective HTML Minification (in 24 Seconds)
Install, add import and config, done.
#426 · · html, optimization
A Minimal CSS Starter
What would you include in a CSS starter, as a CSS minimalist? Submitting not a reset—yet perhaps five and a half surgical tweaks.
#425 · · css, minimalism
Website Optimization Measures, Part XXXIV
In this action-laden episode, link checks, file renaming, crawl settings, dependency substitutions, Eleventy performance profiling, recommendation handling, general performance optimization, and MCP servers.
#424 · · optimization
3 User-Friendly Technical Ways to Respond to Genocidistan
Imagine a country that colonizes another nation, attacks and murders their people, attacks other countries around them,—and no one stops them. What would you do? What could you do?
On Web Development II
A comprehensive ebook marking another 10 years of meiert.com, featuring 180 curated articles on web development from 2015 to 2025.
#422 · · books, html, css, management
HTML Minifier Next: Improved Minification, More Comprehensive CLI, Clearer Docs (and a Switch to Lightning CSS)
On making it easier to minify, optimize, and speed up HTML at scale.
#421 · · tools, html, css, performance, optimization
Nostr: How to Generate Your Keys Locally
You know something isn’t ready for prime time when…
#420 ·
HTML—the Most Difficult Programming Language in the World
Where we seem to stand after declaring that HTML is a programming language and finding that most HTML documents contain errors.
#419 · · html
Website Optimization Measures, Part XXXIII
On updating links, creating subagents, working through to-dos, blocking extremists, reviewing configs, uninstalling shell plugins, re-configuring Git, optimizing rsync, and cleaning up Node.js installs.
#418 · · optimization
AI: The Real Problem Engineering Leaders Need to Have a Solution For
The greatest challenge of today is not how our Engineering organizations should use AI, or what our Product organizations could accomplish with AI.
#417 · · management, ai
2025: 0 of the Global Top 200 Websites Use Valid HTML
With the latest results from the annual HTML conformance analysis, the legend of what may be the most difficult language in the world continues to grow.
#416 · · html, conformance
.htaccess: A Helper Script to Easily Block Website Traffic by Country
On making it easy to pull and customize IP ranges from IPdeny.
Why You Absolutely Need to Have Automated Dependency Management in Place
Although tooling is abundant, good, and free, many projects still have no system in place to manage software dependencies. This comes with unnecessary risk and leads to unnecessary work.
#414 · · maintainability
Tech Is Political: Take More Action Against Countries and Organizations Engaged in Wars, Genocides, and Misanthropy
As consumers, social media participants, and website owners, we can do a lot more to protest and increase consequences for crimes against minorities or humanity as a whole.
#413 · · politics
Should We Never Use Non-Logical Properties?
In CSS, it’s extremely hard to argue against the use of anything.
#412 · · css
The Great Disappointment
It’s 2025, and web development has never appeared more apolitical. On tech influencers, without a cause.
#411 · · politics
Why and How to Write Minimal and Valid HTML, a Link Guide
On using all of HTML’s features and ensuring that HTML code is error-free—two surprisingly underused and unpopular approaches to writing HTML.
#410 · · html, minimalism, conformance, performance, optimization
Naked and Semantic
On Jared Norman’s “Dead Code” podcast, together with Fabien Basmaison, speaking about CSS Naked Day and other web development topics.
#409 · · interviews, css, maintainability
HTML Minifier Next (a Maintained Fork of HTML Minifier)
On providing an alternative version of HTML Minifier, critical web tooling that cannot remain unmaintained.
#408 · · tools, html, optimization, performance
How to Identify Your Unknown Unknowns in Web Development
You know your knowns, you know some unknowns, but what do you do about your unknown unknowns? On two resources that help.
#407 ·
Website Optimization Measures, Part XXXII
On “internal server error” pages, Eleventy configs and passthroughs, content security policy hardening and sorting, Apple store links, and link checking and trimming.
#406 · · optimization
CSS: The Pain Is Real
With presentational HTML, it’s impossible to do a CSS-only redesign. With strict separation of concerns, it’s incredibly rare to observe a CSS-only redesign. On a not-frequently-made observation around maintainability, which is to make changes more predictable.
#405 · · css, maintainability
The Magic of the Most Minimal HTML Possible (and Why We Don’t Make Use of It)
On challenging XHTML–HTML and regular redos, by looking at HTML–HTML, full separation of concerns, and iterations.
#404 · · html, minimalism, conformance, maintainability
How Often Should We Speak About HTML Conformance?
Our field ships erroneous and fantasy HTML, all the time. When we analyze how often we talk about valid HTML, we obtain varying data. Let’s review what’s going on.
#403 · · html, conformance
Is Web Development Dying?
#402 · · interviews
Website Optimization Measures, Part XXXI
Qodana! HTML Minifier Terser! Privacy! Git! Automation! Eleventy! GitHub Actions! Cron jobs! Migrations! Maintenance has no limits.
#401 · · optimization
Web Development Has a Short-Term Memory
Our field generally likes DRY code, but that doesn’t apply to what we’re writing about.
#400 ·
Jens Oliver Meiert: How WebStorm and AI Assistant Fit Right Into My Workflow
#399 · · interviews
Eleventy: A GitHub Workflow to Check if an Automated Dependency Update Would Break Your Site
A little safety measure to prevent updates to package.json, package-lock.json, and .nvmrc (or similar) from causing a hiccup.
#398 ·
How I Run Eleventy (It’s Complicated?)
Aliases, debug mode, non-versioned builds as part of a centralized, versioned site exports repo—and the thinking behind it all.
#397 ·
5 Ways to Reduce HTML File Size on Your Website, Step 0
The journey begins with an unpopular step.
#396 · · html, performance, minimalism, optimization
Markup Languages
Just something to remember HDML, DHTML, WML, and cHTML.
#395 ·
Where Frontend Dogma Gets Its News From
On sources for news and views that approach 4,000 items per year.
#394 ·