Web Development (5)

The Dangers of Being a Web Developer

Video, slides, and resources for my talk at beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf.

#200 · May 10, 2018

CSS Optimization Basics

My latest little book, covering mindsets needed for writing effective style sheets, optimization options during operation and for production, and useful resources to aid and inform the work with CSS.

#199 · Apr 12, 2018 · books, css, optimization

When we think of user focus we easily think of usability tests, following a usually strong wish to produce something that’s actually useful. For us as web developers, focus on the user has a tendency to appear distant though…

#198 · Mar 14, 2018 · usability, accessibility, performance

HTML, CSS, and Dependency Direction

Adam Wathan wrote one of the most interesting web development articles I’ve read in the last few months: CSS Utility Classes and “Separation of Concerns.” At least until “Phase 3” there’s much to learn about current web development…

#197 · Feb 14, 2018 · html, css

How Declaration Repetition Developed Over Time, a Statistically Insignificant Sample

We know that there’s excessive declaration repetition in the Web’s style sheets, that each declaration is on average repeated 2–3 times, often needlessly. We know that this repetition is a little less bad on tech sites…

#196 · Feb 7, 2018 · css

The Compact Guide to Web Maintainability: 200 Tips and Resources

The result of reviewing, normalizing, rephrasing, sorting, and testing 134 responses to a maintainability survey that yielded more than 500 data points, to form a new guide, a new and more definite guide to web maintainability.

#195 · Jan 24, 2018 · html, css, maintainability

The Two Extremes of Writing CSS, and What We Can Learn From Them

Extremes can be useful. In practice they help get the maximum out of a given approach, and in theory they can show what we’re headed to. Compare two ways of writing CSS—like Tachyons or Atomic CSS, and 2000’s idealistic engineering.

#194 · Jan 2, 2018 · css

Expert Web Development: A 3rd Key Differentiator

As web developers we have decisions to make and our decisions depend on a few variables. Two that have become much more important over the years are the one of code for research or production, and the one of web site or app…

#193 · Dec 13, 2017

An Ode to Smashing Magazine

Excitement about a success story.

#192 · Dec 6, 2017

Performance of CSS Selectors Is Still Irrelevant

From my upcoming book on CSS optimization: Selector performance is not something to optimize for as the price we pay for it is terrible: We micro-manage our work for gains that aren’t noticeable.

#191 · Nov 29, 2017 · css, performance

On Big Picture Thinking in Web Development

Thoughts on thinking outside the box, in tech, with examples ranging from selector performance to a general development vision, to illustrate how very different issues can all reach beyond their perimeter.

#190 · Nov 22, 2017 · performance, maintainability, accessibility, design

CSS: The Reason Why Selectors Should Be Ordered, Too

We’ve talked a lot about declarations as declarations are at the heart of our work with direct consequences for the quality of our style sheets. We’ve not talked much about selectors, though, and that may be a mistake.

#189 · Nov 17, 2017 · css

Static Site Generation With Grow: How to Set Up Syndication Feeds

Grow is a static site generator that I’ve slowly been switching to on my own projects. Here I wish to lay out how to do something with Grow that’s not overly difficult, but also not well-documented—to set up syndication feeds.

#188 · Nov 13, 2017

DRY CSS: How to Use Declarations Just Once, Effectively

Using declarations just once is one way to control repetition in style sheets. It’s not a silver bullet, as we’ve seen with recent data, but it’s so powerful as to make for a key style sheet optimization method.

#187 · Oct 26, 2017 · css, optimization

5 Reasons Against Resets, Normalizers, Reboots

A word about one of CSS’s horsemen of the apocalypse.

#186 · Oct 19, 2017 · css

The 3 Levels of Code Consistency

Consistency is a factor for code quality and one of the key reasons why we need coding guidelines. Interestingly enough there are three levels of consistency: individual, collective, and institutional.

#185 · Oct 16, 2017 · quality

Understandable-Simple vs. Minimal-Simple Code

Code simplicity seems to be a goal quite worthwhile, contributing to better understanding, greater robustness, and higher quality. That’s at least what comes to my mind when looking at the matter…

#184 · Oct 6, 2017 · minimalism

On Enforcing Coding Guidelines

Surprisingly a snippet from The Little Book of Website Quality Control, not the one of HTML/CSS coding guidelines, a few thoughts on enforcing coding standards.

#183 · Oct 2, 2017 · management

The Cost of Frameworks, Illustrated

A visual attempt to show how for everything built for the long run, external frameworks are a pricey crutch that has to be avoided or be thrown away at the earliest time. The reasons: quality—and cost.

#182 · Sep 14, 2017 · frameworks, quality

CSS @-Rules, an Overview

From @charset to @viewport. Or from @bottom-center to @top-right-corner.

#181 · Sep 11, 2017 · css

What We Should Teach Up-and-Coming Developers

Evidently, learning is important, and learning strategies are, too, and how to generally work on ourselves, absolutely, but what else to aim for apart from understanding computer science fundamentals, reading the specs, and—coding?

#180 · Aug 31, 2017 · management

What Kills and What Saves Content Management Systems

Imagine you just moved into a new place, and realize that you lack a screwdriver to put up some of your furniture (it’s not from IKEA). You ring at your neighbors’, find one who’s home, and she…

#179 · Aug 29, 2017

Living Websites, Living Books

To me, websites are living objects. They require regular care and maintenance. Such care starts with monitoring, from uptime control to visual site tests, demands technical quality control, and ends with content checks…

#178 · Aug 17, 2017 · misc

Website Optimization Measures, Part VIII

Eight years. Eight years has it been since the last episode of this series, “Website Optimization Measures.” In October of 2009, I last talked about more or less random things I did on my own websites…

#177 · Aug 8, 2017 · optimization

Web Development: How Making Our Own Lives Difficult Is More Important Than We Think

Many moons ago I wrote that web developers wouldn’t need debugging tools. I was half joking and half serious. We were just coming out of the dark ages of web development, so to speak, undernourished of useful tools, frameworks, libraries…

#176 · Aug 1, 2017 · maintainability

Frameworks, Libraries, and the Modern Web Developer: Web Development, Overdone

We are raising tool-dependent rather than self-reliant developers. Aren’t we.

#175 · Jul 28, 2017 · frameworks

What I Learned Building Google’s Web Frameworks

On building Google’s Go and Maia HTML/CSS frameworks, and succeeding and failing as a tech lead.

#174 · Jul 25, 2017 · html, css, frameworks

Boyscout Code

Of course, always leave code better than you found it.

#173 · Jul 20, 2017 · quality

Stop Using Resets: Visual Examples of the Practical Nonsense of Resets and Normalizers

Or, when Jens found out that he could just collect websites that use reset style sheets and the like, disable those style sheets, document the results and write a post with the diffs for visual evidence. All because “we ran after this mirage for more than a decade.”

#172 · Jul 13, 2017 · css

Two Paradigms of Web Development

On a sunny Tuesday in Düsseldorf a few weeks back, at Beyond Tellerrand, I had a pleasant recorded conversation with the team of Working Draft. In our discussion we briefly touched on the idea of web development paradigms…

#171 · Jun 19, 2017 · css

The Great Web Maintainability Survey Results

Four weeks ago I started a survey about good and bad practices when it comes to the maintenance and maintainability of websites. Participation was amazing, and here are the first results.

#170 · Jun 16, 2017 · maintainability

70% Repetition in Style Sheets: Data on How We Fail at CSS Optimization

Looking at data for some of the most popular websites, we repeat ourselves too much in CSS; using declarations just once is often one solid avenue to avoid repetition; together, we need to put more focus on style sheet optimization.

#169 · May 31, 2017 · css, maintainability

The Great Web Maintainability Survey

The maintenance and economics of websites is a much-neglected topic in the web development community. Here are three questions for developers, to gather practices as well as resources.

#168 · May 14, 2017 · maintainability

Principles of Web Development

Web development, at more than 20 years of age, is becoming an increasingly mature profession. Web development is yet also subject to constant change, and the field produces more of that change, out of itself. More technological standards…

#167 · Feb 16, 2017 · quality, maintainability

HTML Statistics: 5 Take-Aways

A few quick comments on Catalin Rosu’s interesting follow-up analysis of his sampling of eight million websites. Some practices are wonderful to note, others have been commented on, yet one or the other point drowned.

#166 · Feb 13, 2017 · html

On Quality and Logistics

Clearly, quality requires quality thinking. But then it requires a lot more, like definitions, criteria, tools, planning, enforcement, &c. pp. And it relies on some organizational foundation.

#165 · Jan 12, 2017 · quality

Apocryphal Apostrophes

Oh, typography. How have you been.

#164 · Jan 8, 2017 · design

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.

#163 · Dec 21, 2016 · css

Why I Don’t Use CSS Preprocessors

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

#162 · Dec 14, 2016 · css

“Don’t Believe Everything You See, Sophie”

#161 · Nov 22, 2016 · interviews, philosophy

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…

#160 · Nov 17, 2016 · quality

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.

#159 · Nov 14, 2016 · css

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.

#158 · Sep 27, 2016 · books, quality