Web Development (6)
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…
#181 ·
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…
#180 · · 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…
#179 · · 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…
#178 · · maintainability
Frameworks, Libraries, and the Modern Web Developer: Web Development, Overdone
We are raising tool-dependent rather than self-reliant developers. Aren’t we.
#177 · · 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.
#176 · · html, css, frameworks
Boy Scout Code
Of course, always leave code better than you found it.
#175 · · 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.”
#174 · · 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…
#173 · · 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.
#172 · · 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.
#171 · · 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.
#170 · · 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…
#169 · · 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.
#168 · · 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.
#167 · · quality
Apocryphal Apostrophes
Oh, typography. How have you been.
#166 · · 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.
#165 · · css
Why I Don’t Use CSS Preprocessors
A tribute to Roger Johansson as well as the craft of web development.
#164 · · css
“Don’t Believe Everything You See, Sophie”
#163 · · 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…
#162 · · 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, even being taught to developers.
#161 · · css
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.
Accelerated Mobile Pages, a Critical View
Last year Google introduced AMP and the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project. Independent of suggesting tech paternalism when AMP gets treated preferably in search rankings, I’ve been concerned about what the AMP spec entails exactly.
#159 ·
WordPress Themes and Web Development
Like everyone on this planet I work with WordPress. Just setting up a new project I ended up using and building on one of their default themes, Twenty Sixteen. Had I better not?
#158 ·
The Anatomy of a Coding Guideline
Coding guidelines produce consistency, help (code) usability, collaboration, and maintainability, and lead to quality. That is what we all typically learn in development practice. Now, what does a guideline consist of?
#157 ·
On Tailoring and Web Frameworks
After building early frameworks for GMX and Google I had rushed to squeeze my experience into a (literally) little book. In it there’s emphasis on a priority I’ve always deemed critical for us developers: the idea of tailoring…
#156 · · frameworks
That’s in a Guideline
About two weeks ago I ended a little lottery to give away signed copies of my last book, The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines. Here are feedback and winners.
#155 ·
What’s in a Guideline? Win a Copy of the Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines!
I give away five signed copies, and to win one just comment or tweet (to @ j9t), until April 30, why you deem coding guidelines important or what you find to be the most useful coding guideline.
#154 ·
Coding Guidelines, the Gist
What’s not to ♥ about coding standards.
#153 ·
The Law of Maintainability
One cannot not maintain. This is an important axiom, critical even when we recognize how little understanding and prioritization this topic enjoys in our industry…
#152 · · maintainability
The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines
Out of the blue! My latest book, The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines, is now available. It’s a brief introduction into the theory and practice of coding standards. Emphasis, as the title suggests, is on HTML and CSS, and furthermore on Google’s guidelines…
What I’ve Hated and What I’ve Loved About Web Development
In On Web Development and in other contexts I’ve alluded to wrapping up, ending my old career. That’s only correct to an extent. (In keeping with the intelligence community, always put everyone at risk by adding backdoors.)
#150 ·
The Problem of “Fire and Forget” in Web Design
If I were to pick the main issue in web design… I couldn’t answer immediately. I don’t think there are so many, but there are a few, they are very different, they operate on different scales, and so they’re hard to compare. One, however, is “fire and forget.”
The Law of User-Generated Code
Whenever you allow users to edit code of your website, you’re doomed. It’s only a matter of time until you need to give up and redo the entire website—and, adding insult to injury, alienate your users.
#148 · · css, maintainability
Analytics: Only When We Actually Use It
Here’s something so obvious, it isn’t anymore. Which is: We should only use analytics software when we actually use it. Not when we think we could might want to need it. And not when we only glance at it, every now and then.
#147 ·
On Web Development
I wrote another book. On Web Development. On Web Development is an ebook that collects most of the articles about web development (and web design) that I wrote between 2005 and 2015. Most articles as in most useful, most important, and also most controversial.
#146 · · books, maintainability, html, css, design
Web Standards: We’re F’ing It Up
It’s a problem to just change specs. But it’s an increasingly bigger problem not to clean and prune them. The intimidating complexity of web standard specs should precisely be a motivation, not a threat, to come up with a plan. It follows the populist version.
A Vision of Web Development
There is one thing every web developer should aspire to: writing the most minimal, semantically appropriate, valid HTML, and then never changing it. “Never” not in a sense of denial and refusal, but in the sense of a guiding light…
#144 · · html, minimalism, semantics, conformance, maintainability, quality
The Two Ground Rules for Using a Framework
Follow the documentation, don’t overwrite framework code. These two rules are golden.
#143 · · frameworks
Remember: April 9 Is CSS Naked Day
CSS Naked Day is coming up! Why the excitement? Because CSS Naked Day is a magnificent custom; the magnificent custom to, on one day of the year, strip websites of all styling. It’s awesome because—
#142 · · css, maintainability
The Truth About “!important”
Sometimes I wake up at night, full of agony, tears in my eyes. The Holiest Alliance Against !important is haunting me. I see their countless crusaders gallop at innocent web developers with merciless force, incessantly blowing their deafening horns…
#141 · · css
The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks
It’s out! My new book, The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks, is now available. I myself have been surprised by the sudden release, and while I’m still unsure about how print copies can be obtained, the book can now be downloaded for free at O’Reilly.
#140 · · books, html, css, frameworks
Web Design and Principles
Web design has become complex. More people, more ideas, more use cases, more technical innovations, more design variations, &c. pp. More makes for more complex. However, there’s a life line helping us with this complexity, as well as trends.
#139 · · design
Web Frameworks in a Nutshell
My next book is coming! “The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks.” I’m wrapping it up with the team of O’Reilly as we speak. In the book, I share much of my experience architecting, developing, and maintaining web frameworks, as I’ve done for Google, Aperto, and GMX…
#138 · · frameworks, quality
On the Deterioration of HTML/CSS Practices
Presentational markup for everyone.
#137 · · html, css, maintainability
Maintainable Social Script Integration
In my book, a website embeds all those third-party “share” and “like” and “+1” scripts like: this.
#136 · · javascript
CSS and Specificity
On one of CSS’ greatest features, going from using graphs for greater understanding to affirming fundamentals for saner coding.
#135 · · css
Google and HTML/CSS Code Quality
For much of Google’s life time there have been few Google web pages of high code quality. That had changed over the last years, but now there are regressions. On the rise and fall of Google’s websites.
#134 · · html, css, conformance, quality
CSS, DRY, and Code Optimization
Why we should minimize repetition in style sheets—perhaps through using declarations just once—, focus more on CSS optimization, and consider that avoiding problems is also a way of solving them.
#133 · · css, maintainability, optimization
On Declaration Sorting in CSS
I keep on seeing people advocate to sort declarations “by type.” And every time I wonder, why is this idea still going around? Type sorting is extraordinarily ineffective, for it’s extremely slow and consistently unreliable…
#132 · · css, maintainability