Web Development (6)
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.
#196 · · 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…
#195 ·
An Ode to Smashing Magazine
Excitement about a success story.
#194 ·
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 micromanage our work for gains that aren’t noticeable.
#193 · · 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.
#192 · · 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.
#191 · · 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.
#190 ·
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.
#189 · · css, optimization
5 Reasons Against Resets, Normalizers, Reboots
A word about one of CSS’s horsemen of the apocalypse.
#188 · · 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.
#187 · · 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…
#186 · · 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.
#185 · · 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.
#184 · · frameworks, quality
CSS @-Rules, an Overview
From @charset to @viewport. Or from @bottom-center to @top-right-corner.
#183 · · 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?
#182 · · 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…
#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 · · html, css, javascript
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 · · management