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Jens Oliver Meiert

Web Development × Engineering Management × Philosophy (13)

Articles and books on the craft of web development (with a focus on HTML/CSS optimization and maintainability), engineering management, and philosophy.

CSS: The Maintenance Issue #1 and How You Can Avoid It

The biggest—as most unnecessary—maintenance issue in web development is, as my recent research shows, style sheet naming and integration. Web developers use inadvisable style sheet names and inadvisable ways to integrate style sheets that force them


#109 · · , , ,

The Result of Maturity Is Simplicity

“Finally, it doesn’t lack some irony considering that web design gets often enough protected by the credo ‘the end justifies the means’ and pragmatism’s paid homage to. The question is whether you’re talking about unhealthy, sanctimonious pragmatism or—”

#108 · ·

Notes on XML, Elements, and Attributes

Knowledge of the design of markup languages is something I consider beneficial for my job as a web professional. A few notes on XML design, inspired by internal and external documentation.

#107 · ·

Why CSS Needs No Variables

CSS variables and constants are one of the top features web developers are asking for in web development fora, magazines, blogs, and on W3C’s www-style. Following a concept written by Daniel Glazman and Apple’s Dave Hyatt, the WebKit rendering engine


#106 · · ,

The Stupidest Style Sheet Name Ever

The last name you want to pick for your style sheet is “style.css”. Why is “style.css” such a poor CSS file name? The main reason is maintenance


#105 · · ,

CSS: Style the Non-Obvious

One of the qualities you have to acquire as a web developer is to see the non-obvious, and to use that skill to your code’s advantage. Let me explain by two simple examples.

#104 · · ,

Presenting
 the Google Shoe

They finally arrived, long longed for Google shoes, in this case the “Google j9t” model based on the Adidas ZX700. They’re not for sale but I might share the configuration I used to design them. The “Google j9t” may only be worn for dynamite fishing and important launches.

#103 · ·

Performance of CSS Selectors Is Irrelevant


if you like to have a strict read of Steve Souders’ recent research. We’ve still got few but now a few more numbers backing up what we always suspected, that merely optimizing selectors is micro-optimization.

#102 · · , ,

Website Optimization Measures, Part VI

In this episode: On the utilization of Google Friend Connect, maintenance of Google Analytics, sanity checks, type attributes, charset rules, cite elements, and ICRA labels. Fresh and sexy.

#101 · · ,

When to Split Style Sheets

Three factors influence whether it makes sense to split style sheets: probability, meaning (aka semantics), and granularity.

#100 · · ,

Another Survey (Including Website Usability Scale Template)

I’m doing it again: Do you have another 15 seconds to answer a couple of questions? The survey is based on the System Usability Scale (SUS) John Brooke presented in the 80s. Which means nothing less than that there’s another experiment taking place with me testing SUS.

#99 · · ,

Performance and RFC 2396

RFC 2396 specifies that relative URIs like //foo get resolved as http://foo. This means, if you link a resource like https://example.com/, @ href may as well just point to //example.com/.

#98 · · ,

Arial, Helvetica

An extension of my post on Arial and Helvetica: For those who want or have to use Arial as their standard font, there is no point in mentioning Helvetica anywhere in the code, as in arial, helvetica, sans-serif.

#97 · · ,

The Two Great Things About Validation (and Conformance)

There are two great things about validation: Validating helps technical understanding and thus contributes to awareness of respective specifications, and writing valid code is a sign of professionalism.

#96 · · ,

Browser Support: The Two Metrics That Count

There are two things that matter to determine what user agents—browsers—to support on a given site: First, what popularity (percentage of market) makes a browser important to support? Second, what browsers pass that threshold?

#95 · ·

5 Cool Ways to Support the W3C

I recently got a mail by someone interested in supporting the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) similar to how I do it. While replying I noticed that the information I was about to share might not be obvious to everyone, but still important


#94 · ·

My Year in Cities, 2008

Following Anne; I couldn’t resist.

#93 · ·

HTML vs. XHTML: Why HTML Wins

Document types are cool, and there are plenty of them. There are plenty, countless discussions about the “right” document type, too. Alas, these discussions may deal with irrelevant details or miss the point.

#92 · · ,

5 Tips To Deal With Right-to-Left Projects

Know what goes into your markup and what goes into your style sheets. It’s actually simple: When available, you should always use dedicated bidi markup to describe your content. CSS may not be available, and the specs actually say that


#91 · · ,

The Greatest Secret in Web Design

Alright I cheated, this isn’t a secret. Or an open secret. Or whatever. It’s that web design is a process. Good web design is an ongoing endeavor.

#90 · · , ,

WDR #2: Web Developers Needed for a Website

The Web Dev Report, issue #2, this time featuring a classic situation.

#89 · ·

How to Uncover Pseudo-Standardistas

There’s a growing group of developers that doesn’t help our attempts for faster, more accessible, more maintainable, and generally quality-oriented web development: pseudo-standardistas.

#88 · ·

WDR #1: Versioned Style Sheets

Ladies and gents, all I present’s
 the Web Dev Report, issue #1.

#87 · · ,

5 CSS Tips Every Web Developer Should Know About

Of all the tips this site shares, the following ones may be special. Let’s quickly run through what might be essential for every web developer to know about CSS. Main focus: maintainability, though differently.

#86 · · , ,

Website Optimization Measures, Part V

Almost half a year since the last article it’s about time to present version 5 of random website optimization measures, hopefully of use for your site as well. Short and crispy, to use a random German expression.

#85 · · ,

Thoughts on Disclaimers

Disclaimers are popular in Germany, both for websites and emails. Recently I came across the German Wikipedia article on disclaimers which talks about the topic in detail, and I could not but go for another “thoughts” post


#84 · ·

An Exercise for Emerging CSS Experts: Avoid IDs and Classes

To gain more expertise with CSS, there’s a great bonus level: Try to avoid IDs and classes altogether. That’s right: Write your markup without any IDs and classes.

#83 · · , ,

The Most Annoying Yet Most Important Task in Website Management


is link checking. There are tools out there, en masse, but we still have to run after professionals who neglect online fundamentals or don’t set up redirects—and with that waste other people’s time.

#82 · ·

meiert.com Survey Results

It’s one and a half months since I asked for your feedback about meiert.com, and I’ve finally decided to publish some of the results.

#81 · ·

Code Responsibly

Exactly.

#80 · ·

Accessibility Heuristics

You can bolster your accessibility knowledge by internalizing heuristics and ground rules. Review the guidelines and rules provided by the W3C and IBM.

#79 · · ,

Web Standards at Google

As an exception, I’m writing as a Googler here: At Google, we care about web standards. Officially, that’s no news, but given repeated criticism for the code of our pages, maybe it is.

#78 · · ,

The Most Important Thing Is to Get the HTML Right

Why? Because it’s the markup that makes for most of the code of a site and is hence key to cost efficiency and maintainability; because it carries meaning and is important for accessibility; because it often has an impact on performance; and because it is the prerequisite for online success.

#77 · · , , , , ,

When Guidelines Should Be Descriptive or Prescriptive

Every time I’m putting up guidelines or conventions one of the decisions I need to make is whether the guidelines, or which parts of them, should be descriptive or prescriptive. For coding guidelines this could mean the difference between, say, “the markup should be valid” and “the markup must be valid”


#76 · · , , ,

How to Share Code With Users

If you share HTML/CSS code with users: Make sure that the code is valid and that ideally, it works with both HTML and XHTML. Focusing on valid code—a step towards quality code—should be obvious. “Invalidating” other people’s sites isn’t nice


#75 · · ,

Asking for Your Feedback

I’d like to ask for 15 seconds (meaning exactly 15 seconds) of your precious time for a short survey related to this website, to learn about your perspective.

#74 · ·

To Be Clear (on Conditional Comments and Resets)

My articles on Conditional Comments and “reset” style sheets belong to the most popular articles on the respective topics not just on this site, but apparently on the Web. Now, it looks like I could still clarify my standpoint.

#73 · · , ,

Best Practices for ID and Class Names

I’m working on another article for German Dr. Web mag, this time covering recommendations for IDs and classes, an issue likely as old as the Web itself. Taking a different approach than usual I’m feeling free to publish a “guerrilla sneak preview” in this place.

#72 · · ,

A Few Words on HTML/CSS Frameworks

Public, or open, or external, HTML/CSS frameworks are rarely a good idea. Why? Because framework developers are outside of your organization and cannot know your needs. This simple fact, the inevitable ignorance of a third party, means that—

#71 · · , , , ,

Updating a Definition of Art

When I tried to define art, design, and decoration, I described art as: “Art hides. Art has a meaning, and it hides it, on purpose. Art delivers a message, and that message is hidden, on purpose. It is an art to create art. Art is unusable, by definition.” Continued.

#70 · · ,

Expertise and the Inverted Parabola

I’m not a mathematician!—but it looks like applying one’s experience and expertise results in an inverted parabola when it comes to the amount of work invested. That is, knowledge or its use, respectively, seem to mean that beginners don’t know what to do and thus don’t do much, while experts


#69 · ·

Yes, You Can Use HTML 5

You can already use HTML 5: Just use <!DOCTYPE html> as your HTML documents’ document type. This works even though you will not yet benefit from new elements and attributes.

#68 · · ,

Compared to What?


is probably one of the most important questions there is. “Compared to what?” is the question that should be answered every time it is about data, be it through charts, in newspapers, on websites, or in conversations. Yet it is rarely asked, rarely answered, and people end up with less or even false information.

#67 · ·

10 Measures for Continuous Website Maintenance

Website maintenance and quality assurance constitute the backbone of high-quality offers of information, and they make the difference between amateur and professional web design.

#66 · · , ,

When Validation Becomes Unimportant

Validation becomes unimportant only once you’re ahead of the game. Even then, truly mastering HTML and CSS, it’s best to stick with valid markup and styling. Improving latency might constitute the only exception—if at all.

#65 · · , , ,

Thoughts on Email

Email was, is, and will remain the Web’s true killer application, but spam, top-posting, incompetent use of newsletters, and the HTML email problem mean serious challenges.

#64 · ·

Web Design: 10 Additional Research Findings You Should Know

Following up on last year’s post on web design research, here’s another collection of research findings, this time featuring further reading.

#63 · ·

Optional Tags in HTML 4

For your convenience, here’s a list of all optional tags according to the HTML 4.01 Strict DTD. Omitting these tags allows to save markup and thus file size—if you choose to. I created this list because even nine years after release of the HTML 4 specification


#62 · · ,

Über-Semantics

Premasagar Rose recently published a great demonstration of what can be considered â€œĂŒber-semantic” code. I guess we can thank the microformats community here, which carefully avoids to rely on the semantics of HTML elements but


#61 · · , ,

Tip: vi Configuration

Long story short: It’s easy to modify the vi editor’s standard configuration. The most useful changes probably relate to encoding (UTF-8) and display of line numbers


#60 · ·