A Short Guide to Minimal Web Development · Jens Oliver MeiertUse my latest work: latest tech book · latest non-tech book · latest optimization tool · latest defense tool<br>A Short Guide to Minimal Web Development<br>Published on Sep 25, 2018 (updated Jul 14, 2023), filed under development, minimalism. (Share this post, e.g., on Mastodon or on Bluesky.)This is one of 180 articles that you can also read in an ebook: On Web Development II.There’s an art and even a bit of magic around simple frontend code. I love researching such code, and keeping code simple. Well beyond the point of understandable-simple, then, instead not-so-understandable-simple but rather minimal-simple. For that reason have I enjoyed writing about “best templates” and suggested omitting optional tags and other technically unnecessary things like unneeded attribute quotes. But I have also contemplated writing a short book about the matter.That book I started writing last year, but it didn’t assume the structure and size that I imagined for it. Or, I wasn’t quite sure about the material I ended up gathering. Maybe I turned lazy. And therefore (and not for the first time), instead of just writing another “little book” I decided to just publish what I so far collected. All to ponder, how could we learn, or could we teach, web development, quite off the current “web app and tool all the things” path.Oh, no. That’s something I know nothing about. (Copyright King Features Syndicate, Inc., distr. Bulls.)Contents<br>Master the Core TechnologiesRead the SpecsPracticePublishFamiliarize with Related TopicsPrimary SubjectsSecondary SubjectsDo It YourselfRecommendedTo Be AvoidedFind the Shortest WayKeep It SimpleTailorKnow Simple and SimpleAutomateReviewMaster the Core Technologies<br>Beginners achieve simplicity because they don’t know about all the options and possibilities. (One could liken this to an inverted parabola.) But as professionals and experts, as this article wants it, we cannot approach minimalism from not knowing what’s there, and pat ourselves on the back when we wrote something simple just because we couldn’t produce anything else.Read the Specs<br>The first step for mastering appears to come through a thorough look at the technical specifications. While the specs aren’t always kind in terms of how easy they are to understand, and while they’re not small in size, they offer the greatest degree of precision and detail. As the goal is mastery, precision and detail are more important than convenience.Some of the specs to work through are:Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)ECMAScript 2017 (ES8)Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1)Personally, I’ve never worked through any ECMAScript spec—and my scripts will show—but I wished to include them here for my own encouragement as well. Then, ES and WCAG only carry version numbers because these aren’t, at the moment, “living” specifications as are HTML and CSS. Pick the latest relevant versions of these standards.Some important topics, like performance or maintainability, aren’t covered by particular standards and specifications, but are only accessible through literature. (A future edit of this article may cover recommendations.)Practice<br>Not necessarily after but while familiarizing with the specs, it will be useful to put the knowledge into practice. That means: developing. Developing as much as possible.One of the greatest aspects about web development is probably that the results show immediately—save an .html file, open it in a browser, test any content, structure, styling, scripting changes instantly.This ease of trying things is an advantage. It allows us to be very fast in setting up test cases as well as entire sites and apps, and therefore to build up experience.This practice seems important for every web developer. The following habits are of help:Try newly learned things immediately (for example, through local test files).Set up a personal website.Help friends and family with their websites.Work on websites pro bono.Contribute to open source projects.Publish<br>Practice inevitably leads to the here final point of technology mastery: making one’s work public.This exposure has several great side effects. The scrutiny it brings may seem a bit intimidating at first, but a novice need not fear but welcome scrutiny: It means great opportunities to become better, faster.The benefit, then, should usually consist of great extra motivation: One wishes to present one’s work well, and hence focuses more on the output’s quality; and this focus comes as an asset for all one’s professional work. One takes the work more seriously and acquires the necessary caution. Very often, too, one enjoys one’s work more as well, because publishing means sharing, and shared work can be of use for others.Publishing, as an important step for exposure, feedback, professionalism, also sets people up to build their portfolio: Every published work can add credibility to one’s professional claims....