Blog
Here you will find a number of articles I have written the last few years. The subjects vary but are usually around web development, especially HTML5, but other topics are explored too.
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real.digital
Just a short note to say that as from today I will be working as a Senior Frontend Engineer at real.digital. After five years at trivago, I felt it was time to move on and look for a new challenge, …
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Again
Once again it’s almost been a year since my last post. Sadly not much has changed, I am still tired. The things I mentioned in that post are still the same, and people still don’t seem to …
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Tired
I haven’t posted anything here in over a year. I have been struggling for a while in general with writing, I seem to have simply lost interest in it. But on reflection I was trying to work out …
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On Specialisation
Specialisation is nothing new, and it is required across many roles in many industries, and the web industry is no exception, although one particular area of specialisation in our industry tends to …
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The Diple
I am always looking for small but different changes to add to my website, and during my recent redesign this was no different, the active state on the main navigation being a small example of this. …
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Hard Refresh
As some of you may have noticed, I have refreshed my website again although this time there is more than just a redesign behind what has been done. As well as changing the look of the site, I also …
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The :focus-within pseudo class
Today I came across a new CSS pseudo class that will be very handy for web developers who are styling focus states.
The
:focus-within
pseudo class becomes active when an element itself has focus or … -
HTML5 Video and Multiple Track Display
Normally when using using subtitles or captions with HTML5 video, even if you provide different track files in different languages, you will only want to display one set to the user at a time. …
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Help with WebVTT
Over the last few months I have received a number of requests via email for help with HTML5 video subtitles via WebVTT. Some of the questions have been very specific, whilst others refer to general …
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The Frontend Scientist
A web developer is a generic term for a developer who works on frontend and/or backend code, and whilst it can be confidently said that those who work on backend code are also programmers, the same …
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Assumptions
In the web development world, those of us who preach best practices and who advise other developers how they might do something, often make too many assumptions. Most of us know that
assumptions are …
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On Accessibility and the Lack of Proper HTML
When Ethan Marcotte first wrote about responsive web design back in , the development world cheered, embraced what he said, and went forth and built sites responsively. This, of course, was a …
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WebVTT and Audio
I have written a number of posts in the past on WebVTT and video subtitles it has always struck me that the technology is surely just as useful for HTML5 audio and it is for video, so I decided to …
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Hello trivago
A change is as good as a rest they say, and the time has come for me to move on. After over three and a half years as a senior web developer at pixolith, in I am moving to trivago where I …
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Building a Semantic Calendar in HTML5
Recently, developer Wilfred Nas asked an interesting question on Twitter with regards to calendars being traditionally marked up in HTML with tables, and should they perhaps be lists instead. This …
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Bugs and Change Requests
As developers, dealing with bugs, issues, and change requests is part of our jobs, whether we like it or not. But one thing that those who report such things to us can get wrong, is correctly …
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Getting Appcache’s Fallback to work, crossbrowser
Recently I decided to make my simple website available offline using HTML5‘s application cache. You’d think that this would be a fairly simple procedure but it turned out not to be so. As …
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Refresh
As frequent visitors to this site may have noticed, I have recently refreshed this site’s design, and whilst it is still nothing fancy (for I am no designer!), it maintains its minimalistic …
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Accessibility Resources
Accessibility is something that sadly often gets ignored by developers, myself included, and in an attempt to increase my knowledge in this field I asked on Twitter if people could suggest some sites …
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HTML5 Video Captions – Current Browser Status
The topic of HTML5 videos and captions is something that I have written extensively about in the past, specifically talking about creating your own UI via JavaScript to access multiple tracks since …