Top all-time · #1475
Jens Oliver Meiert
Personal blog · meiert.com/blogwebpoliticsphilosophy
Jens Oliver Meiert's personal blog at meiert.com covers web, politics and philosophy. Since 2008, 48 different Hacker News readers have linked it 61 times, most often “Optional HTML: Everything You Need to Know”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (18) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Jens Oliver Meiert's pages on optional HTML (omitting tags and quotes) and his HTML elements index, which is based on the WHATWG Living Standard, as references for HTML practice.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Called a handy reference on optional HTML, "very good", and "great value"; the elements index is praised as WHATWG-based.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 18 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
I’m Jens Oliver Meiert, and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I specialize in the craft of frontend development, write tech and non-tech books, and love trying things out. Follow my work on meiert.com.
Most-linked posts?
- Optional HTML: Everything You Need to Know5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-08-21
- /en/indices/html-elements/3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2017-02-15
- Must Work Without JavaScript?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-11-22
- 0 of the Global Top 100 Websites Use Valid HTML (in 2022)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-09-13
- Only 0.5% of the Global Top Websites Use Valid HTML2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-09-11
- /en/indices/html-elements/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-07-07
What Hacker News says?
Quotes are completely optional on attribute values in HTML5 if the value doesn't have certain characters like spaces which will require quoting I've found this article a handy reference on all the stuff it's safe to leave out https://meiert.com/en/blog/optional-html/
Comment linking /en/blog/optional-html/
on “Show HN: htmz – a low power tool for HTML”Submitted Ignore AMP as a story · 426 points
HN discussionAnother source explaining optional HTML in depth: https://meiert.com/en/blog/optional-html/
Comment linking /en/blog/optional-html/
on “How to build a personal webpage from scratch”Submitted A Short Guide to Minimal Web Development (2018) as a story · 277 points
HN discussionMDN indeed is (and should remain) the canonical resource, but projects like this could be nice additions. https://meiert.com/en/indices/html-elements/ - another nice minimalist project with great value.
Comment linking /en/indices/html-elements/
on “Show HN: A guide to all HTML5 elements and attributes”Submitted 70% Repetition in Style Sheets: Data on How We Fail at CSS Optimization as a story · 111 points
HN discussionThis is very good: https://meiert.com/en/indices/html-elements/
Comment linking /en/indices/html-elements/
on “Every HTML Element”Submitted AI will never be ethical or safe as a story · 46 points
HN discussionExactly what I was thinking, by omitting the <html> <head> and <body> HTML can be quite concise [1]. Additionally the closing </li> can be omitted from lists and <li> barely a step over using - for bullet points. The worst part about HTML is the links, though. Anchor tags are awful. Having to repeatedly type <a href="..."> and closing with </a> is wayyy too boilerplate much for for something that is simply surrounde…
Comment linking /en/blog/optional-html/
on “We should have Markdown-rendered websites”Submitted CSS Properties Index as a story · 40 points
HN discussionThe author mentions something about omitting HTML tags and links to another article of his own, which could explain this (I haven't read it yet): https://meiert.com/en/blog/optional-html/
Comment linking /en/blog/optional-html/
on “A Short Guide to Minimal Web Development (2018)”Submitted Only 0.5% of the Global Top Websites Use Valid HTML as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThanks to Aaron for posting this. Such a great reminder. Anyone interested in this subject, check out a series of three very tiny books called “UPGRADE YOUR HTML” by Jens Oliver Meiert. They give great step-by-step examples for eliminating optional tags and attributes, reducing HTML to its cleanest simplest valid form. The author is a super-expert in this specific subject, working with Google and W3C on this. His bi…
Comment linking /en/biography/
on “Write HTML Right”Submitted The Reminder Trick as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThe only web pages that don't function on mobile are ones which have been optimized for desktop. Although it's rare to find them nowadays, this is false for pages with no CSS at all. By no CSS I mean not even the infamous proprietary viewport meta tag... which is a posteriori being made CSS. Access for instance the basically unstyled page [1] with a $1000+ smartphone of our day... and you're likely to find unreadabl…
Comment linking /en/indices/html-elements/
on “PDF Is the World's Most Important File Format”Submitted In Critical Defense of Front End Development as a story · 4 points
HN discussionDon't overcomplicate things: - Have only one CSS-file, unless your project is huge . - Never use IDs - Avoid reset CSS (espescially if you can ignore IE6/7 - If you think you need variables (like in SASS), you are probably thinking about it the wrong way - Give classes functional names, not presentational - Linebreaks after declaration. (Makes your CSS-file easier to navigate) - Remember that you can use you media q…
Comment linking /en/blog/20090527/css-maintenance-issue-1/
on “Ask HN: Anyone have a really smart way to organize css?”Submitted A Minimal CSS Starter as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWhy not eliminate quotes in production, if you know the value doesn't need quotes? That's still valid, it's optional HTML: https://meiert.com/en/blog/optional-html/ Sorting content alphabetically and that sort of thing to improve compression may be silly code golfing and impractical for page content, but on the other hand I don't see that it costs you anything (aside from time experimenting with it) when applied to…
Comment linking /en/blog/optional-html/
on “Making a Website Under 1kB”Submitted The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks as a story · 3 points
HN discussionExample of low repetition from his page: view-source: https://meiert.com/setup/default.css If this is worthwhile doing, a source tool to transform it would make more sense IMO.
Comment linking /setup/default.css
on “70% Repetition in Style Sheets: Data on How We Fail at CSS Optimization”Submitted Should We Never Use Non-Logical Properties? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHere's one also by WHATWG, with all the relevant changes: http://meiert.com/en/indices/html-elements/
Comment linking /en/indices/html-elements/
on “The Elements of HTML”Submitted A Short Story of the Google Error Page as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPlease use http://meiert.com/en/indices/html-elements/ instead, as it’s based on the WHATWG HTML Living Standard rather than W3C’s versioned fork.
Comment linking /en/indices/html-elements/
on “The Elements of HTML”Submitted Overview of the 50 Web Design and Development Glossaries as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI'm not taking sides yet, but . . . "why CSS needs no variables" http://meiert.com/en/blog/20090401/why-css-needs-no-variable...
Comment linking /en/blog/20090401/why-css-needs-no-variables/
on “Coding Horror: What's Wrong With CSS”Submitted 2024: 0.5% of the Global Top Websites Use Valid HTML as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThere isn't even a need for the <head> and <body> tags at all. This is valid HTML 4.01 Strict: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"> <html lang="en"> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <title>Here's our title</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="stylesheet"> <p>Here's our body And this is valid HTML 5: <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Here's…
Comment linking /en/blog/20080429/best-html-template/
on “Google homepage doesn't close html tags, on purpose”Submitted Calling Someone "Too Old" Is Ageist as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
