Apr 12One million broken web sites — and a way to prevent thatWebaim.org releases an annual report called the WebAIM Million. This is a deep analysis of the one million most visited web sites how accessible they are. And every year the result is pretty grim. Across the one million home pages, 50,829,406 distinct accessibility errors were detected — an average of…Accessibility4 min read
Mar 14Noise cancellation for developersI like noise cancelling headphones. Using them, I can sleep better on planes and find much more detail in music I enjoy. In the office, they are a visual clue that I am currently unavailable for feedback as I want to concentrate on a task at hand.Development And Growth16 min read
Dec 20, 2021The web starts on page 4After 25 years of working for, on and with the web, I am looking at the current state of it and I don’t like it. There is still a lot of beautiful, creative and amazing work out there, but on the whole, we lost an amazing opportunity. In its place…Search Engines7 min read
Nov 1, 2021Developer Tools secrets that shouldn’t be secretsThis is a talk that I’ve given at CityJS this September. I am a principal product manager for developer tools in Microsoft Edge and these are things I encountered during working on the tools, documenting them and going through user feedback. You can watch the recording of the talk on…Web Development11 min read
Aug 6, 2021Happy Birthday, WWW — 30 years of mining a landfill for valid codeToday the World Wide Web is 30 years old. I’ve worked on it since 1997 or so and I saw a lot of technologies and design trends come and go. I’ve also seen a lot of “this is much better and will replace the web” solutions come and go. What…Www4 min read
Jul 20, 2021The accessibility stalemateOver the course of my career I’ve seen a lot of excellent accessibility presentations and learned a lot. That’s because I worked in the accessibility space and went to specialist conferences. Web development conferences also have accessibility talks and their number is rising. But often these don’t go past the…Accessibility4 min read
Jul 15, 2021How many happy users did your product have this month?The other day, I mulled over the problem of bad user experience resulting in more usage of products. And I followed up with wondering how we could get to a “happy user” metric. When measuring the success of software products, data is king. When I moved from DevRel…Usability4 min read
Published in UX Collective·Updated Jul 1, 2021The unseen benefits of accessibilityA few days ago I posted a graph I found some time ago that jokingly explained the benefits of subtitles in movies and tweeted about it. The tweet went wild and so far has 35 answers, 290 retweets, 1,500 likes and 150,000 impressions. I love that the answers are…Accessibility4 min read
Jun 16, 2021Shut up, old man…Often you will be part of meetings where people show demos of what your product could look like in the future. These are brain-storming, visionary meetings that can have great outcomes. The idea is to not think in boundaries but in benefits for your users and customers. The longer you…Product Management4 min read
Jun 9, 2021Tools and Tips to Optimise Your Workflow as a DeveloperI have a new class on Skillshare where I am teaching how to be a developer that is easy to work with in a world of home office, geographical and temporal distribution and how to communicate across departments. You can check the introduction video here: Here’s what I am…4 min read