Tags: answers

P&B: Jeremy Keith – Manu

In which I answer questions about blogging.

I’ve put a copy of this on my own site too.

Let’s start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

My name is Jeremy Keith. I’m from Ireland. Cork, like. Now I live in Brighton on the south coast of England.

I play traditional Irish music on the mandolin. I also play bouzouki in the indie rock band Salter Cane.

I also make websites. I made a community website all about traditional Irish music that’s been going for decades. It’s called The Session.

Back in 2005 I co-founded a design agency called Clearleft. It’s still going strong twenty years later (I mean, as strong as any agency can be going in these volatile times).

Oh, and I’ve written some nerdy books about making websites. The one I’m most proud of is called Resilient Web Design.

What’s the story behind your blog?

I was living in Freiburg in southern Germany in the 1990s. That’s when I started making websites. My first ever website was for a band I was playing in at the time. My second ever website was for someone else’s band. Then I figured I should have my own website.

I didn’t want the domain name to be in German but I also didn’t want it to be in English. So I got adactio.com.

To begin with, it wasn’t a blog. It was more of a portfolio-type professional site. Although if you look at it now, it looks anything other than professional. Would ya look at that—the frameset still works!

Anyway, after moving to Brighton at the beginning of the 21st century, I decided I wanted to have one of those blogs that all the cool kids had. I thought I was very, very late to the game. This was in November 2001. That’s when I started my blog, though I just called it (and continue to call it) a journal.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

Sometimes a thing will pop into my head and I’ll blog it straight away. More often, it bounces around inside my skull for a while. Sometimes it’s about spotting connections, like if if I’ve linked to a few different things that have some kind of connective thread, I’ll blog in order to point out the connections.

I never write down those things bouncing around in my head. I know I probably should. But then if I’m going to take the time to write down an idea for a blog post, I might as well write the blog post itself.

I never write drafts. I just publish. I can always go back and fix any mistakes later. The words are written on the web, not carved in stone.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I mostly just blog from home, sitting at my laptop like I’m doing now. I have no idea whether there’s any connection between physical space and writing. That said, I do like writing on trains.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

I use my own hand-rolled hodge-podge of PHP and MySQL that could only very generously be described as a content management system. It works for me. It might not be the most powerful system, but it’s fairly simple. I like having control over everything. If there’s some feature I want, it’s up to me to add it.

So yeah, it’s a nice boring LAMP stack—Linux Apache MySQL PHP. It’s currently hosted on Digital Ocean. I use DNSimple for all the DNS stuff and Fastmail for my email. I like keeping those things separate so that I don’t have a single point of failure.

I realise this all makes me sound kind of paranoid, but when you’ve been making websites for as long as I have, you come to understand that you can’t rely on anything sticking around in the long term so a certain amount of paranoia is justified.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

I’m not sure. I’m not entirely comfortable about using a database. It feels more fragile than just having static files. But I do cache the blog posts as static HTML too, so I’m not entirely reliant on the database. And having a database allows me to do fun relational stuff like search.

If I were starting from scratch, I probably wouldn’t end up making the same codebase I’ve got now, but I almost certainly would still be aiming to keep it as simple as possible. Cleverness isn’t good for code in the long term.

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what’s your position on people monetising personal blogs?

I’ve got hosting costs but that’s pretty much it. I don’t make any money from my website.

That Irish traditional music website I mentioned, The Session, that does accept donations to cover the costs. As well as hosting, there’s a newsletter to pay for, and third-party mapping services.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

You should absolutely check out Walknotes by Denise Wilton.

It’s about going out in the morning to pick up litter before work. From that simple premise you get some of the most beautiful writing on the web. Every week there’s a sentence that just stops me in my tracks. I love it.

We wife, Jessica Spengler, also has a wonderful blog, but I would say that, wouldn’t I?

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

You know I mentioned that The Session is funded by donations? Well, actually, this month—April 2025—any donations go towards funding something different; bursary sponsorship places for young musicians to attend workshops at the Belfest Trad Fest who otherwise wouldn’t be able to go:

thesession.org/donate

So if you’ve ever liked something I’ve written on my blog, you can thank me by contributing a little something to that.

Cheers,
Jeremy

5 Questions for Jeremy Keith · Frontend Dogma

If you like the prospect of an old man ranting at clouds, this is for you.

I’ve been tagged in a good ol’-fashioned memetic chain letter, first by Jon and then by Luke. Only by answering these questions can my soul find peace…

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

All the cool kids were doing it. I distinctly remember thinking it was far too late to start blogging. Clearly I had missed the boat. That was in the year 2001.

So if you’re ever thinking of starting something but you think it might be too late …it isn’t.

Back then, I wrote:

I’ll try and post fairly regularly but I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep.

I’m glad I didn’t commit myself but I’m also glad that I’m still posting 24 years later.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?

I use my own hand-cobbled mix of PHP and MySQL. Before that I had my own hand-cobbled mix of PHP and static XML files.

On the one hand, I wouldn’t recommend anybody to do what I’ve done. Just use an off-the-shelf content management system and start publishing.

On the other hand, the code is still working fine decades later (with the occasional tweak) and the control freak in me likes knowing what every single line of code is doing.

It’s very bare-bones though.

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

I usually open a Mardown text editor and write in that. I use the Mac app Focused which was made by Realmac software. I don’t think you can even get hold of it these days, but it does the job for me. Any Markdown text editor would do though.

Then I copy what I’ve written and paste it into the textarea of my hand-cobbled CMS. It’s pretty rare for me to write directly into that textarea.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

When I’m supposed to be doing something else.

Blogging is the greatest procrastination tool there is. You’re skiving off doing the thing you should be doing, but then when you’ve published the blog post, you’ve actually done something constructive so you don’t feel too bad about avoiding that thing you were supposed to be doing.

Sometimes it takes me a while to get around to posting something. I find myself blogging out loud to my friends, which is a sure sign that I need to sit down and bash out that blog post.

When there’s something I’m itching to write about but I haven’t ’round to it yet, it feels a bit like being constipated. Then, when I finally do publish that blog post, it feels like having a very satisfying bowel movement.

No doubt it reads like that too.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

I publish immediately. I’ve never kept drafts. Usually I don’t even save theMarkdown file while I’m writing—I open up the text editor, write the words, copy them, paste them into that textarea and publish it. Often it takes me longer to think of a title than it takes to write the actual post.

I try to remind myself to read it through once to catch any typos, but sometimes I don’t even do that. And you know what? That’s okay. It’s the web. I can go back and edit it at any time. Besides, if I miss a typo, someone else will catch it and let me know.

Speaking for myself, putting something into a draft (or even just putting it on a to-do list) is a guarantee that it’ll never get published. So I just write and publish. It works for me, though I totally understand that it’s not for everyone.

What’s your favourite post on your blog?

I’ve got a little section of “recommended reading” in the sidebar of my journal:

• Split
• Web! What is it good for?
• Seams
• Hyperdrive
• Design doing
• Iron Man and me

But I’m not sure I could pick just one.

I’m very proud of the time I wrote 100 posts in 100 days and each post was exactly 100 words long. That might be my favourite tag.

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

I like making little incremental changes. Usually this happens at Indie Web Camps. I add some little feature or tweak.

I definitely won’t be redesigning. But I might add another “skin” or two. I’ve got one of those theme-switcher things, y’see. It was like a little CSS Zen Garden before that existed. I quite like having redesigns that are cumulative instead of destructive.

Next?

You. Yes, you.

In just a couple of weeks, I’ll be heading to Bristol for Pixel Pioneers. The line-up looks really, really good …with the glaring exception of the opening talk, which I’ll be delivering. But once that’s done, I’m very much looking forward to enjoying the rest of the day’s talks.

There are still tickets available if you fancy joining me.

This will be my second time speaking at this conference. I spoke at the inaugural conference back in 2017 when I gave a talk called Evaluating Technology. This time my talk is called Declarative Design.

A few weeks back, Oliver asked me some questions about my upcoming talk. I figured I’d post my answers here…

Welcome back to Pixel Pioneers! You return with another keynote - how do you manage to stay so ever-enthusiastic about designing for the web?

Well, I’d say my enthusiasm is mixed with frustration. And that’s always been the case. Just as I’ve always found new things that excite me about the World Wide Web, there are just as many things that upset me.

But that’s okay. Both forces can be motivating. When I find myself writing a blog post or preparing a talk, the impetus might be “This is so cool! Check this out!” or it might be “This is so maddening! What’s happening!?” …or perhaps a mix of both.

But to answer your question, the World Wide Web never stays still so there’s always something to get excited about. Equally, the longer the web exists, the more sense it makes to examine the fundamental bedrock—HTML, accessibility,progressive enhancement—and see how they’re just as important as ever. And that’s also something to get excited about!

Without too many spoilers, what can we expect to take away from your talk?

I’m hoping to provide people with a lens that they can use to examine their tools, processes, and approaches to designing for the web. It’s a fairly crude lens—it divides the world into a binary split that I’ve borrowed from the world of programming; imperative and declarative languages. But it’s a surprisingly thought-provoking angle.

Along the way I’ll also be pointing out some of the incredible things that we can do with CSS now. In the past few years there’s been an explosion in capabilities.

But this won’t be a code-heavy presentation. It’s mostly about the ideas. I’ll be referencing some projects by other people that I’m very excited by.

What other web design and development tools, techniques and technologies are you currently most excited about?

Outside of the world of CSS—which is definitely where a lot of the most exciting developments are happening—I’m really interested in the View Transitions API. If it delivers on its promise, it could be a very useful nail in the coffin of uneccessary single page apps. But I’m a little nervous. Right now the implementation only works for single page apps, which makes it an incentive to use that model. I really, really hope that the multipage version ships soon.

But honestly, I probably get most excited about discovering some aspect of HTML that I wasn’t aware of. Even after all these years the language can still surprise me.

And on the flipside, what bugs you most about the web at the moment?

How much time have you got?

Seriously though, the thing that’s really bugged me for the past decade is the increasing complexity of “modern” frontend development when it isn’t driven by user needs. Yes, I’m talking about JavaScript frameworks like React and the assumption that everything should be a single page app.

Honestly, the mindset became so ubiquitous that I felt like I must be missing something. But no, the situation really has spiralled out of control, much to the detriment of end users.

Luckily we’re starting to see the pendulum swing back. The proponents of trickle-down developer convenience are having to finally admit that it’s bollocks.

I don’t care if the move back to making websites is re-labelled as “isomorphic server-rendered multi-page apps.” As long as we make sensible architectural decisions, that’s all that matters.

What’s next, Jeremy?

Right now I’m curating the line-up for this year’s UX London conference which is the week after Pixel Pioneers. As you know, conference curation is a lot of work, but it’s also very rewarding. I’m really proud of the line-up.

It’s been a while since the last season of the Clearleft podcast. I hope to remedy that soon. It takes a lot of effort to make even one episode, but again, it’s very rewarding.

Pixel Pioneers Bristol 2023 Speaker Spotlight: Jeremy Keith

Oliver asked me some questions about my upcoming talk at Pixel Pioneers in Bristol in June. Here are my answers.

How Yahoo Became an Internet Villain - The Atlantic

Andy, Jason, and Maciej testify against Yahoo.

I was supposed to be in Plymouth yesterday, giving the opening talk at this year’s Future Sync conference. Obviously, that train journey never happened, but the conference did.

The organisers gave us speakers the option of pre-recording our talks, which I jumped on. It meant that I wouldn’t be reliant on a good internet connection at the crucial moment. It also meant that I was available to provide additional context—mostly in the form of a deluge of hyperlinks—in the chat window that accompanied the livestream.

The whole thing went very smoothly indeed. Here’s the video of my talk. It was The Layers Of The Web, which I’ve only given once before, at Beyond Tellerrand Berlin last November (in the Before Times).

As well as answering questions in the chat room, people were also asking questions in Sli.do. But rather than answering those questions there, I was supposed to respond in a social medium of my choosing. I chose my own website, with copies syndicated to Twitter.

Here are those questions and answers…

The first few questions were about last years’s CERN project, which opens the talk:

Based on what you now know from the CERN 2019 WorldWideWeb Rebuild project—what would you have done differently if you had been part of the original 1989 Team?

I responded:

Actually, I think the original WWW project got things mostly right. If anything, I’d correct what came later: cookies and JavaScript—those two technologies (which didn’t exist on the web originally) are the source of tracking & surveillance.

The one thing I wish had been done differently is I wish that JavaScript were a same-origin technology from day one:

https://adactio.com/journal/16099

Next question:

How excited were you when you initially got the call for such an amazing project?

My predictable response:

It was an unbelievable privilege! I was so excited the whole time—I still can hardly believe it really happened!

https://adactio.com/journal/14803

https://adactio.com/journal/14821

Later in the presentation, I talked about service workers and progressive web apps. I got a technical question about that:

Is there a limit to the amount of local storage a PWA can use?

I answered:

Great question! Yes, there are limits, but we’re generally talking megabytes here. It varies from browser to browser and depends on the available space on the device.

But files stored using the Cache API are less likely to be deleted than files stored in the browser cache.

More worrying is the announcement from Apple to only store files for a week of browser use:

https://adactio.com/journal/16619

Finally, there was a question about the over-arching theme of the talk…

Great talk, Jeremy. Do you encounter push-back when using the term “Progressive Enhancement”?

My response:

Yes! …And that’s why I never once used the phrase “progressive enhancement” in my talk. 🙂

There’s a lot of misunderstanding of the term. Rather than correct it, I now avoid it:

https://adactio.com/journal/9195

Instead of using the phrase “progressive enhancement”, I now talk about the benefits and effects of the technique: resilience, universality, etc.

A Book Apart, Get to Know Jeremy Keith

My publishers asked me some questions. My answers turned out to be more revealing of my inner demons than I was expecting. I hope this isn’t too much oversharing, but I found it quite cathartic.

My greatest fear for the web is that it becomes the domain of an elite priesthood of developers. I firmly believe that, as Tim Berners-Lee put it, “this is for everyone.” And I don’t just mean it’s for everyone to use—I believe it’s for everyone to make as well. That’s why I get very worried by anything that raises the barrier to entry to web design and web development.

It’s ironic that, at the same time as we can do so much more with less when it comes to the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in browsers, many developers are choosing to make things more complicated by introducing complex tool chains, frameworks and processes.

Best Practices With CSS Grid Layout — Smashing Magazine

A great set of answers from Rachel to frequently asked questions about CSS grid. She addresses the evergreen question of when to use flexbox and when to use grid:

I tend to use Flexbox for components where I want the natural size of items to strongly control their layout, essentially pushing the other items around.

A sign that perhaps Flexbox isn’t the layout method I should choose is when I start adding percentage widths to flex items and setting flex-grow to 0. The reason to add percentage widths to flex items is often because I’m trying to line them up in two dimensions (lining things up in two dimensions is exactly what Grid is for).

Answers for young people - Tim Berners-Lee

Many, many years ago, Tim Berners-Lee wrote this page of answers to (genuinely) frequently asked questions he got from school kids working on reports. I absolutely love the clear straightforward language he uses to describe concepts like hypertext, packet switching, and HTTP.

Systems Smart Enough To Know When They’re Not Smart Enough | Big Medium

I can forgive our answer machines if they sometimes get it wrong. It’s less easy to forgive the confidence with which the bad answer is presented, giving the impression that the answer is definitive. That’s a design problem.

Discovering Resilient Web Design with Jeremy Keith

In which I attempt to answer some questions raised in the reading of Resilient Web Design.

Edge.org 2017: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?

A good range of answers for this year’s question, overlapping a bit with 2011’s What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?

An Event Apart News: The Contributions of Others: A Session with Jeremy Keith

Eric asked me some questions and I was only too happy to give some answers.

Questionable Characters | Home

A beautifully presented site wherein Ben and Frank endeavour to answer your design-related questions.

Digital Web Magazine - Five Pertinent Questions for John Allsopp

John answers some questions about microformats.