Jeremy Keith

Progressive enhancement and the things that are here to stay, with Jeremy Keith Jeremy is the founder of ClearLeft - a passionate group of UX and digital strategists based in the UK - where Jeremy now heads research and development. He is the author of a number of books on web development, including his latest book, Resilient Web Design, has been seen on stages like An Event Apart and South By South West, and is also the creator of the world’s first Science Hack Day. Time Stamped Show Notes 1:00 – Jeremy plays in a band in Brighton called Salter Cane . He also enjoys traditional Irish music and goes to Irish music sessions with his mandolin in tow. 1:42 – What excites Jeremy most about development is when he can accomplish something that makes somebody’s life easier and improves their day. 3:11 – Jeremy discusses the difficulties of the contradicting goals among the various parties involved in a web project; namely business, designer, developer, and user goals. 3:37 – Jeremy uses the example of an e-commerce site to demonstrate how tricky it can be to balance competing goals. For example, if the designer only cared about the user’s experience, everything in the store would be free! However, this is obviously not in line with the business goals. 4:51 – Jeremy got to know Andy Budd and Richard Rutter through their blogs and books about web standards. In 2005, the three got together and founded Clearleft . 6:22 – At the time, only a few other companies were focusing on user experience. Adaptive Path in America was one of them. 8:38 – Jeremy thinks design sprints work well. Clearleft blocks out a few days for a group of people to be fully committed to solving a single, defined problem. 9:21 – Clearleft uses roughly the same sprint structure as the five-day model advocated by Jake Knapp and Daniel Burka of Google. 10:56 – Jeremy likes the intensity of a sprint as long as it’s followed by a break. He advises against doing design sprints back to back. 11:16 – Clearleft works with two different development mindsets: a production mindset, and a quality mindset. The production mindest is for transient products like prototypes, whereas the quality mindest is used when creating production-ready code. 12:54 – Don’t get attached to prototypes and never evolve them into the finished product. Throw the prototype away once it has answered the question, “will it work?” From there, build the product from scratch using the quality mindset. 17:38 – It’s easier to write code than it is to convince someone to change their mind. “Computers easy; humans hard.” 18:16 – Jeremy admits to being an awful procrastinator. However, he says it sometimes works in his favour as he often comes across useful content for his blog whilst “goofing off on the internet”. 19:53 – Jeremy has an “inbox zero,” but only because people know not to email him and because he archives his mails! 20:12 – Jeremy mentions Jessica Hische’s term, “procrastiworking” . Jessica believes that, “the work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life”. 21:01 – Jeremy gets frustrated by the sheer number of development tools available. Whereas before you could just open up the text editor, save some html and CSS and build something that works, now you have to set up a build chain, NPM, Webpack, Grunt, Gulp, Unicorn etc. 21:58 – Tools are supposed to help you work faster. If you find yourself spending more time on the tool than actually doing the work, then it’s not really a tool at all. 22:26 – In a talk by Anna Shipman , she suggests thinking of your servers as cattle as opposed to pets. Jeremy likes this advice. Don’t get too attached to your servers or to your tools. 23:03 – Frank Chimero says that working in the web over the past two decades doesn’t feel like twenty years. Instead, it feels like five years done four times over because of how often devs have had to overhaul their way of working. 23:47 – Although tools and approaches in the industry are often transient, Jeremy is convinced that progressive enhancement is here to stay. Persistent principles like this are what get him excited about development. 24:55 – Jeremy is excited about service workers and how they lead to faster sites, offline capabilities, and in turn, an improved user experience. 31:48 – Progressive enhancement starts with the lowest common denominator – the simplest technology to accomplish what the user needs to do. Jeremy says that the trick is not mess it up as you layer elements on top. 35:01 – Although progressive enhancement focuses on technology rather than the user, the result is often a much improved user experience. Quickfire Questions 35:38 – Best advice about programming Jeremy agrees with Hemingway’s advice: “write drunk, edit sober,” as well as Anne Lamott’s concept of the “shitty first draft”. When writing, get everything out of your head first, then go back and edit later. 36:49 – Habits for writing better code Feed your brain effectively and you’ll produce better work. Although Jeremy believes that “produce more than you consume” is great advice in general, he says it depends on the type of material you expose yourself to. 38:51 – Book The “A Book Apart” series . Jeremy thinks it’s terrific. In 2017, Jeremy didn’t read any two fiction, or any two non-fiction books back-to-back. He believes fiction gives you a kind of empathy that non-fiction doesn’t. “A Dao of Web Design” by John Allsopp. Although it was published in 2000, the ideas in it are still relevant. 41:05 – Inspiring devs Harry Roberts , Sarah Soueidan , Sarah Drasner , Jen Simmons , and Rachel Andrew – not only for the great work they’re doing, but for the fact that they’re sharing it too. To Jeremy, this is what’s great about the spirit of the web. Alice Boyd-Leslie , Zara Syversen , Amber Wilson , and Cassie Evans for the amazing work they do at CodeBar in Brighton . CodeBar is a great initiative for introducing a more diverse range of people into the world of building for the web. 44:07 – How to learn to code from scratch CodePen , Glitch , GitHub , John Duckett and Shay Howe’s books , CodeBar : Being in the same physical space as somebody sitting down with someone who’s going to show you this stuff is going to help you. 46:32 – How to work smart Share what you know. Tools, Tips, and Books Mentioned <

Episode 104: RON JEREMY Keith Reza interviews the number one adult star of all time Ron Jeremy. Support the show: https://anchor.fm/reza-rifts Follow Ron on twitter: www.twitter.com/ronjeremy Support the show on patreon.com/rezarifts61 Follow Keith on all social media platforms! www.facebook.com/realkeithreza www.tiktok.com/keithreza www.instagram.com/keithreza www.twitter.com/keithreza Book Keith on cameo at www.cameo.com/keithreza Check out my website for dates at www.keithreza.com Subscribe - Rate & Review on Apple Podcasts - Tell a friend :) Be a Rifter! Subscribe - Rate & Review. Tell a friend :). Be a Rifter! #ronjeremy #keithreza #rezarifts #comedy

This week we're joined by Jeremy Keith, a web developer and author who's had a massive influence on at least one of our hosts. Jeremy introduces us to the concept of "resilient" websites, and has loads of advice for developers new to the field. The web is for everyone, and websites should reflect that: if you're using some advanced fancy features, make sure that your core functionality is available to everyone. We delve into the thorny issues of progressive enhancement and graceful degradation. Are they ultimately the same thing? Or does real-world pragmatism get in the way? Is it easier to become a web developer today? Or has the increase in dev-tooling added too much complexity? Find out all this and more in this week's resilient instalment of A Question of Code. Mentioned in this episode: Find Jeremy Keith online at adactio.com Read Jeremy Keith's books at abookapart.com , including the oldie-but-goldie HTML5 for Web Designers . Code Bar Jeremy's band, Salter Cane webpagetest.org Jeremy's blog post about Getting Started Design agency, Clearleft

Send us feedback or episode suggestions. Chris and Jeremy Keith discuss imbuing teams with a shared sense of ownership of their design system, creating design systems able to address unforeseen scenarios, design ops as an essential part of an effective design system, and more. Guest: Jeremy Keith is an Irish web developer working with @Clearleft , playing music with @SalterCane , creator of @Huffduffer . You can find Jeremy on Twitter and LinkedIn . Host: Chris Strahl is co-founder and CEO of Knapsack, DnD DM, and occasional river guide. You can find Chris on Twitter and LinkedIn . Links: Episode transcript → Google Drive Progressing The Web → Jeremy Keith via Medium Progressive Enhancement: What It Is, And How To Use It? → Sam Dwyer via Smashing Magazine

Phil’s guest on this episode of the IT Career Energizer podcast is Jeremy Keith. He is a web developer at Clearleft, a design agency that he co-founded, in 2005. He is the author of several books about web design and is a regular speaker at conferences across the world. He is also an organiser of events, including the recent Patterns Day 2 in Brighton. In this episode, Phil and Jeremy Keith discuss how writing improves your spoken communication skills and builds your career. They also talk about how to get through difficult career phases. Jeremy shares his take on the future of the industry as a whole including some of the concerns he has about the direction web development is going in. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (2.36) TOP CAREER TIP As you learn something and progress in your career, write about it. You could just keep a record for yourself or put it all on a website. That approach has served Jeremy well. This really enhances your communication skills. You soon become good at explaining complex things in writing and using speech. Writing is also a great way to be noticed. (6.14) WORST CAREER MOMENT Having to let some staff go, because of the financial situation his company was in, was gut-wrenching for Jeremy. However, it taught him that no matter how hard things get, life goes on. The people he had to let go now have decent jobs, so they are now in a good situation. That experience also changed the way he handles company finances. As a result, they have not had any financial issues since. (9.21) CAREER HIGHLIGHT CoolSiteoftheDay.com has been highlighting the best sites and apps, since 1994. Keith was a fan from day one and set himself the goal of getting one of his sites selected as the coolest site of the day. Naturally, he was thrilled when that is exactly what happened. (11.05) THE FUTURE OF CAREERS IN I.T Keith is worried about some aspects of the industry. Websites have become too bloated and slow, especially in light of the needs of emerging markets. He is concerned that the process of creating sites is becoming so complicated that the majority of people are not be able to easily learn the skill. Nevertheless, he is still optimistic. The web design and development communities are still willing to share and work closely together. Once someone figures something out, they share it a way of working that benefits everyone. (14.02) THE REVEAL What first attracted you to a career in I.T.? – The fact that something he made in his bedroom could be seen by anyone in the world who wanted to view it. What’s the best career advice you received? –If you are supposed to be somewhere or do something, show up. What’s the worst career advice you received? – Invest in this or that technology. Usually, following that advice turns out to be wrong. Instead, you need to learn the underlying principles. What would you do if you started your career now? – He would probably go down the self-taught route and focus on learning the underlying principles rather than focusing on just one tech discipline. What are your current career objectives? – Helping others is what brings Jeremy the most satisfaction, so that is his current focus. What’s your number one non-technical skill? – Writing. It has enabled him to become a good public speaker and communicator. How do you keep your own career energized? – Jeremy has been lucky to find new tech that has interests him enough to keep him energized. What do you do away from technology? – Music is still his first love. He also enjoys reading, but he is careful to read non-fiction as well as fiction, which keeps things interesting. (20.07) FINAL CAREER TIP Build your own website and use it to learn to write well, share what you k