Top all-time · #358
Jim Nielsen
Personal blog · blog.jim-nielsen.comwebdesign
Jim Nielsen's personal blog at blog.jim-nielsen.com covers web and design. Since 2020, 147 different Hacker News readers have linked it 287 times, most often “Inspecting Web Views in macOS”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 7 of 33 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for web-platform writing: HTML web components, webview-based system UI, URL design, RSS feed discovery and menu icons. Most comments cite specific posts as sources.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- Good feed-URL article, good menu-icons paragraph, timely critique, and a liked idea of stating the obvious.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 33 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.
Most-linked posts?
- Inspecting Web Views in macOS9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2022-02-28
- Deadlines as Technology6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-03-10
- HTML Web Components5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-11-13
- The Subversive Hyperlink (2024)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-03-17
- Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-12-08
- Building websites with lots of little HTML pages4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-03-04
- Examples of Great URL Design (2023)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-12-11
- Faster Connectivity !== Faster Websites3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-04-15
- CSS System Colors3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-08-26
- Cheating Entropy with Native Web Technologies3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-10-10
What Hacker News says?
Something for the sanding list: Navigating between https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/about/ and https://blog.jim-nielsen.com makes the layout shift a bit in Safari on macOS. The reason is that Safari only shows the scrollbar when it's needed but without "reserving" the space. I once spent hours debugging this before I realized what was happening, my confusion coming from the fact that with the inspector open that wasn't…
Comment linking /
on “Sanding UI”Submitted Sanding UI as a story · 1300 points
HN discussionAre they doing web requests upon opening every settings page or what? At least some of them are actually web pages: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/inspecting-web-views-in-ma...
Comment linking /2022/inspecting-web-views-in-macos/
on “Apple's Software Quality Crisis”Submitted You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it as a story · 887 points
HN discussionhttps://jloh.co/ Runs on Hugo hosted by Netlify. I want to make it more minimalist, I really like how clean and simple Jim Neilson's is for example https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help as a story · 846 points
HN discussionMaybe this https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/inspecting-web-views-in-ma... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30648424 ? On mobile the webview app experience is crap and it's immediately obvious that an app is not native. Simply nobody asks customers how they like it. The management assumes that as long as nobody complains and the users don't leave in droves, the experience must be impeccable.
Comment linking /2022/inspecting-web-views-in-macos/
on “Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance”Submitted What “work” looks like as a story · 788 points
HN discussionThe previous post: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/icons-in-menus/ A related post linked to by the previous post: https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/
Comment linking /2025/icons-in-menus/
on “No more icons in every menu by default”Submitted Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables as a story · 784 points
HN discussionThanks very much for a thoughtful reply and link to your article. I look forward to reading it. As it turns out, I shared that very same article in the Datastar discord the other day! Here's some other good ones that I found while digging into the topic, for anyone who cares. * https://warpspire.com/posts/url-design/ * https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/examples-of-great-urls/ * https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI…
Comment linking /2023/examples-of-great-urls/
on “</> Htmx – The Fetch()ening”Submitted Canistilluse.com as a story · 555 points
HN discussionSounds like you might like the idea coined as "HTML Web Components": https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/html-web-components/ You basically write all the normal HTML and CSS so it's loaded in right away. But then you also make use of the advantages that defining a custom element gives you.
Comment linking /2023/html-web-components/
on “Shoelace: A library of web components”Submitted Inspecting Web Views in macOS as a story · 536 points
HN discussionSounds like a similar argument outlined here in a framework-agnostic way: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/html-web-components/ I don't really understand why people would bother arguing whether htmx is a library or a framework. It's a way of making a web site where you write less JS.
Comment linking /2023/html-web-components/
on “Is htmx Just Another JavaScript Framework?”Submitted No more icons in every menu by default as a story · 483 points
HN discussionIt may have actually started with Web Components Community Group report itself: https://w3c.github.io/webcomponents-cg/2022.html --- start quote --- It's worth noting that many of these pain points are directly related to Shadow DOM's encapsulation. While there are many benefits to some types of widely shared components to strong encapsulation, the friction of strong encapsulation has prevented most developers from…
Comment linking /2023/html-web-components/
on “Lit: a library for building fast, lightweight web components”Submitted Tags to make HTML work like you expect as a story · 441 points
HN discussionWeb components are okay as long as you only use them to progressively wrap actual HTML elements. If you're using custom-elements by themselves like a JS frontend replacement and just making entire web pages full of blank grey boxes that do nothing without JS, you're doing a bad job. See: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/html-web-components/
Comment linking /2023/html-web-components/
on “Web components are okay”Submitted The optional chaining operator, “modern” browsers, and my mom as a story · 432 points
HN discussionI want to note that Vue provides official instructions on how to use it without build tools [1], and lots of folks who have written posts on how to use React without tooling as well [2]. I agree that they're ultimately designed to be used with tooling, but it's not a blanket requirement. - [1] https://vuejs.org/guide/quick-start.html#without-build-tools - [2] https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2020/react-without-build-too…
Comment linking /2020/react-without-build-tools/
on “An SPA Alternative”Submitted Examples of Great URL Design (2023) as a story · 415 points
HN discussionEven OSX uses webviews for "native" ui: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/inspecting-web-views-in-ma...
Comment linking /2022/inspecting-web-views-in-macos/
on “Ask HN: Why aren't devs making desktop apps any more?”Submitted Deno Is Webby as a story · 407 points
HN discussionYeah, the "HTML Web Components" can be useful: https://adactio.com/journal/20618 and https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/html-web-components/
Comment linking /2023/html-web-components/
on “Customizable HTML Select”Submitted The Mac app flea market as a story · 401 points
HN discussionI generally try: /rss, /feed, /index.xml, /rss.xml, /feed.xml, etc. And at various root or /directory/* locations. https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2021/feed-urls/ is a good article with statistics on naming. I've been adding to my feeds.opml since reddit started dying in ~2015 and now I'm up to around ~1700 feeds and mostly independent from aggregators; though I still collect new feeds from HN/IRC/etc. Mostly I just al…
Comment linking /2021/feed-urls/
on “Deep dive into finding RSS feeds”Submitted The OG Social Network: Other People’s Websites as a story · 331 points
HN discussionWhat’s the problem you’re trying to solve w/ Pomodoro? As I understand, Pomodoro’s purpose is to incrementally train you to stay on task for longer and longer durations. Is that not working for you or do you have a different goal? “The only technology that you need is deadlines“ - Paul Ford https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/deadlines-as-technology/
Comment linking /2023/deadlines-as-technology/
on “Ask HN: Alternatives to the Pomodoro technique?”Submitted How to make websites that will require lots of your time and energy as a story · 303 points
HN discussion
