About

Web enthusiast. Passionate about accessibility, design systems, performance. Typography nerd. Professional introvert. Runner.

Hi there! I’m Francesco Schwarz, a Frontend Developer from Munich, Germany. I’m passionate about the web and its technologies, but what I love most is to build experiences for people on the web that are responsive, fast, and accessible.

2004 was the year when I first learned about and played with web technologies. 20 years in, I’m still fascinated by how the three frontend pillars HTML, CSS and JavaScript intermesh and thus form the foundation of the web.

At software service provider jambit I designed and implemented websites and frontend features for numerous organisations, amongst others Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. For the latter, I was a leading part of the team that launched the redesigned website in 2017.

At censhare I improved the workflow between designers and developers by implementing and advancing design systems, always with a strong focus on semantic HTML, maintainable CSS architectures, and accessibility.

At Süddeutsche Zeitung I maintained and developed sz.de, together with a fantastic team of testers, designers, analysts and developers.

Today I’m back at jambit to work for clients in the media industry.

Projects

A selection of projects I initiated or was involved in:

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

From 2016 to 2017 I was a leading part of the team that launched the redesigned website of the FAZ, one of Germany’s big newspapers. Read what the chief editor at the time wrote about the relaunch in Layout, Technik, Ladezeit: Das sind die neuen Seiten von FAZ.NET.

Süddeutsche Zeitung

From 2013 to 2016 I was part of a team at the SZ that launched a range of projects, e.g. implementing regional parts into the apps with intelligent layout automatisms, making the newspaper’s content available in the browser through a webapp, releasing a new ereader edition of the newspaper, or redesigning the cover page within the apps.

jambit

In 2015 I was responsible for the relaunch of the website of my former employer jambit, which was the selected site of the week in the ProcessWire Weekly. The relaunch included a complete new frontend, backend and SEO. At jambit I also initiated and organized the “Community of practice Frontend” to raise awarness for frontend topics.

👨‍🎨 Side projects

Specificity Visualizer

In 2017 I launched the Specificity Visualizer. It’s a tool enabling you to identify patterns, trends and inconsistencies across a CSS file in bird’s-eye view. Especially useful for analyzing big and complex stylesheets.

The front-end side of news

In 2016 I created an overview showcasing front-end metrics of big news sites around the world: the front-end side of news.

ProcessWire CLI

In 2015 I created a little CLI tool for the ProcessWire API.

deutschlandGeoJSON

In 2013 I created a repository featuring administrative borders of Germany in GeoJSON format in different quality levels.

Bare Figures

In 2012 I published the website Bare Figures which enables you to look at quarterly data of major companies through interactive charts. The release attracted wide media coverage.

forms.css

In 2012 the repository forms.css was my sad attempt to get consistent looking forms across all major browsers. This is one for the history books!

Visualization of voter turnout in German state elections

In 2013 I created an interactive visualization of voter turnout in German state elections from 1946 until today as part of a university course project.

NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX)

In 2012 I created this implementation of the NASA-TLX as part of a little university project.

Learning program for children: “Wild Africa”

The learning program “Wild Africa” was developed as part of a project work in the subject “Media Psychology and Didactics” at the TU Dresden in the summer semester of 2012. It is aimed at children aged 8 to 9 years and offers the opportunity to get to know the animal world of Africa.

🤝 Community involvement

ProcessWire

In 2016 I was involved in the community of the ProcessWire CMS by initially organizing the repositories for issues and feature requests. Also, in the same year, I spread the word about ProcessWire by writing articles for Envato Tuts+, the German print magazine t3n, and Smashing Magazine.

Web Developer Community Meetings

From 2012 to 2013 I was the organizer of WDCM Dresden, a monthly get-together of web developers, geeks, nerds, and students to discuss web topics in a relaxed atmosphere.

Talks

Artifacts of talks I have given over the years:

2020

  • Süddeutsche Zeitung; November 2020; Munich, Germany; tech talk: Component-based frontend at sz.de
  • Süddeutsche Zeitung; March 2020; Munich, Germany; tech talk: Performance at sz.de: experiences in accelerating our website

2019

  • Süddeutsche Zeitung; November 2019; Munich, Germany; tech talk: Design tokens with Theo
  • Süddeutsche Zeitung; March 2019; Munich, Germany; tech talk: Automatic versioning and changelog generation with Conventional Commits

2018

  • censhare; November 2018; Munich, Germany; presentation: Current state of the Design System
  • censhare; March 2018; Munich, Germany; two presentations: Switching from Less to Sass and Sneak peek of the new Design System

2017

  • censhare; December 2017; Munich, Germany; presentation: The state of our stylesheets
  • jambit; June 2017; Munich, Germany; presentation: Aesthetics of the invisible; slides

2015

  • jambit; November 2015; Munich, Germany; short presentation: Die neue jambit-Website: Backend und Frontend von www.jambit.com
  • Süddeutsche Zeitung; May 2015; Munich, Germany; presentation: CSS Best Practices: 5 Ratschläge für besseres CSS; slides
  • jambit; March 2015; Munich, Germany; presentation: “Yes, browsers can do that!”; code examples

2014

  • jambit; May 2014; Munich, Germany; short presentation: Neue Features in Sass 3.3

2013

  • WDCM Dresden; May 2013; Dresden, Germany; presentation: ProcessWire: Das Wohlfühl-CMS; slides

2012

  • CCC Datenspuren; November 2012; Dresden, Germany; lighting talk: Formulare in HTML5; slides, video (26:05–29:50)
  • TU Dresden; June 2012; Dresden, Germany; presentation: jQuery – overview, basic concepts, examples, plugins ; slides
  • WDCM Dresden; February 2012; Dresden, Germany; short presentation: Apple’s quarterly results visualized; slides

2011

  • WDCM Dresden; December 2011; Dresden, Germany; presentation: CSS3 Media Queries; slides
  • WDCM Dresden; July 2011; Dresden, Germany; presentation: HTML5-Features: Ein kleiner Überblick über Syntax, Formulare und JavaScript-APIs in HTML5; slides