About Me

Hi there, I’m Harry Roberts. I am an independent Consultant Web Performance Engineer from Leeds, UK. I help some of the world’s largest and most respected organisations deliver faster and more reliable experiences to their customers. I am an invited Google Developer Expert, a Cloudinary Media Developer Expert, an award-winning developer, an international speaker, and co-chair of the inimitable performance.now(), the web performance conference for professionals.

• About
• Colophon
• Interviews

With very many years of professional experience, and over a decade working as an independent consultant, I have been trusted by the likes of the United Nations, Google, the BBC, General Electric, and many more. Through combinations of workshops, training, audits, development, and consultancy, I have helped my clients to build and scale resilient, performant front-ends for a variety of applications.

There is a short list of people I whole-heartedly recommend for detailed performance work and Harry is right there at the top.

Tim Kadlec

Internationally recognised as a leading expert in CSS architecture and front-end performance, it is my job to help companies accomplish the return on investment that web performance efforts can bring, whether that is increasing conversions, improving engagement, or growing revenues. I thrive on being a business-focused engineer, equally comfortable in front of C-level executives as I am in front of a room full of developers.

Most importantly, I am available for hire. My work spans many industries, countries, and formats. From troubleshooting and assessing existing performance issues, to training engineers to debug and avoid these common pitfalls in future; from advising and consulting with teams to get a handle on web performance issues, to everything else in between. If you need a faster website, we’ll get you a faster website.

If you think I can help you—and I probably can—say hello: I enjoy working with companies of all shapes, sizes, locations, problems, needs, and budgets. I’m professional, but I’m very laid back—drop me a line, and we can see what fits.

Hire me.

• About
• Colophon
• Interviews

Colophon

CSS Wizardry makes use of many great tools and services; tools and services that make my life as a developer much, much simpler.

CSS Wizardry is built on Jekyll, an open source static site generator. This is hosted using GitHub Pages and served via Cloudflare.

The CSS is written in Sass, and built on top of inuitcss. inuitcss is a free, open-source, Sass-based, OOCSS framework with a strong focus on performance, scalability, and a small footprint. This is then built into ITCSS, a CSS architecture of mine which is designed to aid the growth and maintainability of CSS projects.

Your system font is used to give a familiar feel and to help improve performance. Responsive testing was made possible by Finch, an incredible tool for exposing local dev sites to the open internet. SpeedCurve and Treo help keep CSS Wizardry fast.

The photograph used on the homepage’s masthead is of me speaking at DotYork, and was taken by Jim Poyner.

CSS Wizardry’s roadmap and task list are viewable on a public Trello board, and all of the code that powers it can be found on GitHub. Feel free to take a look round, but please don’t steal anything.

I chose the name CSS Wizardry when I was 17 years old. It’s a decision that I’m having to live with…

• About
• Colophon
• Interviews

Interviews and Podcasts

1. Podcast

   2017-06-13: ScriptCast

2. Podcast

   2017-06-13: Non Breaking Space Show

3. Podcast

   2016-11-10: Hacking UI

4. AMA

   2016-10-20: Hashnode

5. Podcast

   2016-09-14: The Web Platform Podcast

6. Interview

   2016-09-14: Honeypot

7. Podcast

   2016-08-23: Toolsday.io – Travel Tools

8. Interview

   2015-03-10: CSSConf Australia

9. Podcast

   2015-02-10: Being Freelance – CSS Wizard Harry Roberts – Developing Consultant Magic

10. Podcast

    2015-02-07: Unfinished Business – Two old farts looking at their calendars

11. Interview

    2014-12-04: ColourSpaces

12. Video interview

    2014-11-09: DaFED

13. Interview

    2014-10-02: PSDtoWP – 3 beloved front-end development tools

14. Podcast

    2014-09-29: Unfinished Business – A cage full of hungry dogs

15. Podcast

    2014-06-05: CDNify – An Interview with CSS Expert Harry Roberts

16. Interview

    2014-05-20: Insurance By Jack – How To Get Started With Public Speaking

17. Video interview

    2014-04-24: FOWD – 10 Minutes ’til the Future – Live from FOWD edition

18. Interview

    2014-04-04: Workspiration

19. Interview

    2014-04-03: Sitepoint – CSS Framework Fortunes and Failures with Harry Roberts

20. Interview

    2014-03-14: Responsive Design Weekly – Responsive Interview with Harry Roberts

21. Interview

    2014-02-15: net mag – Harry Roberts on big CSS, working for Sky, and being a home bird

22. Interview

    2014-01-06: Alex Carpenter — Harry Roberts of CSS Wizardry

23. Podcast

    2013-11-08: Web Payload – Why not to use IDS? The tipping point, inuitcss, and frameworks

24. Podcast

    2013-08-10: Unfinished Business – Almost as controversial as putting the milk in first

25. Interview

    2013-05-15: Steer – An interview with Harry Roberts

26. Interview

    2013-04-26: Web Courses Bangkok – An Interview With Harry Roberts – Front-end Architect and Speaker

27. Interview

    2013-04-25: net mag – Use shame.css to house hacks

28. Podcast

    2013-03-22: Up Front Podcast – CSS with Harry Roberts

29. Podcast

    2012-11-29: Shop Talk Show

30. Interview

    2012-10-15: Martin Wolf – Interview with CSS wizard Harry Roberts

31. Podcast

    2012-08-30: Young Guns Show – Scalable CSS with Harry Roberts

32. Interview

    2012-03-06: Nu Blue – Off to see the Wizard