10 Things Any Web Developer Worth Their Spit Should Know
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DOCTYPE Declaration
DOCTYPE (short for “document type declaration”) informs the browser of which HTML or XHTML standards you would like your code to be checked against. You’re essentially declaring to the browser that these are the rules that you have used to create this page and in return you are expecting that it will render accordingly. Failure to specify a DOCTYPE can lead to unexpected rendering — a developers worst nightmare.
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Navigation
A website’s navigation plays a key role in the success or failure of a site. It allows humans and search engines alike to easily locate the desired information. Or it doesn’t. Navigations made up of Flash or JavaScript/DHTML may seem attractive at first, but ultimately can cripple a website by not allowing search engines to crawl and index the entire site. In addition, viewers that choose not to partake in these technologies can be left with no means to move within the site.
Most experienced webmasters have left such navigations back in the 90’s with all those AOL discs.
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CSS is Not an Option
In the past webmasters could choose to ignore CSS if they so desired. Those days are gone. CSS is no longer an option, it’s part of the trifecta (see The Separation of Concerns for the trifecta) that makes up a quality website. A good webmaster will use CSS exclusively to define the look and layout of a website.
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The Separation of Concerns
In days gone by web developers would meld HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code all into a single page; like a web page jambalaya. Inexperienced web developers may still do this, but the experienced ones took notice that the make up of any given page is defined by three elements: the content of the page, the presentation of that content and the behavior of that content.
Realizing this, competent developers have made an effort to keep these three layers separate from one another. Kevin Yank does a fine job explaining our three layers in his article: Simply JavaScript: The Three Layers of the Web
When building a site, we work through these layers from the bottom up:
1. We start by producing the content in HTML format. This is the base layer, which any visitor using any kind of browser should be able to view.
2. With that done, we can focus on making the site look better, by adding a layer of presentation information using CSS. The site will now look good to users able to display CSS styles.
3. Lastly, we can use JavaScript to introduce an added layer of interactivity and dynamic behavior, which will make the site easier to use in browsers equipped with JavaScript.
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Cross-Browser Support
Any developer that has been building websites for awhile has the battle scars that you get when you try and make your website work on all browsers. Each browser has it’s own idiosyncrasies (some more than others) and designing and redesigning your site to function under each can be a battle; but it’s a battle that must be fought and won.
