Importance of Clean Code
Filed Under: Code
I know that many do not believe that clean code is all that important. I do though. An example is a shopping cart that I had to fix last week. It was written by an off-shore firm (and there’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself). The problemwas that the top include file (a server side include) had so much junk in it that the cart would not work in Firefox at all. As soon as the junk was cleaned out and what was left properly code the cart functioned properly.
Web Standards
Filed Under: Code
If you already have a web site has it been done to the web standards and guidelines (HTML, CSS, XHTML or XML, 508)? Is it viewable, no make that usable, across all of the different browsers?
Web sites that are done according to the web standards and guidelines load quickly. Well they should load quickly. However, if the page involves several large graphics or there are server issues that can affect load time.
Do you know how well is your web site coded ? Do you know what it looks like across the various web browsers? If you are considering other web site developers check out how well they have complied with the standards.
Clean Code
Filed Under: Code
I really, really hate badly written code. There are some “web designers”, and I’m using that term very loosely, that should have their fingers broken and never, ever permitted near a keyboard again.
An example is a web site that I recently created a nice and cleanly coded template for. The previous designer (again that term is very loosely used) had written such horrible and convoluted code. It was a mixture of poorly nested tags that was so horrible that other designers found it a nightmare to update.
What many people do not understand is that badly written code causes loading problems, and search engine spiders to give up (and we don’t want that to happen now do we) while crawling your web site. And depending on the browser make your nice new web site look horrible.
It actually makes me wonder if they don’t pay attention to the code what else aren’t they paying attention to?
Learn to code instead of just using a WYSIWYG. If you learn to code then you can look at it be be able to identify the problem. Using a WYSIWYG can leave behind tiny bits of code (empty or missing tags) that can cause problems with the web site.
