Hey Guys, I'm kinda bored, so I figured we could start a thread as to what we find important when coding websites from PSDs. I'm talking about the whole shibang, from robots.txt files to images to well basically anything. I'll start it off with teh basics: Image Optimization - Basically, when you cut the PSD up, make sure the image size + quality are at the best possible ratio. What I mean by that is don't sacrifice too much quality for size, but also don't make the image huge and make the site load when the visitiors will be long gone. WC3 Validation - This is basic. If it validates, it means there is less errors in your site. That's a good thing. Shorthand vs Longhad Markup in CSS - I personally prefer shorthand. It makes it faster and makes the file sizes smaller. I have never really ever seen the reason to use longhand to write my CSS. SEO Optimization - I'm no SEO expert, but I like my websites to be at least a bit SEO Optimized. What I mean by this is make sure you always have an "alt" tag on your images, use identifiers and classes that actually make sure, etc. Someone can probably expand on this more than I can, so feel free to do so. Inline Styles - I personally feel like there is only so many reasons to ever have an inline style, and most of the time you really don't have to, so if you're using an external stylesheet, just drop the inline style in there. Don't make your HTML page bigger in file size. Seperate Stylesheets - There's no reason to make your website load from two different stylesheets. Even if you make a stylesheet for IE6, I would suggest to make it all in one stylesheet using simple hacks. This makes less call to the server and lowers the overall load time. Javascript/Flash - I personally like to keep these to a minimum, and if I ever use them, I like to make sure that they break up well, so that there isn't a problem for people who's browsers don't support flash or javascript. I know it's not a lot of people, but I don't want to take away from their experience. I'm done for now. I'll put up some more later, but for now, let's see what you guys have. And I'm no expert by any means, so if you guys want to correct what I said above or add on to it, go ahead, I won't mind. Best Regards, Nick
The Design The XHTML W3C Compliant The CSS, commented and clean Tableless Code Content Management System like Wordpress SEO this is the key
Just to comment on one part of your reply: "Tableless Code" only when it doesn't require tables. I've seen many people put tables content into DIVs and such and it's just a mess.
By far the most important part for my sites is the final aesthetic product... I spend a lot of time optimizing images and getting them to work just right in every browser, which is probably the second most important thing-- browser compatibility. IE and WebKit browsers and FireFox all seem to interpret simple code differently (I don't understand why), so I spend lots of time adding conditional CSS for each browser and similar hacks. I focus on what the user is going to experience in the ~7 seconds they'll be on the site: total size of the site (load time), what scripts are loading first, etc. Oh also a "This website cannot be displayed with IE6, please upgrade"--which is inevitably true with any moderately complex site--page is requisite in my designs. Admittedly I'm lazy with 100% W3C validation and SEO, but those are important too.
I'll just comment on that one for now. Using multiple stylesheet files to separate global styles from those used occasionally on a page or another may be an advantage if website load times are important. For instance, styles for a contact form could be included in a separate .css file and only called on the contact page instead of globally. Other than that, clean coding is what I value mostly when building a website theme.
HTML Validation. It must pass all test on tags. Security when coding with inputs using PHP Speed, must use only those what are needed most Structured, indentation closely observed
Think mine would have to be clean code - theres nothing worse to me than having messy code lying around, that and SEO and making sure every single link on the site works... broken links look unprofessional and can put people off going through a website further