Posted September 25, 2009 at 8:35 AM EST in Just Sayin, Meeeeeeee, Web Standards, Work | Comments Off
Most mornings, I hit the Starbucks near work for a double tall non-fat no-whip cinnamon dolce latte. Yes, it’s a mouthful to say. And apparently it’s a really tough drink to get right… at least for the morning crew at this particular Starbucks. Despite seeing the same crew regularly, I almost always have to correct them on some aspect of my drink that they’ve screwed up (espresso shots sat too long, wrong milk, wrong size drink, scorched milk, etc.). When I do point something out, rather than get an apology, I’m usually given some excuse as to why it’s not right. I’m starting to suspect that either they’re making my drink wrong on purpose or they just don’t care about their craft — but in either case, they send a clear signal: a job’s a job, and they don’t care about theirs all that much.
Web developers can’t have this attitude. We absolutely must care about our craft and continually ensure that our work is demonstrative of best practices (both industry and our own signature practices). Sloppy execution of our work leads to cross-browser problems, inaccessible features, confusing user interactions, and time lost refactoring code in the future. We don’t get to give excuses to our customers — if it doesn’t work, end users don’t use the site, and clients don’t pay. Messy code shows that we don’t care about leaving something our fellow developers can learn from, and it demonstrates that we don’t care to take the time get our code right.
I shudder to think about the kind of code the baristas at the local Starbucks would write, were they developers. If only they could be more like so many of the awesome developers/craftspeople I know… then I’d be happily caffeinated each morning. And if fewer developers wrote code the way those baristas make drinks? Well, the Web might just explode from all that awesomeness.
Posted September 20, 2009 at 5:17 PM EST in Web Standards | Comments Off
Cross-posted from The Circle of Standards:
Since the practice of setting and managing standards is as much a management concern as it is a technical concern, I spend time reading a number of business blogs. The HBR Voices blog is full of important management insights.
A recent blog post, How Are You Defying “Best Practice”?, was particularly insightful. Although the article was referring to business and management best practices, it just as easily could have been about design and code best practices.
The only difference is that, while the business world has well-documented and well-established best practices (most commonly taught in MBA programs worldwide), the Web design and development world doesn’t yet have that common set of agreed-upon best practices. What one designer or developer considers a best practice may be contrary to what another one believes.
This leads me to the question of how do you define what is an industry best practice? And, how do you defy those best practices, if at all?
Add your two cents
Posted July 21, 2009 at 8:46 AM EST in Industry Events, Presentations, Web Standards | Comments (2)
This past Saturday I gave my CSS Summit presentation on CSS & Troubleshooting IE6. Feel free to download the presentation slides to check out what I covered!
In the chat room, a number of questions and comments came up regarding the use of CSS hacks to address IE. I don’t know how many people were in the camp of “all hacks are bad, all CSS must validate!” versus “who cares, use all the hacks you want”, but I was put on the spot and asked for my two cents. I said something to the effect of, “Aiming to write CSS which validates is a great goal and perfectly achievable on your personal site, but when putting together a site for work or for a client, especially a large site, you may find that using hacks is easier to write and read, and will scale better over time — so long as you plan a way out.”
I think that resonated with some of the folks in attendance, who have always felt that to honor the Web Standards cause, a developer always had to follow the best practices and have valid code at all times.
So, just to reiterate, no, you don’t have to have valid markup and style sheets all of the time. In fact, there are times where you’ll intentionally code something not valid — whether it’s the use of the target attribute for an anchor to make sure a link opens in a new tab/window, or whether it’s the application of a hack in your CSS, so a future developer doesn’t have to look through multiple CSS files to figure out what you did. I think this is perfectly acceptable, provided you execute the hack consciously. At almost all of the large companies where I’ve worked*, we’ve had to use hacks or deliver non-valid code. It’s just a fact of life. It’s what you know about your non-validating code, what you plan for**, that matters.
*At PayPal, we attempted to maintain separate IE6 and IE7 style sheets, called with conditional comments; this caused developers to have to write additional CSS in many cases, as the CSS architecture included a global CSS file, one or more product/flow/page-specific CSS files, and then these IE-specific CSS files. Due to the cascade, overwriting one style in the IE-specific CSS file sometimes meant writing additional lines of CSS to restore a style — unless you could ensure that tweaking selectors in the other CSS files to make them more specific would be a better fix, without breaking any other pages… perhaps you see where I’m going with this? With over 100 developers potentially working on a bit of code, decoupling IE-specific styles created a nightmare situation, which inline hacks would have solved in a way that would have been easier to read and easier to maintain.
**On the other hand, at CIM, we have no coding standards (yet), so each developer appears to be addressing browser-specific issues in whatever way they want. I’ve seen multiple hacks used in our code and backing them out later is going to be a major challenge. When you do use hacks, make sure everyone on the project/working on the site uses the same ones!
So, with that, you have my permission to use hacks and write non-validating code — just make sure you have a good reason for doing so, in case someone comes asking why you did it. ‘Cause I won’t back you up if you don’t have solid justification!
Posted June 3, 2009 at 9:31 AM EST in CSS, Industry Events, Web Standards | Comments (5)
In case you hadn’t already heard, The CSS Summit is coming to a desktop near you on Saturday, July 18! This online conference is offering a slate of presenters who will talk about typography, CSS3, flexible layouts, HTML5, jQuery, troubleshooting IE6, and more.
Since it’s an online conference, there are no travel expenses, and registration is only $139 for individuals! (If you want to round up a group of folks in your living room or office, you can register as a meeting room for just $439!) However, if you register via this link, you’ll get $25 off the price!
As you may have guessed from the title of this post, I’m presenting on the topic of troubleshooting IE6. Unlike most Web developers, I don’t hate IE6. In fact, it has a special place in my heart, as it enabled my team at AOL to build some of the most awesomely advanced CSS-based grids and templates ever. (No joke, I see folks still trying to do what we did back in the day!) Yes, I still get frustrated by having to deal with some of the odd bugs it presents with, from time to time, but generally I’ve learned how to plan for and work around those bugs. So that’s what I’ll be speaking to.
Of course, if you have particular pain points or concerns that you think I should address, please let me know by adding your two cents here. Thanks!
Posted June 2, 2009 at 9:24 PM EST in Duran Duran, Music | Comments Off
Oh yes, it’s another list! I’ve been listening to a lot of great music lately, and there’s been lots of music news to report, so here goes!
- My friend, Chris Connelly, has a new album out — this one dedicated to his beloved Scotland. Pentland Firth Howl is available on CD and limited edition vinyl; it’s something you don’t want to miss.
- Once a month, I visit Julian Cope’s Head Heritage, and lo and behold, this month I met a site redesign! As always, there is plenty of new music in Unsung and W.S.Y.M., as well as a new album for Spring 2009. (Side bonus: Julian’s wife, Dorian, has an awesome new blog, On this Deity — highly recommended!)
- Shoegazing is making a comeback and one of its original darlings, Mark Gardener of RIDE, is back with a lovely (and standards-compliant) website. He was recently interviewed about this genre’s resurgence by Drowned in Sound and the Times Online. Be sure to get the shoegazing retrospective Sci-Fi Lo-Fi Vol. 3: Shoegazing 1985-2009.
- Scott Walker: 30 Century Man, the documentary, is finally being released on DVD in the US on June 16, and it’s going to have extra content (so I’m going to have to buy another copy!). Pre-order it now. Also check out music inspired by the film — I can’t decide which track I love the most!
- Duran Duran has been recording with Mark Ronson and, apparently, the new album sounds like Rio and Planet Earth! While waiting for that to arrive (next year?) Duranies can enjoy (finally) a double-CD or vinyl set of Rio, featuring both the UK and US album mixes (the CDs also have studio demos, b-sides, and other mixes). Also generating excitement amongst fans is the DVD/CD/download release of the band’s 1982 performance at Hammersmith Odeon! Full details
Plus NME has been reporting about forthcoming new releases from Yoko Ono and Sigur Ros, as well as North American tours in the fall by The Charlatans (UK) and Blur! Woo hoo!
Hi, my name is Kimberly Blessing. I'm a computer scientist, Web developer, standards evangelist, feminist, and geek. This is where I write about life, the Web, technology, women's issues, and whatever else comes to mind.
