hackification.com

The response to my last article (Ten Web Development Tips I Wish I’d Known Two Years Ago) has been a bit… surprising. It’s been viewed 75,000 times so far, wiping out my 3Gb monthly bandwidth allowance in less than a week. (I’ve paid for extra bandwidth now). I’ve received an unprecedented number of comments – it certainly stirred up a fair bit of debate. Here’s a summary:

Server Side

I was thinking more of client-side techniques I wish I’d known; but many readers pointed out that properly learning a server-side framework (ASP.NET, Ruby-on-Rails, PHP, etc) is critical.

Photoshop

Everyone agrees Photoshop is too darn expensive. Some people reckon it’s a worthwhile investment; others recommend Gimp, Fireworks, or Inkscape as cheaper or free alternatives.

SEO Concerns, Accessibiliy Worries

Rob pointed out that excessive use of AJAX can harm the ability of search engines to find your content. Google et al don’t run JavaScript when spidering your site, so any important keywords or content should be included in the static part of your website. In a similar manner, people using screen-readers probably won’t be able to access the AJAX-y bits of your website.

Internet Explorer

As expected, many web developers share my hatred of and frustration with Internet Explorer, especially IE6 and earlier. Should IE6 users be shut out entirely? Should clients pay extra for IE6 compatibility? Or is IE6 still a big enough part of the web that it’s a bitter pill we just need to swallow?

Missed Tips

A few commenters suggested extra tips – so in no particular order:

• Don’t use CSS hacks – apply separate, extra stylesheets for problem browsers.
• Use a web-checklist – for example, http://www.digitalgarde.com/strategy/blog-design-secret-tip-1/

Missed Utilities

A couple of readers pointed out some very useful browser plug-ins I wasn’t aware of:

• Dust-Me-Selectors for removing un-needed CSS rules
  
• DebugBar for Internet Explorer
  
• Broken link checkers: http://validator.w3.org/checklink or http://www.dead-links.com/
• If you need old versions of browsers etc, you can find them here: http://old-versions.net/