Things that annoy me.
rant html5 css
Warning, RANT ahead
I have been doing web development quite a while now, for some 15+ years. In those years I still manage to get excited and mad about bad code.
Let me, just for laughs, present you a couple of annoying things I see in real websites, collected today in just a few minutes:
- Extra elements to clear a float:
<br class="clearfloat">
mmm, clearfix anyone...- Link elements without a working href, needing javascript to work:
<a href="#" onclick="foo();">link text</a>
Why should you do more work just to make something inaccessible.- Inline styles
<input type="text" style="color: rgb(150, 150, 150); ">
Right, you go and maintain this.- No label for form elements
<input type="text" label="telefoonnummer" >
Guys, there is no label in an input...- Plugin dependancy
- No, I don't have flash, I know there is no frigging silverlight here, just give me the content.
I could go on for pages like this, but the bottom line is the same:
YOU ARE DOING MORE WORK TO MAKE SOMETHING WORSE, NOT BETTER. HTML IS VERY ACCESSIBLE, USE CSS FOR PRESENTATION AND JAVASCRIPT FOR BEHAVIOUR.
Sorry for the caps-lock folks, but sometimes you just have to. Don't get me wrong, I am not mad at the people who write this stuff, I am mad at the companies that make or let them, I am mad at the schools that fail to educate them and I am mad at us as a web developer community.
Companies
The companies just should take some more pride in their work, not focus on short term profit, but know, that as they make good products, profits will come.
What's more, if you are a company that makes cool stuff, cool people will want to work for you. Cool companies will want to be you client, where as the other way around...
Schools
Schools work with years old material and ask their students to learn that outdated stuff. Getting rid of bad habits is harder that acquiring good ones...
It has gone so far that in the last couple of years, I prefer someone who is self taught, to someone who has studied 'web design'. Should that make schools think, I gave some lessons in the past and I know of more good developers who did. Ask us and we will help you. I will and I know that Vasilis is available too.
Us, elitist, nitpicking, knowitall web developers
And last but not least, the web community as a whole. We tend to lock ourselves into our own perfect world, where everybody knows how to do this right. Truth is, a lot of people don't know what to do. These people we don't see at conferences or on Twitter.
I think we should take this personally and try to correct these mistakes. Not by being mean to the people that build this, but by being nice. If you know someone who is just starting out, help him or her along, talk to them about web development, give him or her some pointers to who to follow on twitter, what site to read and so on. As we may or may not know, the web is a big and scary place if you start out. Hearing people calling you names won't help, having people help you is much better...
If you are already making great websites, in this way you can help others to make great ones too.
I almost ended with a big American motivational sentence like: Let make the world a better place. Decided against it.