Invest Time
April 13th, 2010
When you’re going to build a new site invest time in the beginning. It is going to save you a lot of time in the end and its going to help you create not only a better product, but one that is sustainable.
If you can, work with someone else to discuss how the markup is going to be structured, naming conventions of IDs and classes, how the CSS will be written, how the folder structure will be laid out, what CMS you’ll be using, if you’re going to be using a javascript library and if so which one?
These are fundamental web development questions yet people skip them all the time. They rush right into the markup and begin developing and building before asking Why and What. I can understand that some of this is due to excitement of building a new site, but often its because they don’t know better.
Take the design (whether it’s a PSD or jpg doesn’t matter) and print it out. Yes folks, print out your web design. Sit down with it (as many unique pages as possible) and a pencil. The full site design doesn’t have to be completed yet, doing this with only a few pieces of the site you’ll still see the advantages. You’ll see common elements throughout the site, try to reuse that markup and CSS as much as possible. Take your pencil and start to sketch out on the printed mockups your divs, classes, ids, unordered lists, elements that will need to be floated or positioned absolutely, etc. This not only helps to reinforce your skills as a developer but it helps flush out any development problems earlier in the process.
If you can sit down with the designer and another developer that’s even better. You’ll be able to bounce ideas off the other developer and learn why the designer made certain design choices. If you can sit down with a very small (and focused) group of individuals it may be more beneficial to use a projector and whiteboard. Yep, you guessed it – project the design onto the whiteboard and light it up with those markers. This will help the group dynamic and discussion. Potential problems can be squashed and ideas or concepts can be discovered with a bit more ease.
This Mental Markup is crucial to building clean and awesome sites and apps. Its only going to help make your product stronger and make you a better developer. If you’re not doing it already you should definitely start.