With the web being a constant moving platform I believe that I will always be required to keep up to date with the latest trends and patterns in a Web Development career. I am constantly networking across social networks in order to follow the latest news from people within the web design and development web industry.
As I am very passionate when it comes to web development, I ensure that I develop to a high standard for any. Below are some of my views that I follow when am in the development process of a web project.
“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.” - Tim Berners-Lee
I'll always remember this very important quote by Tim Berners-Lee as it will always remain true in web development. I am constantly trying to ensure that the web projects I am working on is accessible to anyone no matter what impairment they might have. Being able to sensibly navigate a website via keyboard is a aspect of design that is usually overlooked as well as ensuring I am not ignoring the use of screen readers as many aspects of web design might not make sense to a voice feedback tool.
Accessibility isn't just about an impairment a end user might have. These days, we're not just reading information from the web sat at a desk, there is a vast amount of Internet-connected devices out there such as laptops, desktops, tablets and smartphones. All of these gadgets come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and all have different methods of user input. It is almost essential now that a website must be optimize for the user's input devices as well as their screen resolution.
Responsive Web Design is no longer an additional extra to add onto a website. It is a core feature for any website no matter who the target user base is. Every new website should start with a mobile-first approach.
Keeping browser compatibility is still a important task to this date. It's absolutely essential to ensure that any content displayed on your website works on all browsers. If one file format does not work then, as a developer, you must provide additional formats and solutions to fall back on.
While tech-savy users might have the latest and greatest broadband package that offers incredibly fast download speeds, there are some users who may be accessing your website from a rural area that might not get fantastic broadband speed or via the ever-growing popularity of mobile data.
With the above facts in mind, it is essential to ensure that anyone who accesses a webpage on your website, there are several steps I put in place in order to make the website that I am developing download for the end user as quick as possible. For example, I ensure that all .jpeg formatted images are progressive and any images are sent through compression tools such as jpegoptim or OptiPng.
I also go into greater depths when optimizing web speeds by ensuring I use caching methods such as memcache where applicable and also ensure that media is on a CDN as well as concentrating on the TTFB is as minimal as possible.
While I am discussing the subject of low-bandwidth/slow connections, I do enjoy creating "minimalist" designed websites. Gone of the days of heavy flash-based websites and thousands of images needed to produce rounded corners along with complementary box shadows. Simple is truly better! A minimalist designed also provides the reader of a website a distraction-free environment so they can focus directly content shown on the page.
Do you find my views interesting? Check out my portfolio to see various snippets of my past work experience and personal projects to see my own guidelines in action.