User:Richabrown
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<FONT> A Web Developers Rant </FONT>
Most up-to-date, professional web developers now use XHTML compliant pages. The deprecated HTML code is rapidly being replaced by XHTML with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). CSS makes a web developer’s life so much easier, just this morning a client wanted the color of the copy on her entire website changing from black to brown. Because her site utilized CSS I was able to make the requested changes in less than one minute.
Unfortunately all too often websites are not correctly utilizing the power of CSS. Web developers in the past used Legacy code, out of date, messy, poorly factored code that is not only a nightmare to professional web developers today but also search engine bots (Google etc). Archaic Web developers today are still using this redundant code. Please will someone make them STOP!
I get a lot of requests to update Legacy code website that have been written recently, the owners of the websites have no idea what lies underneath the page rendering. Sure the page may look OK but updating a simple issue such as site wide font color is an accomplished web developer’s nightmare. In most cases I request that the client lets me completely rewrite the code, instead of me having to hack my way through beastly code which, in the long run, will take longer.
Below is an example of actual code taken out of a website written less than a year ago.
<p><font size="3">Ad Total:...</font> # of issues:......</font> Total</font><br> $<input name="adtot" size="6" > X <input name="numiss" size="6" > = $<input name="total" size="6" > <b><p>NOTE: If your ad is Free enter 0.00 in the Ad Total and Total fields</p></b> <P></P><div align="left"><b><p>PAYMENT OPTION </p></b>
Where do I begin to tear this code a new one?
The <font> tag
Early web designers (and the ridicules designers today that call themselves web developers, can you feel my tension building?) used the <font> tag (see example code) as a means to control the display of text within a HTML document. Long deprecated, and now absent from the later revisions of XHTML, <font> tags now only serve to make the internet a mess.
Before the blessing that is CSS, when there were only 7 font sizes and 16 colors, the font tag reigned supreme. These days it is little more than a reminder of what CSS has done to empower the web designer with control of style and content on a web page.
Code Inconsistencies, mixed capitalization tags and the dreaded <br> tag
As you can clearly see from the example code, some tags have capital letters, others are lowercase, some tags have content and others empty tags. Thankfully today XHTML mandates case-sensitive markup and a, no tag shall be left empty policy. HTML 4.0 and earlier allowed coders to capitalize as they wished, so some tags would scream out at you, and others would be hidden away. Empty table cells, transparent gifs, and the use of the <br> tag were all pretty nasty ways of controlling a page layout before CSS.
These now archaic (to most) ways to manipulate the display have vanished and been replaced by our friend, the CSS.
Bastard transitional HTML
Some primitive web developers today are at least trying to implement some CSS, but with bastard HTML results. The application of CSS styles to <font> tags and ‘color’ attributes to <span> tags were very common place a few years ago when designers started the transition over from the dark side. Thankfully today, (except for my particularly region it seems) this messy mix of styles is a rare sight.
With the rapid changing of code markup and browser rendering changes to keep up with, a web developer cannot afford to let his markup skills slip. Only constant reading of new material will allow designers to move forward with todays, and tomorrows technologies.
I will leave you with code from a local, prominent web developer’s website to illustrate exactly what has been discussed here. Be warned this code is seriously dark side (code has been shortened but not altered).
<html> <head> <title>########. - Web Site publishing, design, hosting</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"></head> <body bgcolor="#330033" link="#CC0000" vlink="#CC0000"> <center> <table bgcolor="#000000" border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width=604> <tr> <td align=left valign=top><IMG xsrc="images/upleft.gif" WIDTH="22" HEIGHT="23" BORDER="0"></td> <td align=right valign=top><IMG xsrc="images/upright.gif" WIDTH="22" HEIGHT="23" BORDER="0"></td> </tr> <tr> <td align=center colspan=2><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="560" bgcolor="#99CC33"> <tr> <td colspan="2"><img name="top" xsrc="images/top.gif" width="560" height="24" border="0"></td> </tr> <tr> <td align=center valign=top><table border=0 cellpadding=0> <tr> </tr> </table></td> <td align=left valign=top bgcolor="#99CC33"> <IMG xsrc="images/logo.gif" WIDTH="332" HEIGHT="171" BORDER="0" ALT="OBI - The Freshest Spin on the Web"><br> <center><a xhref="/jobs/"><FONT size="-2" FACE="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <B>Employment Opportunities</B></FONT></a><br><br></center> <FONT SIZE="-2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="helvetica, arial"> Over the past ten years, Outer Banks Internet, Inc. (OBI) has built a sterling reputation as the company best able to provide website design, multimedia, and Internet technology solutions to businesses regardless of their needs, size, budget or location. We are quite proud of this reputation, which we believe is the result of three key elements:<br> <br> <li><FONT SIZE="-1">An Experienced, Professional Team</font></li> <li><FONT SIZE="-1">The Ability to Serve Your Needs</font></li> <li><FONT SIZE="-1"> Long-term Commitment</font></li> <br><br>Combine these three elements with our commitment to work hard for our clientele, and you can easily see why OBI has garnered the reputation as one of the web's premiere development companies.</font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align=center colspan=2><img name="contact" src="images/contact.gif" width="403" height="27" border="0"> <img name="bemail" xsrc="images/bemail.gif" width="157" height="27" border="0" alt="sales@obinet.com"></a></td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> <tr> <td align=left valign=bottom><IMG xsrc="images/lowleft.gif" WIDTH="22" HEIGHT="23" BORDER="0"></td> <td align=right valign=bottom><IMG xsrc="images/lowright.gif" WIDTH="22" HEIGHT="23" BORDER="0"></td> </tr> </table><p><IMG xsrc="images/copyright.gif" WIDTH="560" HEIGHT="16" BORDER="0" ALT="copyright"></center> </body> </html>
