The Three Biggest Mistakes Web Developers Make An How To Avoid Them

1. The Three Biggest Mistakes Web Developers Make And How To Avoid Them By Jordan Ashment Copyright © Jordan Ashment 2019. All Rights Reserved

2. Intro Nobody likes making mistakes. In the web development and design world, mistakes can be costly. So let's talk about how to avoid them! The three biggest mistakes that web developers and designers make are...

3. The Three Biggest Mistakes • Not Developing For Different Screen Sizes • Forgetting Cross-Browser Compatibility • Not Having Code Reusability

4. Not Developing For Different Screen Sizes One of the biggest mistakes that web developers make is not building their websites to be compatible with different devices. This is called ‘responsiveness.’ In today's day and age, there are so many different devices on which a website can be seen. If you're not developing your websites to be responsive then you are missing out on many opportunities. Also, if you don’t, you are going to be behind the game before even starting. Most serious websites today are at least responsive if they don’t have an mobile app that goes along with it. This is because most people‘s first impression (if not only impression) of your website is going to be from their smartphone.

5. Develop Mobile First! To help you remember to develop responsively, start designing and developing your project to be optimized for mobile first. That way, you already have your website ready to be viewed on smaller screens. Making the site tablet and desktop optimized is much easier after that.

6. 2. Forgetting Cross-Browser Compatibility Along with developing for different devices, there are also different browsers! Some browsers need different additions or coding than others. Cross browser compatibility means that your website is compatible with not only any browser, but also any version of the browser. This can mean omitting things for older versions of a browser and adding certain other things. It all just depends on how you want your website to behave.

7. Use The Tools! Many times, making parts of your website cross browser compatible is as easy as adding one or two lines of code. There are many tools out there to help you make your sites cross browser compatible. Some of the best tools out there to help you test your projects areLambdaTest,CrossBrowserTesting, andBrowserShots.

8. 3. Not Reusing Code Reusing code is something that will not only make the developer’s life easier, but also make their code better. Sometimes similar code can be used in multiple areas. This means making a function or creating code that can be used over and over again, with maybe a couple of tweaks here or there. This is what code re-usability is.

9. Make It Modular Reusing code can mean smaller files and faster load times for your website. One thing that is helpful when making your code reusable is making your project modular. Using partials and templates can help make your code modular. Making modular code and making blocks of reusable code will also make it easier for someone else on your team (if you have one) to easily understand the code and add to it if they need to.

10. Conclusion Not building responsively, forgetting cross-browser compatibility and not reusing code are mistakes that every web developer should avoid. Thinking about your project before you begin to develop and following this simple advice is an easy way to avoid making these mistakes in your future projects.