Taking our work to the extreme

02-13-2011

95% of my everyday involves implementing and working w/ front-end languages like HTML/CSS and integrating them w/ the ExpressionEngine content management system. Not many people (outside of my twitter followers) have a clue what this means, nor will they ever see my work directly, but I still try and execute every little detail to the extreme. What?

How many of you view source on that new cool website everyone is talking about on Twitter? What about look at the CSS? No? I don’t either. But when that 1 person does look, I want it to be perfect. I want them to get knocked out of their seat like they’ve seen a ghost. Lights shine down, music starts playing. The whole 9 yards. #BOOM

For the CSS that means: Perfect tabbing, alphabetical ordered properties, thought into details like where the comments go and styling them beautifully, how specific my declarations are and making sure that every little piece of the cascade comes together flawlessly.

For the HTML that means: Tabbing, spacing, comments, simplicity, using the right elements in every single situation and not shortcutting anything with a generic span or div. I want my grandma to be able to view source on my HTML and go “Oh yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.”

As far as bringing it all together into a content management system like ExpressionEngine: How is the code outputted? Is it still perfectly tabbed and spaced? If not, make it that way (without hurting the readability of the actual template files). Does the control panel make sense to the end user editing the site and are there things you can do to fix that? Field instructions, Channel names, everything. What about the possibility of a new guy coming along and taking over your project? Does the back-end stuff look perfect for him/her as well? Make it that way.

There’s a lot more to this obviously, but you get the point. I’m not just talking about making a site look good. I’m talking about making every little aspect of the whole ordeal executed to the extreme.