Web development is a constant learning experience. If you go a single day without learning something new, it’s likely because you got stuck in meetings!
In the past, I’ve written in detail about some of the tips I’ve picked up, but there really hasn’t been an avenue (other than Twitter) to publish quick pearls that don’t quite warrant a complete article.
My goal will be to do this on a weekly basis, which means I’ll be happy to do it monthly! So here we go:
- Validating HTML An often unconsidered reason to validate your HTML – it can parse and render faster in the browser than invalid HTML.
- HTML E-Mail Using the actual link as anchor text will cause some email clients to flag the email as a scam.
- SSL Certificates Use Google Calendar to remind yourself when to update SSL certificates. Don’t rely on provider emails. I fell victim to this a couple weeks ago!
- Cron Jobs They’re not just for utility scripts. You can leverage them to background things that a user doesn’t need to wait for. Sending conformation emails, for example.
- CSS I started adding
outline: none;to my CSS reset rules. It makes the UI more consistent between browsers. - Colorbox ColorBox has been my go to lightbox for years. I recently discovered that it isn’t responsive by default. Use
maxWidth: '90%', maxHeight: '90%'to make it more responsive. - CSS For many layout requirements, I’ve been shifting away from the first-child pseudo in favor of the next sibling selector, i.e.
span + span { border: ...; }
as opposed to
span { border: ...; } span:first-child { border: 0; }