Web Development Mistakes

Nobody’s perfect, but when you’re a web developer it sometimes seems that the whole world expects you to be. “DOCTYPE confusion.Completely missing, incorrect, or in the wrong place. I have seen HTML 4.0 Transitional used in documents containing XHTML markup as well as in documents, DOCTYPE declarations appearing after the opening tag, and incomplete DOCTYPES.

Why? Two reasons. First, it’s required, as stated in the W3C HTML 4.01 spec as well as in the W3C XHTML 1.0 spec. Second, modern web browsers use the specified DOCTYPE to decide which rendering mode to use. This is also known as “DOCTYPE switching”. For more consistent results across browsers, especially when using CSS, you’ll want browsers to use their “Standards compliance mode”. More info on DOCTYPE switching can be found in Fix Your Site With the Right DOCTYPE! and Activating the Right Layout Mode Using the Doctype Declaration.

A common way of styling something with CSS is to wrap it in a element with a class attribute and use that to hook up the styling. I’m sure we’ve all seen things like and why? It is, in most cases, completely unnecessary, has no semantic value, and just clutters the markup. Use heading elements for headings, put paragraphs in paragraph elements, mark up lists with HTML list elements. Use CSS to style those elements. If necessary, add class or id attributes.”

Read the full list of common web development mistakes and see if your web page has any of them.