DEV Community

Cover image for Web Development Bad Habits to Kick
Liz Laffitte
Liz Laffitte

Posted on

Web Development Bad Habits to Kick

Cover photo by mohamed abdelghaffar from Pexels

1. Not Designing for Mobile First

You know what’s difficult? Taking a complex, intricate design that looks pixel-perfect on a 24 inch monitor and trying to shove it on a 300-pixel-wide screen.

How do you decide what to cut? How do you ensure the most important info is still above the fold? You go back in time and design the mobile view first.

If you’re not optimizing your design for mobile, you’re likely serving a subpar experience for a majority of your users.

Start with a simple prototype that gives users easy access to the most important information on the page. Add design elements as you scale for bigger devices.

If you’re not a designer, take advantage of tools like Bootstrap.

2. Not Being Consistent

Consistency helps users know what to expect from your website and helps teach them how to use it. Being inconsistent can lead to frustration, despair and high bounce rates.

Inconsistent Links

You should treat links of the same type the same. If one of your external links opens in a new window, they should all open in a new window. (Don’t forget to think about users using screen readers. Check out these suggestions on making target=”_blank” more accessible)

This includes links to media! Don't indicate a link opens a PDF in one place and neglect to add that info everywhere.

Inconsistent Style / Design

While it's more than likely that you'll have multiple page templates and designs, users shouldn't think they've navigated to a new website or caught you in the middle of a theme update when the open a new page.

You should have your basic theme colors and include a header, navigation and footer where appropriate. (E.g. If you're building a JavaScript SPA browser game, you probably don't need a footer.)

It can be tempting to use an entire palette of colors and six different Google fonts, but less is...way less confusing. Define your CSS styles for font families, colors and sizes and use them.

3. Hardcoding Full Paths

Stop. It. Do you enjoy doing things multiple times? Does it bring you joy to install a plugin that literally only does one thing that you could’ve done yourself? Stop hardcoding full paths!

I cannot express to you how many times I’ve had someone ask me to troubleshoot a website issue that turned out to be a hardcoded full path for an image source attribute or external stylesheet.

Clients change their minds about domain names, production and development domains differ. Using partial paths gives you the freedom to make changes and push to production without having to go back and look for references to a previous domain.

4. Not Using Image Alt Tags

Seriously, it’s 2021. Adding alt tags to images is literally the most basic thing we can do to make a website or app more accessible. This is especially true for any images that contain text. The goal is to express the function, meaning or information portrayed by the image to all users.

Check out this alt decision tree for help deciding how to make images in specific contexts more accessible.

5. Being Div-Happy

Listen, we all love divs. They're fun little boxes that you can use for almost anything. But just because you can doesn't mean you should.

We should try to use divs only when there are no more appropriate - read semantic - elements for the job. You could use a div for your menu and everything would work fine. But using a <nav> element helps anyone using a screen-reader and the non-humans (i.e. search engines) understand the meaning behind your code. This isn't just a box with links in it, it's a navigation elements that holds a menu that will guide me through the rest of the site.

Instead of using a div to...
Place text under an image ... use <figure> and <figcaption>
Make a link that performs an action (e.g. uses JavaScript to open a modal or page through a multi-page form) look like a button ... use <button>
Group the main part of your page ... use <main>

What are your web development bad habits? Which ones do you come across most often?

Top comments (49)

Collapse
 
davwheat profile image
David Wheatley

Do not use a button just to "style a link". Buttons are intended to perform actions on the current page.

Side note: also please don't use anchor elements which have onclick event handlers and a placeholder href (e.g. #) -- use a button instead.

Collapse
 
lizlaffitte profile image
Liz Laffitte • Edited

I wasn’t very clear with this. Often I see people using divs with an internal link where they should probably use a button element. For example, opening modals, paging through multi-page forms, etc.

Collapse
 
joelbonetr profile image
JoelBonetR 🥇 • Edited

this does not depend on the place you put'em but the context where the items are and the most important is what the user expect to happen. Most UX studies reveal that there are many differences depending on the professional market it's web app is working, cultural history, target of the web app and so.

If your users expect a button (layout) which triggers an action (logic) that according to standards or for convenience needs to be an "a" tag then use an "a" tag and add the proper styles to make it look like a button instead of being stubborn and use a button (which merely purpose is to trigger a "submit" in its context).

If we start talking about A11Y or this kind of things that nobody takes care of excepting when you need to build an application for people with some particular disability (usually never) then it's another story and we can discuss with that in mind.

Thread Thread
 
Sloan, the sloth mascot
Comment deleted
 
lofibytes profile image
Jillian S. Estrella (she/her)

Being cruel to people isn't a good look, and certainly doesn't make a positive contribution to this community. Folx are here to learn, not to exchange vitriol.

Collapse
 
davwheat profile image
David Wheatley

Yeah, that I completely agree with. :)

Collapse
 
Sloan, the sloth mascot
Comment deleted
 
bclonan profile image
Bradley Morgan Clonan

Because they're crappy coders but amazing at code exercises.

Collapse
 
charlieleedham profile image
CharlieLeedham

Another thing would be to stop worrying about using the latest tech, developers get so caught up not wanting to use jquery cause its becoming out dated and want to use Vue yet they have no experience using Vue and there's projects that need to be done in company, learn tech in your own time but as for bringing new tech into the business don't worry about it unless they are paying u time and research on it, cause by the time you learn Vue, react, angular etc, another tech would come out, it all does the same job at the end of the day, just another boring old website, if u are so desperate in making sure u are relevant in the market, learn VR or machine learning etc, something that's different, cause learning Web frameworks would only lead to new frameworks and then more and then more, does the same job, get it done

Collapse
 
lizlaffitte profile image
Liz Laffitte

I agree, if the only reason you’re learning a new framework is because you think you should, you’re on the wrong path. BUT if you really enjoy learning new ones, I say go for it. Just learn it well before jumping to the next one.

Collapse
 
aarone4 profile image
Aaron Reese

Disagree with both comments. Learning new tech to be more productive and keep company applications at the leading edge of functionality which is a competitive advantage. Old tech is getting impossible to recruit for. Experienced Devs have retired and new Devs aren't interested in being onboarded, otherwise they would all be learning COBOL.

Thread Thread
 
lizlaffitte profile image
Liz Laffitte

That’s a good point. However, I do think trying to learn EVERY new framework to stay competitive isn’t the best course of action. If you’re learning specific new frameworks used by companies or sectors or cities you’re interested in, I get it.

Thread Thread
 
joellau profile image
Joel Lau

as with all things, balance is important. can't lean in either direction too heavily

Collapse
 
danabaiardi profile image
DanaBaiardi

I am a div lover 😅

Collapse
 
lizlaffitte profile image
Liz Laffitte

I am also a little div crazy. 🙈

Collapse
 
krishan111 profile image
Krishan111

I found this post really helpful especially the 4th part. Thanks For Posting

Collapse
 
iamcoderanddev profile image
Nick Williams

I too loved this post

Collapse
 
jennawagnercode profile image
Jenna Wagner

I guess this link would also help you @krishan111 searchenginejournal.com/10-importa...

Collapse
 
brandonwallace profile image
brandon_wallace

Designing a website mobile first is definitely a fabulous idea. It is a lot easier to create a website that way. It is a nice challenge to be able to design something that looks appealing to the eye on a small mobile screen.

Collapse
 
sqlrob profile image
Robert Myers

Speaking more as a user, I hate mobile first. Too often it turns into "mobile only". I have the space, use it to full advantage. Just looking at this page, there's a huge amount of white space on the sides, why? There's close to a thousand px of whitespace if I keep things maximized, and it's not like I'm using a 4K screen.

Collapse
 
godwindaniel10 profile image
Godwin Daniel

Do not be like me , I use ( text-align ) to center everything in a div container (e.g image, text buttons ) .

Instead , you should use the right property ( display: flex ;
Align-item: center
Justify-content: center

Collapse
 
ironcladdev profile image
Conner Ow

The DIV-Happy one is like my most-used bad habit. I do design stuff for mobile view, but after I've gotten it down in a computer's view first. If I make a navbar, I'll design what it looks like on a computer first and then add media queries to make it responsive.

Collapse
 
chidioguejiofor profile image
Chidiebere Ogujeiofor • Edited

Nice article.

One question I have is that is a link styled to look like a button (the link has no onclick but just goes to a new different page) a bad habit ? If so I'd like to learn why

Collapse
 
aarone4 profile image
Aaron Reese

Because a button is expected to trigger an action within the context of the page. A link is a navigation tool. The confusion often comes from the action (e.g. form submit) also has the side effect of a navigation.

Collapse
 
lizlaffitte profile image
Liz Laffitte • Edited

I don’t think so! I often create a btn class that gives links the padding, background color and box-shadow to look like a physical button. It would be using a div with an a tag where you SHOULD use a button element.

I found this article really interesting, and it touches on how screenreaders interact differently with links and buttons: css-tricks.com/use-button-element/

Collapse
 
chidioguejiofor profile image
Chidiebere Ogujeiofor

Nice. thanks a lot. I wanted to be sure I wasn't doing the wrong thing all along

Also I learnt a ton from the article about buttons.

Thread Thread
 
lizlaffitte profile image
Liz Laffitte

Of course! I am growing and learning right there with you.

Collapse
 
icecoffee profile image
Atulit Anand

Great article thanks
I'm a beginner but still I wanna say "mobile first approach sucks"

Collapse
 
lizlaffitte profile image
Liz Laffitte

Interesting! Do you mean you don’t like the process or that you don’t like the concept? What’s you’re preferred approach?

Collapse
 
icecoffee profile image
Atulit Anand • Edited

Such a wonderful day it is thanks for replying.
Generally I tend to make desktop version first and afterwards I add or remove sections accordingly.
The approach to make a mobile first version seems pretty decent when it comes to using only floats . But grids makes the process way swift and easy.

Thread Thread
 
lizlaffitte profile image
Liz Laffitte

I totally get it! I think flexbox makes responsive design a lot easier.

Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.