So, it’s time to develop the Website. You have the design all sliced up into individual images and you’ve got the content (hopefully) in the form of a text file and a folder full of images to complement the text side of the content. You fire up your Web development editor of choice and it is…?
[#] What do you start off with first? The front-end or the back-end? Do you develop your Websites with content management systems like WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, etcetera or do you hand code your Websites in your editor?
[#] Do you take advantage of version control / SVN?
[#] Do you develop and test locally on your machine or remotely on the Web server? Or both?
[#] If you hand code a Website (as opposed to using WordPress which has its own documentation), do you write up documentation or manuals for the code that you develop for each Website?
[#] What applications, Websites, or tools do you use to debug your code, and how often do you debug? Do you document bugs and track them or do you leave all of that out of the process?
[#] If there is something that you do throughout your development process then share it, please. I think we’d all like to improve our development process!
Although I have full copies of Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2010, Microsoft Expression 4 Ultimate, and Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 I actually prefer to code my HTML, CSS, JS, and PHP in Microsoft Notepad. Crazy, right? The clean and (literally) minimal UI of Notepad is just heaven for me. Although I have developed on the server in the past I now almost always develop and test locally before finally launching the Website on the remote Web server.
I always hand code my personal and client Websites and attach a license of Perch to the Website for the content management side, if it needs one. So I’ll start off with the front-end development then attach any back-end development work to the files afterwards. I’ve never used version control / SVN previously but I know I should do because almost everyone else seems to use it, but it’ll be interesting to read about who does / doesn’t use it and the reasons why.
I’ll always write up documentation manuals and even video tutorials for my client Websites but I keep the documentation for my personal Websites fairly minimal. Whilst I use the W3C validation and quality assurance / control tools and some other online checkers I don’t use any bug tracking software because the Websites I develop aren’t on that scale to need to use bug tracking software.
You’ve got some questions to answer now and you all know my answers to them, so get your replies flying in to this thread!
Currently working with WordPress, but I don’t use it for editing purposes - I use Aptana (v3 which is RC atm) and Notepad++ if I just have to do something quickly. We have a NAS box with web-server capabilities, we use that to develop locally, the beauty with it is being able to switch from desktop to laptop if I want a change of scenery.
I do have TortoiseSVN installed, had a little run-through of it from a programmer friend but haven’t really used it as much as I should.
Testing I do both locally and remotely, often the environment is different. For example our local server is a pain to use with any mail function; so if I’m working on something like that I end up using the remote server to test it. But I’ll test as much as possible locally.
I try to document anything I make personally, its can be a boring task, but needs doing for sure; either technical documentation or in the interface for the user, preferably without taking it to special documentation separate from the site.
I use Firebug to help me debug HTML and CSS problems, helped me many times with inline or formatting issues. Though I don’t really record bugs, I do try and make a mental note if its something I’m likely to encounter again though. Also those tools you mention, as well as the myriad of browsers installed on my system (and for IE6, just a quick check these days: IE NetRenderer - Browser Compatibility Check - it isn’t perfect, but it gives a good idea).
The only other thing I can think of, in response to your last question - is formatting code, and in the case of CSS I actually alphabetize properties (with the exception of browser specific properties, which I just keep separate from others, should I come back to it later once the spec is finished and widely supported).
I can’t understand using Notepad to be honest. If an IDE doesn’t float your boat, that’s fair enough, but surely basic features like syntax highlighting would be helpful. I use Crimson Editor which is also pretty minimal, but I’d quite web development and dig ditches if I had to do it all in Notepad.
So, it’s time to develop the Website. You have the design all sliced up into individual images and you’ve got the content (hopefully) in the form of a text file and a folder full of images to complement the text side of the content. You fire up your Web development editor of choice and it is…?
It was half-and-half between vim and [url=http://projects.gnome.org/gedit/]gEdit but it’s become mostly vim lately, if I’m starting right out on my development server. I don’t think I use 99% of what gEdit can do, but it can’t do regex-search-and-replace, which I consider a fault (I hear there’s a plugin somewhere, but, bleh).
The images won’t be sliced: I make them as I go usually, in the GIMP (with PNGcrush).
What do you start off with first? The front-end or the back-end? Do you develop your Websites with content management systems like WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, etcetera or do you hand code your Websites in your editor?
The back-end guy usually gets started first, making the back-end. Either I’m rewriting old front-end or I already know at least some of the pages I’m creating new. Also I get emailed pdf’s usually and I turn those into HTML-versions. I’d say this means I use mutt (mail) and scp (secure copy) in my job.
Hand-code, though the back-ender uses Smarty.
Do you take advantage of version control / SVN?
No, but we’re stupid that way. We use “folder management”: old versions in one folder/dir, new stuff in others, each with a number after their names.
But I did install git locally on my machine, for play-time fun.
Do you develop and test locally on your machine or remotely on the Web server? Or both?
Almost exclusively dev-server, so I can easily test pages in browsers in my Virtual Box. Then I don’t have to worry about an operating system in a file on my operating system trying to figure out what a “local file” is.
So I use sshfs to load a local version of the folders I work in that are on the server, so that I can use my local version of vim with my personal settings. This ended up working way better than gvim.
[#] If you hand code a Website (as opposed to using WordPress which has its own documentation), do you write up documentation or manuals for the code that you develop for each Website?
I comment my stuff as if someone else who isn’t a front-end 'tard or n00b might have to come along and maintain.
What applications, Websites, or tools do you use to debug your code, and how often do you debug? Do you document bugs and track them or do you leave all of that out of the process?
Unfortunately there’s not a whole lot of bug-testing of the back end. The back-ender does a lot of testing himself until he’s happy, but after that usually it’s customers calling and asking what’s up. Lawlz.
Andrew, pencil and paper, and Voodoo plus my bare hands are my tools. Though depending upon the nature of the project I’d usually start testing on a localised server. I debug in real-time nothing like the present. I use a variety of IDE but like I said all the markup is all lovingly hand-crafted so I have full control of my destiny.
You fire up your Web development editor of choice and it is…?
That depends on the job… It could be the code editor on Dreamweaver (I’m adicted to the site manager) or it might be Visual Studio 2010 with VS.PHP… Fantastic code-completion and project organization… Or Textwrangler (on Mac), GEdit on Linux.
What do you start off with first? The front-end or the back-end? Do you develop your Websites with content management systems like WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, etcetera or do you hand code your Websites in your editor?
We build 90% of our sites in Drupal now… Still a few sites get authored as static html but very rarely… Maybe 5 sites built by us last year were not CMS driven.
I start by installing the core software, setting up the authoring environment, configuring the modules I think we’ll need and then scaffold the site with blank pages reflecting the approved sitemap (because rarely does copy come in on schedule). Then I apply the basic design to the site and set up the various content types, blogs, feeds, etc…
Once the basic design is in place and all the copy to date is in, we sit down, critique the site and figure out what’s missing and what’s left to do.
Do you take advantage of version control / SVN?
Sometimes… That’s an area that we need to put more effort into so that it is one of our policies.
Do you develop and test locally on your machine or remotely on the Web server? Or both?
We have a local development server, a remote development server and sometimes we’ll have a development subdomain on the production server. We start inhouse and then as we require client participation, we move things to our remote server for proofing and testing.
If you hand code a Website (as opposed to using WordPress which has its own documentation), do you write up documentation or manuals for the code that you develop for each Website?
Although we use Drupal which means it is somewhat standardized, we provide our clients documentation and training for running their site.
What applications, Websites, or tools do you use to debug your code, and how often do you debug? Do you document bugs and track them or do you leave all of that out of the process?
When we build really complicated custom code, we use simple-test to ensure that we don’t break anything during development. It’s not necessary that often but comes in handy when required.
If there is something that you do throughout your development process then share it, please. I think we’d all like to improve our development process!
We schedule everything now and that (hopefully) keeps things in check. We schedule, design, meetings, signoff, milestones, copy-will-be-ready-by, etc… And we follow up on the scheduling so that if we do fall behind, we can figure out why and how to fix it.
[#] Do you take advantage of version control / SVN?
No. Waste of time.
[#] Do you develop and test locally on your machine or remotely on the Web server? Or both?
Both. Develop on Laptop. Transfer files to Desktop. Put on Windows Server for testing purposes. Years ago I would upload my files to an external server (web host). I thought it would be fun to do it myself, makes it an entertaining learning process, and I enjoy it. Plus, 100% control over everything.
[#] If you hand code a Website (as opposed to using WordPress which has its own documentation), do you write up documentation or manuals for the code that you develop for each Website?
I do document, but at an file level, not external to a whitepaper. Document ASP.NET, JS, and CSS files to help myself in case I come back later and forgot how it worked, or someone else viewing my code. Do to others as you want done to yourself.
[#] What applications, Websites, or tools do you use to debug your code, and how often do you debug? Do you document bugs and track them or do you leave all of that out of the process?
Visual Studio. You PHP developers are missing out. Nuff said.
[#] If there is something that you do throughout your development process then share it, please. I think we’d all like to improve our development process!
Do my planning process visually on a white-board with a felt-tip marker. Just like a professor
Do you connect/use MySQL through VS.NET? I’m a C#/SQL Server user, and was curious of your experience and thoughts, and to see if their is a difference between each Database integration.
SERIOUSLY. To me that approach to web “design” is such a steaming pile of manure it’s no wonder the websitest that start out with some PSD jockey are accessibility trainwrecks that while often very pretty – are ultimately USELESS to end users.
Hopefully? Until you have content or at the very least a reasonable facsimile of it you have NO BUSINESS writing a single like of markup – but I say the same thing about layout.
Until you have the content semantically marked up, you have NO business making a layout. You draw the goof assed picture in photoshop first, most of the time you end up with non-viable elements (like fixed height non-tileable backgrounds) and shoehorning the content into a layout it wasn’t meant for. Content should dictate layout, NOT the other way around!
Assuming those images ARE content, and not just layout garbage.
Crimson Editor, though I turned off the illegible acid-trip inducing color syntax highlighting, killed the tab nonsense and force it to use single instances so every file is in it’s own window/process. This has the advantage I can SHOCK put editor windows on multiple screens, view files side-by-side (like say HTML, CSS and PHP) etc, etc… I also like to force 2 space tabs, strip trailing spaces on save, set the word-wrap to 0 indent/de-indent, etc, etc…
SINCE I do my Layout using CSS I make a HTML first that I can cut up into whatever CMS the code is going into. It REALLY helps to work with clean markup BEFORE you get all that annoying theme/skinning crap trying to tell you how to do things, especially given what total GARBAGE the output from systems like turdpress are.
Markup the content semantically, bend that markup to your will with CSS, create the images to be hung on that layout, then break up that markup as needed for the CMS if there will be one.
It’s SO much easier to make the markup, do the layout CSS then force the CMS to output it, than it is to try and work with the output of the CMS from the start.
EVERY time I’ve tried to use some form of version control software it’s been nothing but a disaster filled with code regressions. It’s just another of those tools I’ve NEVER gotten along with – Which is why when I was a project manager we just made a daily copy of each persons area of responsibility/changes and even more frequent changes when a major section is “completed”… or more specifically, meets a “milestone”
Which is where a whiteboard filled with a series of project milestones to be reached is very handy. I’ll stack a human brain with a able hand and a whiteboard against pretty much any automated “tool”
But then, like most automation and programming assistance software the only thing about them that can be considered professional grade tools are the people promoting their use.
In-between. I run XAMPP locally so I can test locally while having all the correct behaviors of being on a web server because, well… it is. By pointing XAMPP’s root at my project tree, I can see my changes locally as I make them and edit directly in the project directory.
It also helps that I ALWAYS write my PHP, HTML and CSS to be directory neutral… letting it exist in root, a subdirectory, wherever; I do this by making all directory links down-tree… “…/” == /FAIL/, “/somedirectory/” == /FAIL/ – point down-tree only, and you never have a problem. “images/”, “theme/images/”, etc, etc… You run your .html or .php’s the user can access from the root (I’m one of the "route all user requests through a single index.php types) and pointing at your sub-files becomes easy.
For static HTML, no… but I’ve not done one of those in a decade. The moment you have anything more complex than static markup if you don’t document it, you’re a fool.
ALSO, given what you have to do to make turdpress output decent markup, document there too…
I use the ACTUAL browsers, and the W3C validation tools… and that’s about it. It’s why I laugh at the “preview pane” bull, since the last thing you need is ANOTHER renderer to test against and lead you down the garden path.,. as if “alt-tab F5” is so incredibly hard to do or something.
Admittedly, it’s a bit more complex than that these days since to test IE 5.01 through 8 I’m using XP under VirtualBox… and for linsux I’m testing Debian Squeeze under VirtualBox… and for OSX I’m testing iAtkos 10.6.5 under VirtualBox… Though at least I can test IE9 native under 7.
One of the big things I like to do is set ‘targets’… Not just things like milestones, but actual ‘targets’ – how big should the files BE? How many separate files are acceptable for a single page? What’s the total allowable page size? If a page looks to be going over those numbers, ESPECIALLY if it’s just because of some ‘pretty layout element’ I’ll start swinging the axe at things as unneccessary… because the ONLY part of the page that’s necessary is the CONTENT, and the markup saying what that content IS.
I think that’s something a lot of “designers” lose sight of – as I’ve said a billion times people visit websites for the CONTENT – NOT the goofy animated garbage that makes the page take a day and a half to load, NOT the stupid pictures you hang around the content, NOT your clever but ultimately useless javascripted nonsense that just makes sites harder to navigate.
Of course, given my target sizes and file counts, it’s not like most of that nonsense is viable in the first place… As a rule of thumb I like to keep single page sizes under 70k, and consider 140k the upper limit – that’s HTML+CSS+IMAGES+SCRIPTS. Likewise I prefer to remain under 20 separate files, with 15 or so the ideal and 40 the upper limit.
I LAUGH at the pathetically useless sites people are vomiting up nowadays, where you’ll see tens of K of markup and tens of K of scripting for every quarter-K of content… If I didn’t know better I’d swear people are padding their code now in anticipation of charging by the K-LoC like it was 1984; Though increasingly I’m starting to attribute it to ineptitude, as anyone who can master a technology like jquery should be smart enough to realize when not ot use it to do CSS’ job – anyone who can figure out how to load four background images should be smart enough to realize that a 1.5 megabyte website is going to have no traffic – anyone who is smart enough to use CSS, should be smart enough to realize not every element needs a DIV around it, a class on the DIV and the element being wrapped resulting in 50k of markup for 1k of content.
It’s the KISS theory – when the art *** starts running his mouth about visual appeal, point them at Google, Amazon and eBay; when they use the ‘but those are content oriented sites’, reply with “If you don’t have content, what the devil is the POINT OF EVEN HAVING A SITE?!?”
In case you couldn’t guess, I’m a content guy – It’s all about the content and making sure it’s available to as many people as possible in as accessible a manner as possible. Build it up with progressive enhancement, so that when those enhancements are unavailable it gracefully degrades…
Find the enemy and shoot him down, anything else is rubbish – Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen
[#] What do you start off with first? The front-end or the back-end? Do you develop your Websites with content management systems like WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, etcetera or do you hand code your Websites in your editor?
[#] Do you take advantage of version control / SVN?
[#] Do you develop and test locally on your machine or remotely on the Web server? Or both?
[#] If you hand code a Website (as opposed to using WordPress which has its own documentation), do you write up documentation or manuals for the code that you develop for each Website?
[#] What applications, Websites, or tools do you use to debug your code, and how often do you debug? Do you document bugs and track them or do you leave all of that out of the process?
[#] If there is something that you do throughout your development process then share it, please. I think we’d all like to improve our development process!
a) Unless if I have to or I’m experimenting, I prefer to hand code my web pages. That way if something goes wrong, I can have an idea of how to fix it instead of having to fight with the settings of a CMS. I prefer Notepad++ and I could not see myself using another text editor, especially Notepad. That one is just a pain to read anything in, much less code.
b) Currently no unless if I’m at work.
c) I prefer to test on my local machine. It’s faster that way, but I also test on the web server too.
d) I put comments in my code, but manuals and all that? I don’t see myself going that far unless if it’s a big-time project.
e) For debugging I use Firebug (despite my hatred of its bugginess) or if there’s a specific debugger that my client wants me to use I go with that. I make sure to track my bugs as much as possible. Makes fixing problems a lot easier, that’s for sure.
f) I’m not an expert, but I prefer to design my pages on paper first before I start writing any code. I also keep in mind my audience and design my page around the content they are going to see. It makes it easier to make a page that is nice and yet simple to read.
I was thinking about back-end development and forgot about Firebug for fine tuning my CSS or any interactive Javascript… I could live without it but I wouldn’t be half as productive. I run it on FF and Chrome… I wish it was available for IE too. If something isn’t working right, I’ll inspect the element and start rewriting the css until it works as expected, then I’ll just copy my newly written directives and paste them in the stylessheet. I rarely use the Web Developer’s Toolbar anymore but I like it for checking my local and live pages for valid HTML.
Good call… I’ve been using Visual Studio to build Drupal modules so all my DB calls are abstracted but yeah, I’ve been meaning to install MySQL connector to use my local MySQL server… So many things you can do with VS2010. I really like the VS.PHP component and I’ve been kicking around an idea for a VS.Drupal component that adds all of the core functions and classes into VS. Now that you’ve reminded me, I’ll have to connect to MySQL and see how it goes. Last time I checked there were some glitches. I’d also like to try SQL Server with Drupal now that MS has provided a SQL Server driver for it.
PHPEd for me, by NuSphere. Brilliant editor, autocomplete, auto indenting, syntax highlighting, regex search and replace, the lot. Well, everything I need anyway! I used to to use the Zend one, but found it slow as hell (comes with Java applications I guess) - PHPEd is quite similar, but faster.
One I can’t get on with is Eclipse - yes it’s free… but you get what you pay for. Slow, buggy, bloated and awful!
Front end. Well, both at once. I can design the database and some basic back end stuff, and the front end (from a PSD template usually - despite Deathshadow’s ridiculous claims, some of us do actually have the ability to create a decent HTML/CSS template from a photoshop file). Then I fill in the middle stuff. Depends on the project really… but I really like seeing the back end work I’m doing put in context on the front end straight away.
Absolutely. Never used to, but then used it for work, and can’t live without it now. It’s so ridiculously useful that it has become part of everything I do now on the web. I’m trying to make the switch to git, but using svn still at the moment. Still looking for a decent way to track database changes though.
Develop on my local machine (with WAMP installed), then test on a test server, then roll out to live usually.
Depends on the project. Sometimes a user requires a manual to use the admin system I created, sometimes not. I’m using a framework I’ve developed over a fair amount of time that I need to get round to documenting and putting on my site for criticism (of which I’m sure there will be much!)
Due to never having got round to properly setting up a debugger (always had problems setting these things up), I just do it the old fashioned way by echoing/var_dumping variables in a few places and finding the root of the problem fairly quickly now.
Can’t think of anything special at the moment but will post back if I think of anything!
[#] You fire up your Web development editor of choice and it is…?
Textmate and my command line.
[#] What do you start off with first? The front-end or the back-end? Do you develop your Websites with content management systems like WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, etcetera or do you hand code your Websites in your editor?
I tend to work from the front-end first, but mostly because the majority of my (paid) work hasn’t been back-end intensive in any way, more focused on the aesthetics.
If I’m doing more than just putting in a custom WordPress theme or something simple like that, back-end first.
[#] Do you take advantage of version control / SVN?
I’ve just recently started to try and get in the habit of using git and github. Great tools if you remember to use them :P.
[#] Do you develop and test locally on your machine or remotely on the Web server? Or both?
When the project is in very rough stages I work locally. Once I have something mostly functional I like to throw it on a live test web server so I can share with others and the like.
Mostly though, I work locally.
[#] If you hand code a Website (as opposed to using WordPress which has its own documentation), do you write up documentation or manuals for the code that you develop for each Website?
I try to comment in as much as I can, but again it’s something I have to remind myself to do. When I get really focused on my coding I start skipping over things like this. I’m working on that though, haha.
[#] What applications, Websites, or tools do you use to debug your code, and how often do you debug? Do you document bugs and track them or do you leave all of that out of the process?
Firebug for front-end stuff, nothing better really from what I’ve seen. I don’t really track these bugs too much unless I’m having to make major overhauls to the code to accomodate for them. Back-end gets debugged as I work and test in small modules.
[#] If there is something that you do throughout your development process then share it, please. I think we’d all like to improve our development process!
Nothing in particular that I can think of, except reminding myself to take a break if I’m getting frustrated. You usually end up doing more harm than good if you keep hacking away at the code when it’s making you angry. The emotion gets in the way of being able to logically solve the issue, so the best thing to do is to get up, do something else for a minute to get your mind off the problem, and come back to it when you feel better.
Wow, you are as ignorant as you think designers are… The truth lies, like always ,in the middle. Your aim should be a perfect symbiosis of design, usability, interaction and content.
I’m not purchasing experiences, even though online businesses keep thinking I am.
This is also why, when the mobile-version (stripped down but does everything the site needs to do) is starting to be preferred to the “desktop-version” (bloated beyond belief and way overcomplicated compared to what it needs to do). Why serve a bloated version in the first place?
It depends on the platform, the demographic and the subject. Sometimes the experience is a much required part of the tool, in other scenarios it is not but there are no hard fast rules that dictate what is best in all situations.
With regard to stripped down versions for mobile devices, IMO that’s when it’s nice to use something like MobileESP so you can switch stylesheets or even switch themes to accomodate mobile devices with a minimalist version of your site’s navigation and layout. I just used it the other day for the wireless login page for a local hotel so I could reformat the page several ways for desktop, smart phones and tablets… It’s quite awesome
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. – George Bernard Shaw.
You fire up your Web development editor of choice and it is…?
Windows: Aptana Studio
Mac: Coda
[#] What do you start off with first? The front-end or the back-end? Do you develop your Websites with content management systems like WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, etcetera or do you hand code your Websites in your editor?
Drupal for all sites
My current project at work in on Codeigniter (custom app)
[#] Do you take advantage of version control / SVN?
Not for one off sites, but for projects at work, I use Unfuddle (free for one user). Saves me the hassle of maintaining and setting up SVN
[#] Do you develop and test locally on your machine or remotely on the Web server? Or both?
I dont develop locally. I stopped doing that a long time ago due to php.ini differences on local and web servers.
I set up a DEV.siteurl.com and ctrl+shift+u (or other shortcut) to upload the files directly from my editor.
[#] If you hand code a Website (as opposed to using WordPress which has its own documentation), do you write up documentation or manuals for the code that you develop for each Website?
Not for each site, but for custom apps
[#] What applications, Websites, or tools do you use to debug your code, and how often do you debug? Do you document bugs and track them or do you leave all of that out of the process?
Web dev apps:
Wiindows-> Filezilla, Aptana Studio, Beyond Compare (merging code live), putty
Mac: Coda, Transmit
I use unfuddle to keep track of bugs (they are inserted as tickets)
[#] If there is something that you do throughout your development process then share it, please. I think we’d all like to improve our development process!
I take 5 minute breaks (reddit :)) every half hour or so. Keeps me going longer.
I suck at design, so I let a designer handle the design portion of things.
I let jQuery do a lot of the JS work
I plan the project (NOT one off sites, but apps) and make an estimate for the project timeline. Keeps me accountable to myself, if not management
Even though said statement IS true, it still holds that the ONLY reason for a website to even exist in the first place is CONTENT, which is why CONTENT and getting it to the user is the priority and should come first – with EVERYTHING else taking a back seat to that.
Especially with goof assed animated bull, graphics twenty times larger than the actual content, endless garbage jquery scripting for NOTHING resulting in pages that end up several megabytes in size in hundreds of files to deliver 5k of plaintext and two content images.
Or even 7k of markup, 59k of images and 70k of scripting to deliver a page where the only actual content even present on it is a street address, two phone numbers and an e-mail totalling less than 170 BYTES. Right Asterisks?
Or even a image only splash page with zero content sucking down 34k, followed by a SECOND splash page with no actual content of value on it either just linking to sub-pages while blowing 22k of scripting, 4k of CSS in five separate files and 5k of markup on 792 BYTES of content. Right Awasson?
