What binds the three together? Professional webdevelopers running a weblog about webdesign, coding tips related to client-side scripting and server-side programming (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, MYSQL, AJAX, ASP, PHP, etcetera), usability, webstandards, accessibility and webtrends.

A short introduction

Robert Nyman is a developer from Sweden running his webjournal at http://www.robertnyman.com. You can find Jonathan Snook, a Ottawa based Canadian webdeveloper at http://www.snook.ca/jonathan and Dustin Diaz, a webdeveloper from sunny California at http://www.dustindiaz.com.

Webdesigners need good coding skills

Many of us webdesigners will have to extend their set of coding skills at one point, re-think and adapt the way of producing websites and broaden views about webstandards, usability and accessibility. So I thought why not ask three webdevelopers about how they see and experience their professional lives as a webdeveloper.

Okay, let’s go on with the interview …

Q1: What are your five handy Javascript/DOM functions you use mostly when doing client-side scripting?

Jonathan Snook: ”More and more I’ve been relying on Prototype (read on prototype cheat sheet) but mostly because I’m working on large web apps that can take a few extra kb’s. From prototype $() and $$() are huge timesavers. Without those, I rely on getElementById, getElementsByTagName and a custom getElementsByClass.”

Robert Nyman: ”I use document.getElementById, document.getElementsByTagName, getElemementsByClassName, my own version inspired by Jonathan Snook’s version and then shaped by valuable feedback from talented people (please see the ultimate-getelementsbyclassname) , if(typeof whatEver != “undefined”){, someObject.search(/funky-word/i) != -1 .”

Dustin Diaz did not answer this one but fortunately I remembered he did an article top-ten-javascript. I got his top 5 from there: The Prototype $ Dollar Function, getCookie(), setCookie(), deleteCookie(), inArray() and insertAfter().

Q2: What is your favourite browser on which platform (eg mac, windows) at home and which browser do you use in a production environment at work?

Robert Nyman: “When it comes to a favorite browser at home, I’m not really sure anymore. When using a PC, Firefox is no. 1, no contender. However, I’ve just gotten a MacBook Pro to my home and I’m getting used to the options available in Mac OS X. Most of the time I use Camino (I would use Firefox there too, but I don’t since it doesn’t have the native Mac OS X look and feel), but I strongly miss the Find as you type-feature.

When working, I do constant testing in Firefox and Internet Explorer, and now and then check in a lot of other web browsers as well. That’s the beauty of web standards, though, that if you write good code that works fine in a proper web browser like Firefox, it will most likely function very well in other good web browsers like Safari and others too.

I would also urge and strongly advise any web developer to initially make sure your website works in a web standards-compliant web browser such as Firefox, and then work out the quirks in Internet Explorer. People who start out testing with Internet Explorer and make sure it works there always get flabbergasted when they see it fail in all the other web browsers.

How I set up my production?

I build some kind of HTML mock-up based on web standards and semantic code and then add layer by layer (CSS, Javascript…). Constant testing in real web browsers, not any emulated environment. Simple as that!

Dustin Diaz: “My browser of choice is typically Firefox on any platform. Seeing as how I only recently purchased a Mac Mini (now with Intel Core). I am getting used to using Safari. There are indeed features that I like, and some I could care less about. However now is not a good time to ask me all the caveats on Safari since I’m so new to the browser. Typically in years past I only used Safari to do minor browser testing. But I will say my biggest beef with Safari is its crappy DOM support. They may have very well passed the CSS Acid2 test, but please move onto the DOM.

In a production environment I always test with Firefox first just because of its useful tools and extensions that make development easier. I never think it’s a good idea to do cross-browser development during your first pass and making prototypes - that defeats the purpose of prototyping. After all, it would be silly put in the extra effort for something that’s not even guarenteed to go into the final product. When something gets finalized, I will then go back and check for browser incompatibilities.

As for text editing software, I’m a big Dreamweaver fan, but only because of its cool syntax hilighting and tree views etc… I’ve yet to use a single code bit from the internal libraries, or use their “design view.” In one sense, I am by no means using DW to its maximum potential. I only use it to write code. Image editing is typically done in Photoshop only because I know it so well. I am by no means a graphic designer, but I know how to tweak images and optimize them to my liking.”

Jonathan Snook: “I use Firefox 1.5 on Windows XP for browsing and development. Once things look good there, I test on IE6, Safari and then, depending on the project requirements, take a peak in older browsers like Netscape 4 or Lynx to see if there’s anything that needs to be taken into account.”

Q3: Do you work with people like webdesigners, IT consultants … what is a typical day at work? You start up your machine and start working on one project or it is (my experience) more like multi-tasking all the way?

Dustin Diaz: “The role of a Web Developer is a very interesting role. At Yahoo! we’re all called Frontend Engineers however my manager and I have concluded that it would almost be more accurate to call ourselves User Interface Engineers. Sometimes the term frontend can be confusing seeing as how we’ll often be working in server-side languages like PHP which is indeed a backend language. Regardless of the matter, I work closely with both designers and backend engineers.

In one sense, every group has overlap with another. So we are the gap between design and the server.

A typical day can vary quite a bit. So rather, to get a good sense of what I do, a typical week would involve mocking up pages in HTML and CSS. Sometimes JavaScript depending on the prototype. Then when it’s time to get the piece integrated into the backend, I’ll migrate over to the engineers to see what API I’ll be working with etc.

On the topic of multi-tasking, I strongly discourage anyone doing that. Although I have a knack for doing it well, it only prolongs the overall timeline. If one thing takes one day to complete (8 hours), but then I’m interupted in the middle for one hour, math tells us that the total time for everything to be completed would be 9 hours. Wrong. More like 12 or 13 hours. This is one thing I consistently try to remind managers just so they know what they’re getting into if they are indeed going to have me switch tasks.”

Jonathan Snook: “When I worked in a web agency, I could find myself working on as many as 10 different projects in a day and working in 5 different languages. Now that I’m freelancing, there’s less distraction and I get the opportunity to focus on one project for an entire day.”

Robert Nyman: ”Multi-tasking seems to be the word of the day. It might be trying to handle a lot of different projects, or just many different aspects in one project. When working as an IT consultant/web developer you need to get used to being asked questions all the time, and to answer them on in a concise manner without losing focus on what you were currently doing. But I like that, most of the time. It’s refreshing to talk to people, discuss things and try to understand everyone’s view, as opposed to just staring into a screen and code till your fingers bleed.

Mostly I work together with system developers and project managers, but I would like to have more discussions and interaction with people that are skilled in design and/or usability.

So basically, a normal day is getting to work and going through the unread e-mails, start working, handle a lot of questions and discussions and then make sure I leave in time to go home to my family.”

Q4: Webstandards and accessibility are both a good thing. Some people think like it is a sort of manifest and others use it in a practical way. Is their government regulation in your country that tells webdesigncompanies to make websites accessible?
Large companies work with eg ASP, JSP and template systems, and they simply haven’t got a clue about webstandards and are happy if the website works fine on their machines? Or is it the fault of vendors selling sloppy coded templates and authoring systems?

Robert Nyman: ”In Sweden there are recommendations for web sites in the public sector, but no legislation. I would say that such a vast majority of web developers in Sweden either don’t know how to do a proper job, don’t want to know or simply just want to get paid and then go home again without having to care and get involved.

People shy away from the standards movement because they think it’s just a bunch of fundamentalists with too many opinions and only living in a theoretic world. It couldn’t be further from the truth.

People who care about web standards simply want to do a good job and be proud of what they do, while at the same time respecting the end users no matter what the platform and/or eventual disability they might have. Also, this will benefit the client/company since they will make more money because of higher accessibility, better search engine ranking and less bandwidth usage.

With evident factors like that, I can’t see why you wouldn’t want to use web standards? What holds you back? That you might do a good job that you can stand up for?

When it comes to tools, I definitely think vendors are responsible too. Microsoft’s .NET is great for system developers but at the same time horrendous for anyone trying to create good interface code, separate content (HTML) from presentation (CSS) and interaction (JavaScript). This in turn has lead to people building Content Management Systems based on this, adopting the bad practices and then made it twice as bad. In all fairness, though, Microsoft is nowadays sincerely striving to make the tools better and take these aspects into account.

The same goes for other vendors as well. Take a look at all the terrible WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) products out there, programs as well as those used in different Content Management Systems. With a few, very rare exceptions, all of them produce such a code mess that it hurts to look at it.

Problem is, the damage is already done and widespread, and the only thing that can sort out the weed is the market by not using and paying for poorly coded inaccessible web sites.”

Jonathan Snook: “There’s a bunch of factors at play. The Canadian Government does dictate some things when working on government sites but not the sites of the general public. Large companies and organizations do tend to steer towards “enterprise” frameworks like J2EE and .NET. But to say that large organizations don’t care about web standards isn’t really accurate. It likely has more to do with knowledge. In other words, if it ‘works’ in most browsers for the majority of the audience, who’d even know? If I do my own plumbing, how do I know I’ve done it wrong? Only when it breaks. I’m not involving myself in the plumbing industry to learn all the latest and greatest and starting up my own plumbing blog. I’m just doing my job and until something breaks, I must be doing my job well enough. “

Dustin Diaz: “Although I can’t dive into the specifics of what we do at Yahoo!. I think it’s fairly obvious that we’re running PHP on most of our newer properties. With Rasmus guiding our direction on PHP patterns, we generally lean toward the “No Framework MVC Framework” . This allows developers maximum flexibility (when done right) to create our own standard output to ensure accessibility. Granted there’s always room for improvement, and I’m always trying to seek out ways to better separate frontend from backend.

On the matter of whose fault it is? It would be easier to point the finger at vendors, but in the end, it’s still your choice and a matter of priorities.”

The round-up

Now that ends our triple interview with Dustin Diaz, Robert Nyman and Jonathan Snook and a big thank you goes to all three of them! Please feel free to add any remarks on what has been said, and, hopefully it has broadened your views! Thanks all and have a nice day!

Share This

↑ Jump up to the comment form

The posts Break Out the Earth Tones, Branding your CSS Stylesheets, Jakob Nielsen @ E-consultancy.com, A visit from Glenda Watson-Hyatt, Review of Max Web Design Blog, are related to this post.

Or why not take time out to find out about the author of the post.