$(document).ready(function() {

  $("#some_element").fadeOut('slow');

  $("another_element").fadeIn('slow');

});

Instead try using callbacks. A callback is a function that is called after the current function has finished. In the previous example an empty callback (does nothing) is called once the first element is faded out and again a different empty callback for when the second element is faded in.

We can write the previous rules like so:

$(document).ready(function() {

  $("some_element").fadeOut('slow', function() {

    $("another_element").fadeIn('slow');

  });

});

I’m not saying analytics is a waste of time

If I had a Saas site or something similar I definitely would use some kind of analytics program. I’d like to know where my users are coming from, the hardware/software they’re using and any other information I can get that would help be build a better product for them.

We aren’t products

We’re people and as far as I’m concerned our personalities and quirks shouldn’t be subject to change based on the “market”. We are who we are. So I’m just going to be myself and give people a break (if only on one small site) from the prying eyes of the internet.

Take my work with wordpress as an anecdotal example. I (almost) never copy and paste code that goes in the loop. However for creating widgetized areas I copy and paste, then edit the options to suit my needs.

The problem of efficiency in coding

I never remember the syntax for creating widgetized areas. I know it more or less. But to get it working I have to look it up. What a waste of time.

Compare that to the loop

I just jump in and code what I need. No wasted time, no fuss, no stress from not being able to quickly find what I need. Not to mention the benefit of having a clearer understanding of the code.

Unfortunately there’s nothing to be found. If you’re a savvy web user you might realize that the URL of the site is structured like so: http://www.somesite.com/events/old-event

Great!

That means I can just delete ‘/old-event’ and I should be sent to a page with some kind of information about the events, right?

Wrong.

All too often I get a 404 page not found error. This seems like a missed opportunity for great user experience. Beginner users won’t know/think that they could do something like that but us savvy users do. I know there are a lot of sites where this would work but if you’re developing your site please keep this in mind and don’t miss out on a great (and simple) user experience benefit.

Edit (Dec – 2011): One idea I had is that many 404 pages give the user a search box or try to link them to some “general useful pages” like home or the blog page. Why not pull the path the user tried to enter and prepopulate (or even just execute) a search with that information. Much more useful in my opinion.

The difficulty isn’t swaying me, but I want to be aware of the challenge. And like JFK said we do these things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard”.

Successful people shouldn’t be coding. They should be attending meetings, sending emails and making phone calls. Who wants to do any of that stuff? If you like to code, build, hack, design, create, whatever, I think you should do it no matter how old you are.

Anyway, the idea was that every developer should build their own blog engine. I loved the analogy that Luke Skywalker built his own lightsaber and we should do something similar.

There are many reasons to do this: helps you learn a language, it’s a project to show to potential employers/clients, it’s fun. I started writing a PHP powered blog a few years ago but got bored quickly, I think it’s time to give it another go.

Maybe in Javascript this time… that would be interesting.

I’m not going to complain. I want to make it better.

The internet reminds me a lot of the printing press. It didn’t make Gutenberg rich but it changed the world. It gave authors a louder voice and a bigger audience. The internet is doing much the same. We should look to the great authors of the past to learn how to push ourselves and create good work.

Who better to start with than Hemingway?

Use short sentences

There is something beautiful about getting an idea across in simplest terms. If you’ve ever seen the code of a table based web page you know what I mean. But even with html5 there can be a lot of noise in our code. Divitus can leave our code looking just as ugly and messy.

Keep in mind that even if shortening your code doesn’t make the page faster, it will at least make it easier for the next person who inherits your wonderful code.

Start with a short first paragraph

When writing, a short opening paragraph helps your readers get sucked into your piece. When coding you want the same thing. The reader is another developer though, so make sure you have some way of easing them into your code.

I structure all my CSS with a table of contents. It helps other developers see the basic organization of my CSS and helps them add to the code while maintaining style standards. Sometimes I’ll throw in a short description but that’s not always necessary.

Use vigorous English

The point of writing with vigorous language is that the right emotion (or message) gets across to the reader. Development is more objective than writing, using menacing variable names in your JavaScript won’t suddenly make users understand the toil of calculating their monthly budget.

However you should be vigorous in observing design patterns and style standards. This can be a huge headache. Imagine you just finished your part of a team project, all the html and css is wonderful. No divitus, only necessary classes and IDs. You did an awesome job.

But then you sent it to that developer. The one who doesn’t really care if the style matches. The one who doesn’t put css selectors in the correct place. The one who makes your code a mess. And guess who will have to clean it up when something breaks?

That’s right. You.

Be positive, not negative

For Hemingway this meant stating what something is and not what it isn’t. For developers it’s slightly different.

Our code should add functionality not take it away. The best example I can think of is writing CSS. To properly cascade a developer should write styles for all the tags and then customize (or add) the features that other tags need. Instead of applying the custom tag globally then take that feature or quality away when it’s not needed.

Thanks to CopyBlogger for the article that inspired this post.

It’s not just Internet Explorer 6. There are significant differences between IE7 and 8 with version 9 soon to come. Firefox acts slightly differently than webkit and html5/css3 is not widely supported. So what’s the answer to these issues? I think it’s the mobile market.

New smart phones are released all the time. People who normally would be using legacy software have no choice but to use newer technologies. Think about all the iPhone users browsing with Safari on their mobile. They might otherwise be using IE6 for all we know.

There’s already talk of mobile internet overtaking traditional computer based browsing. If that’s the case then I can’t wait until I can start using all the cool html5/css3 tools without the underlining feeling that I’m wasting my time on something a lot of people won’t even see.

I’ll be posting articles based on my notes from the event in the next few weeks. Keep an eye out for them.