I have a sublist of that, that I built over the last ~year of hacking on web projects. One of my biggest to dos in each project is automate stuff like validating. I still haven't really found a good way so I either go to w3c and check everything once in a while or I just don't. Usually I just don't.
This to me is like a checklist of things to automate. Is there any "build" system for the web?
I'm sure just about anyone who has used the web for any length of time has hit the standard apache "Not found" page hundreds of times now and pretty much knows what it means.
Custom 404 pages of often quite confusing as they will try to be clever and redirect you to other content that may be interesting. Sometimes these aren't clear and give the impression that the link was not broken and that this is where the site designer intended you to go which leaves you looking around the page for the content you thought you were going to get.
"Custom 404 pages of often quite confusing as they will try to be clever and redirect you to other content that may be interesting."
I agree, however I also believe that is the intent of filing it under "usability". It isn't usability as you would commonly define it, a good UX, but rather keeping the UX of the site consistent across all states, even failure, and giving the user an entry point back in to the rest of the site. A default Apache 404 does not do this, it's just a flat white page, with your only option being to go back from whence you came. If that wasn't your site, then the perception is you've lost a potential visitor, and that potentially could've been avoided with a custom 404 page.
I prefer the 404 pages that something to the effect of "Sorry, that is broken" and then include the results of a site search of the keywords or friendly url that was provided.
This drives me nuts. On the surface there is very little difference between `just functional' and `production ready'. And it's a hard sell if the client is not aware of the benefits.
Would be nice if this was open sourced so more items could have been added by the community (also framework specific checklists) but I like the concept
One thing I would add which is driving me crazy on mobile / tablet sign up pages
- make sure your email fields are annotated with type="email"
Another common issue is with SSL mixed content waring, so I would also add
- make sure to use protocol relative / https only URLs
(with a reminder to NOT use protocol relative URLs in email templates, your outlook users will appreciate it)
> Would be nice if this was open sourced so more items could have been added by the community (also framework specific checklists) but I like the concept
Just to share, since you mention framework specific, a similar concept exists since a while ago for the PHP symfony (version 1) framework (not official, but I quite liked it back then)
It is open source, but I can't seem to find a license on that page, so it may not be free software. I would be reluctant to modify and redistribute copies of it.
Protocol relative URLs for stylesheets unfortunately cause a double download (one for both HTTP and HTTPS) in IE 8 and below, which is a damn shame. Paul Irish has a lot of info on this here: http://paulirish.com/2010/the-protocol-relative-url/
A document that bills itself as "The ultimate checklist for all serious web developers" should not hide most of its content (via CSS) and require trusting some unknown author's javascript to display it.
Security is much more dependent on the site itself though, it's not as "general". Do you have forms? Then watch out of SQL injection. Do you have user input of any type? Watch for XSS. Admin login page? Consider HTTPS. Something like a favicon can apply to every site, not so much with security practices. The idea of just having a "security checklist" is a bit worrisome in itself. The developer in charge should be familiar with the potential dangers as they program a feature, it shouldn't be an afterthought from a checklist.
just got new styling the other day, as I work on updating my seventeen-year-old personal website.
There are still a LOT of websites that make several of those top ten mistakes. They are higher priority than many of the other issues mentioned on the checklist kindly submitted here. As other comments here have pointed out, it's desirable in a checklist to establish priorities.
No. 5 on that list is not valid any longer, fixed font sizes were only an issue with IE6 where fonts specified in pixels wouldn't respond to the user's font size setting.
I was thinking about this a couple of days ago. The way I would do it is to submit it individually to each of the checks (e.g. W3C validator) and scrape the results. There may be APIs available for some, I've not looked into that.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 151 ms ] threadThis to me is like a checklist of things to automate. Is there any "build" system for the web?
I'm sure just about anyone who has used the web for any length of time has hit the standard apache "Not found" page hundreds of times now and pretty much knows what it means.
Custom 404 pages of often quite confusing as they will try to be clever and redirect you to other content that may be interesting. Sometimes these aren't clear and give the impression that the link was not broken and that this is where the site designer intended you to go which leaves you looking around the page for the content you thought you were going to get.
I agree, however I also believe that is the intent of filing it under "usability". It isn't usability as you would commonly define it, a good UX, but rather keeping the UX of the site consistent across all states, even failure, and giving the user an entry point back in to the rest of the site. A default Apache 404 does not do this, it's just a flat white page, with your only option being to go back from whence you came. If that wasn't your site, then the perception is you've lost a potential visitor, and that potentially could've been avoided with a custom 404 page.
It's less confusing and keeps people on site.
Would be nice if this was open sourced so more items could have been added by the community (also framework specific checklists) but I like the concept
One thing I would add which is driving me crazy on mobile / tablet sign up pages
Another common issue is with SSL mixed content waring, so I would also add (with a reminder to NOT use protocol relative URLs in email templates, your outlook users will appreciate it)(Which should be part of the checklist, check your friggin' logs instead of assuming you never miss anything.)
Just to share, since you mention framework specific, a similar concept exists since a while ago for the PHP symfony (version 1) framework (not official, but I quite liked it back then)
http://symfony-check.org/
https://github.com/ligershark/webdevchecklist.com
How about setting up automated backups?
Automated backups also aren't necessary for all sites, particularly if the entire site is in a source repository somewhere and doesn't have users.
You need to backup production sites. A repo could do that, but it's just another backup system that needs to be implemented and verified.
1) Custom 404 page
2) robots.txt
3) PICS label
4) viewport meta-tag
5) Google Rich Snippets
6) Fails the recommended CSS validator
Uh...I think that can be broken down to at least two different things...
Is the author just ignorant, or am I a fool thinking that if anything it should be "Security" which has the most elaborate items?
Lowest level 1a has 22 things to verify, highest level 4 has 121 things to verify. That's a lot of checkboxes.
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-10-mistakes-web-design/
just got new styling the other day, as I work on updating my seventeen-year-old personal website.
There are still a LOT of websites that make several of those top ten mistakes. They are higher priority than many of the other issues mentioned on the checklist kindly submitted here. As other comments here have pointed out, it's desirable in a checklist to establish priorities.
Use your own site and make sure you don't hate it yourself.