Comments on: Judging the technical quality of a site

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 13:08:21 +0000

I don’t agree. Regular website visitors benefits from good code in that the page works in their browser, no matter what that browser is. If you start making up your own HTML, you will soon realize that browsers parse it differently, which means different visitors get a different experience… not a good thing (mostly).

By: Gregory

Gregory — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 14:05:45 +0000

Technical quality of the website is only of interest to web developers and less to search engines for purpose of organic rankings.

Regular website visitors are not interested in this kind of data but with some useful content they can read.

Technical quality can come into the play when you propose web development services to others. In this case you must have your own website made according to these rules.

By: Co oznacza termin “dobra” strona? « Blog o ciekawostkach informatycznych

Sat, 15 May 2010 18:33:27 +0000

[...] Co oznacza termin “dobra” strona? 15 05 2010 Jest to jeden z moich ulubionych tekstów, bardzo zwi??le mówi?cy o tym, jak pozna? si? na programi?cie/webmasterze strony – artyku? pt. “Judging the technical quality of a site”: http://friendlybit.com/tutorial/judging-the-technical-quality-of-a-site/ [...]

By: tom barnfield

tom barnfield — Tue, 15 May 2007 18:04:05 +0000

Great site, love the design. I don’t bother with accessibility much myself as it’s more of a moral imperative than a commercial one, nice to see I meet most of your other standards though. I’m trying to learn everything regarding CSS and XHTML. I’ve made a page to collect all my gathered knowledge so far. Take a look at the source code if you get time, would appreciate your comments. Absolute beginners might find it useful as it’s kind of a help sheet for a mate too.
http://www.runninghead.com/aaa_Templates/centeringTemplate2.html

By: zcorpan

zcorpan — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 10:14:30 +0000

Oh, I might have forgotten one point in my list. If the site uses anything that requires plugins (like Flash) then disable plugins and check if the content is still accessible.

By: zcorpan

zcorpan — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 21:41:00 +0000

You want XBL2 for the wrapper divs… :-)

My list is complete. If a site passes my check list then it’s a quality site, regardless of whether it passes validation or not (though it probably does).

By: Sean Fraser

Sean Fraser — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 15:18:20 +0000

Sure.

“Written content” and “Scripts used” – for me – are both subjective and objective. The objective aspects remain within your Technical guidelines; subjective aspects are not technical but affect my perception of the qualitative state of a site.

Written content.

Objective example: How do they present apostophes, ampersands, single quotes and double quotes in editorial content. Subjective examples: Does the site have a current copyright date. Are there typographical errors.

Scripts used.

Objective example: Dreamweaver-generated scripts. Subjective example: What purpose does the obstrusive display of script behaviors serve, e.g., Web 2.0 Ajax on everything imaginable.

After applying your guidelines, I – Readily – admit that my site is mediocre but then I doubt it will ever be Semantically correct. I prefer “plynth” over “footer”.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 08:43:59 +0000

@Denny: thanks for the clairification.

@Jarvklo: Only a comment on the parantesis? If that was a flamebait, yours was too.

Ok, I will have to look at the comment mechanism, I’m using the wordpress default though…

By: Jarvklo

Jarvklo — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 22:43:37 +0000

(Btw, your feed is not validating either ;)

Emil – I don’t advocate “best practices” for feeds. I use Feedburner and delegate that to them so I just won’t take you up on that obvious flame-bait ;)

As for the comment editing mechanism…
Your site somehow managed to mangle the closing blockquote, and then refused to accept several attempts to rectify the situation. You’ve got my email-address if you’re interested about further details.

By: Denny

Denny — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 20:22:34 +0000

2Emil Stenström: yes, you are right, they are language specific and these » and « are for russian language (that is why my English is so bad). I think, we should use a double prime ” for computer languages or as an inch symbol, but not for text. It is so important, because it’s syntax/spelling right.

I prefer web sites without grammar mistakes (In my opinion they are trustworthy) like books (most of them with correct quotes and dashes, especially which were make up without computers).

Yes, it’s difficult to use special characters, because there are no such symbols on keyboard. So I use mnemonic abbreviations for them mdash; « and » (last pair are for russian texts).

In English, AFAIK, better to use “ and ” for quotes and — for dashes (dash it is not hyphen or minus!).

Also about quotes you can read in last ALA article QTAG: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/qtag

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 19:00:06 +0000

@Denny: Why is that important? From what I know about those they are language specific, and rather annoying to write without the correct keyboard (I use a swedish one). What is the proper one to use for english?

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 18:58:18 +0000

@Jarvklo: ok, that puts it in another light. The markup for my header is using .h1 because

is used for the article title. I couldn’t repeat the header but I certainly should use another class name. This page didn’t validate becuase you didn’t close your blockquote :)

The CSS only validates if you add profile=css21 to the url. It’s a part of the clearfix method of clearing floats. That’s very different from saying that the site doesn’t validate. It does.

About my wrappers. Each and every element on the page is needed, ther’s little gradients, tricks to make faux columns work, source ordering, and so on. So belive me when I say that every wrapper is needed. About the naming: since they are needed to do design things, they have no semantic value, and no semantic value means there is not good way to name them. Currently I belive the current compromise is what works best.

So, from my own point of view I do follow the highly set standards I advocate.

The comment function is not broken, it’s just my caching mechanism that does not update the page until after one hour. Or do you mean some other error? Please be specific.

(Btw, your feed is not validating either ;)

By: Denny

Denny — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 15:14:46 +0000

First of all I view text for using quotation marks and dashes: laquo and raquo instead of “” and mdash instead of – is a good signal.

By: Jarvklo

Jarvklo — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 15:00:20 +0000

… oh and by the way, your comment editing mechanism seems to be broken ;)

By: Jarvklo

Jarvklo — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 14:51:42 +0000

Emil – For what it’s worth I think your markup is just fine – I simply meant that you seeemingly contradict what you’re saying in this article and tha that might not be a good thing…

You advocate semantic coding, yet this site is built using code like

Friendly Bit

… which isnt’t very rich in semantics for a site header.

Your CSS doesn’t currently validate… yet you make a point twice that validation is important.

You advocate that only “mediocre sites” use classnames like “wrapper” – yet your site uses no less than three wrappers named wrapper1, wrapper2 and wrapper3… and I fail to see how the code of this site could be considered mediocre.

My point is – still – to point out that the impression that comes across since the guidelines you advocate in the article (seemingly) are not important enough for you to make your own site live up to your own standards might be contradicting what you’re trying to accomplish with the article in the first place… ;)