Today, we all know the importance of a website or web app for a business. Web application development has evolved from serving static HTML pages to totally dynamic, complex business applications. There are lot of development platforms available to transform simple static HTML pages into interactive applications. Whereas, development environments catch and fix mistakes that early developers battled with usually. On the way of becoming a skilled developer, several mistakes can be made. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced web developer, you must know some common mistakes that most of the developers make. It just takes one silly mistake to collapse your code. It not only affects the functioning of code but also causes a big loss to enterprise for which a project is built. So you must be aware of the common mistakes in web development. Here we’ve curated some common mistakes, let us have a look.
These days, most of the companies offer tools to ease the website development with simple drag and drop features. But, it causes an issue in the backend. With each design decision there is multiple lines of code which slowers the website with time, and this causes performance issues and impact critical functionalities. If you have less time for coding, you can purchase templates at less cost, and you’ll get various responsive and cross-browser compatible templates that are ready to serve your purpose. You just need to include content prior to launching the website. Rather than using website builder tools, it is good to use platforms that offers content management services such as WordPress or Joomla. Aside from seamless hosting of a website, it will serve you various themes that match the purpose of your website.
Developers who started coding in the starting days of HTML may have the habit of using lots or spans and ‘&nbps’s that increases code lines and also causes layout issues in updated browsers like Microsoft Edge. So upgrade your knowledge about the latest technologies and use the latest markup elements like font or center that will ease your job and cleans the code that compiles to the latest industry standards. So concentrate on using HTML to describe your content and use the latest features of CSS3 to design content’s layout.
Also know the best web development trends and technologies for 2020 at- Best web development trends and technologies for 2020
It is important to validate user input on the client and server side. We all know the sage advice “do not trust user input” but nevertheless, mistakes coming from validation happen all too often. Common impact of this mistake is SQL Injection that is in OWASP Top 10 years after year. Keep in mind that most of the front-end development frameworks provide out-of-the-box validation rules which are easy to use. Also, major back-end platforms uses simple annotations to ensure that submitted data are adhering to expected rules. Implementing validation might be time consuming but it should be a part of your coding practice.
Those days were gone, when only the internet browser was used to browse the websites. These days, there are lots of browsers available- Firefox, Chrome, Safari are just some of them. These browsers prefer to access sites. So, as a developer, it’s your responsibility to ensure that website looks perfect for all desktop/mobile browsers. In any case, your website don’t work appropriately in your user’s browser, they may lose interest in your website. To avoid all this, make use of cross browser compatibility tools. Also check whether there are any functional issues in any of the browsers and debug those issues in real-time.
There is a high chance that your web page can be full of high-quality images that has heavy file size. The Javascript and CSS files are quite huge so the source code can be long and complex too. To avoid this, use minimalistic programming techniques, libraries to simplify the program. Careful refactoring is a way to modify the source code of program while keeping the functionality as it is. Always use compressed images with the help of online tools.
Also know- 7 Best Advanced CSS Tricks That Saves Your Time.
In this modern world of rapid development, startup accelerators, and instant global reach of great ideas is a common goal for most of the organizations. Due to this pressure, sometimes good web development teams often ignores certain issues. Generally, most of the time, scaling is taken for granted. MVP concept is great but keep it too far, and you’ll have big problems. Sadly, Choosing a scalable database and web server and isolating all application layers on scalable servers isn’t sufficient.
There are numerous details you have to consider if you want to avoid rewriting important parts of your application later that turns into a significant issue. Consider that you choose to store uploaded profile pics of users directly on the web server. This is a good solution- files are quickly accessible to the application, file handling methods are available in each development platform and you can use serve these images as a static content, that implies less load on application.
When your application grows, you need to use more than one web servers behind a load balancer. Despite the fact that you pleasantly scaled your database storage, session state servers, and web servers, your application scalability falls due to profile pictures. So you want to implement file synchronization service to ensure that files are spread across web servers. Basically, to avoid the problem, you just need to use a shared file storage location, database or other remote storage solution.
These days, ignoring responsive web design will result in a large website displayed in a small screen with small buttons that makes it difficult to click and read content which will lead to a bad user experience. Ensure that you target some devices and resolutions before you start development and writing media queries so that website is displayed appropriately on all devices. Aside from testing in emulators, test your website in real devices too to get the feeling of how an end user experience your website when using a real device.
Generally, developers depend on marketers or content creators for SEO of website. But for the successful SEO, it must be done through out the development. As a developer, you must ensure that all pages contain appropriate alt tags, keywords, site-maps etc.
Sending emails based on user action from the user request handler can be a mistake. Minimum request can be carried out easily but what, when you scale your system and get a large number of requests sending sending confirmation emails. You may face challenges like connection timeout or your application response time reduces to the great extent. To avoid this, you must have an external mailing service to send emails or notification.
Almost every web application has implemented some kind of REST services for external use or integrating with external systems. We see broken RESTFUL patterns and services that don’t adhere to expected practices. Two common mistakes made when writing a RESTful APR are-
HTTP 200 OK { message:'there was an error' }
You just send HTTP 200 OK when the request has not generated an error. In case of the error, you send 400, 401, 500 or other status code which is appropriate for errors that occurred.
Websites with horizontal scrolling are defying the norms of a standard website and users can miss some important information on your website if you have a horizontal scroll bar. These days, vertical scrolls are used on websites to add all the information on your site. Scrolling a website vertically as well as horizontally at the same time will be inconvenient for your visitors, To avoid this, use only vertical scroll on your website. This is simple to implement and also commonly used. And also users are comfortable to use vertical scroll rather than horizontal scrolling.
You must always be careful about the authorization and authentication, scalability plan etc. These are some of the common mistakes that web developers should avoid. If you’re facing difficulty in web development, consult with solace experts.