Write better code (part 1)

Nowadays, many web developers choose the easiest way just to finish their daily task in time, and that’s a bad approach because we, the visitors of their clients’ websites, will suffer the consequences of their “work“.

You’re probably asking now why, or how, right? Well, let’s see:

- When their boss comes to their office and tells them that there’s a client demanding his e-commerce website done in less than 1 month they’re not going to waste any minute thinking about how to create a better website for that client. They will just start working like robots, searching the Internet for quick and cheap solutions to implement in their client website, not thinking for a moment about security or anything alike.

There are so many examples you can find by just visiting some of the e-commerce websites which are so proud to add a link back to their creators’ website. If you’re just an innocent user of this phenomenon called Internet , you’ll probably find nothing wrong with their websites but if you’re aware of the possibilities you can exploit from a bad implemented security ones, then you’ll probably be a rich man in no time or they will run no business no more.

- One big mistake these “web developers” seems to make over and over again is not implementing correctly the error pages. Sometimes, by just clicking the search button without providing a search query, you’ll get displayed in a bad implemented error page some information about the web-site’s database tables structure. Again, for you as a normal Internet user all that error text displayed won’t mean anything but for someone that has experience in working with databases (MS SQL or MySQL) will mean very much. Using some simple SQL injection they can delete important data from tables or even those tables from that database or even worse.

- To prevent that to happen, all they have to do is to implement correctly the error pages that gets displayed when an error arises, by displaying a common message letting the user know that there was an error and nothing more.

- Another big mistake is when they use bits of code found by searching the Internet because they just don’t have the time to create them! Many of those developers can create simple validation functions to increase the website’s functionality or to provide some client-side validation in conjunction with server-side validation but they prefer not to…

- The client-side validation can be simply done by using JavaScript. The server-side validation is done on the server and, in order to be executed, it requires a postback. The server-side validation can be done using one of the multitude of programming language available: PHP, VB.NET, C#, Java and so on…

Now, because in that team there aren’t just “web developers” but “web designers” too, let’s have a look over some of their mistakes:

- It’s easier to copy than to create a new design, and the owners of those websites that provide free downloads for website templates have had a great idea! Everyday their download meter gets higher and higher… At this very moment I can hardly find an original designed website.

- Usability. This is a great word and it’s really hard for me to talk about usability when it comes to these “web designers“, but I’ll try… In a few words, usability is the quality of a product (website or software) that makes it easy to learn, easy to use and easy to remember. As I said, this is a great word…
Usability refers to:

1. Accessibility
2. Page Layout
3. Navigation
4. Headings, Titles
5. Links
6. Text Appearance
7. Graphics, Images, and Multimedia
8. Page Content
9. Content Organization
10. The Search

Now, how many sites following these design rules have you browsed? Not many, I’m sure!

The web designers and web developers are supposed to work as a team and not individually because if the chain is broken there will be only crap websites on the Internet and we, and only we, will suffer the consequences of their separation…

have a great day!

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