Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere!
Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters and the WOW Technology Minute.
If you?’ve been following this podcast then you already know that last month we conducted a number of interviews regarding designing with Best Practices in mind. Although we?’ve moved to another topic for February, I wanted to share with you an e-mail response to my question of what the topics means to you from Roger Johansson of www.456bereastreet.com
Roger is a Swedish web professional specializing in web standards, accessibility, and usability. Here is` what he had to say:
Designing with best practices is what I think all designers and developers should always be doing, of course. But to be more specific, it means adhering to web standards and keeping usability and accessibility in mind throughout the entire design and development process.
Another couple of things that are really important but often overlooked are making sure you understand your client’s needs and create a well thought-through interaction design before even thinking about what the end result will look like or writing any code.
Designing with best practices also means avoiding to get locked in or overly constrained by the tools you are using. Probably the most common example of that is using a content management system that does not let you take full control of the final output sent to the visitors’ web browsers, making it much harder or even impossible to create a fully accessible and interoperable site. I know that many people are stuck using systems like that and it’s not always possible to avoid, but if at all possible you want to avoid a CMS that does not let you use web standards properly.
And finally, I’d say it is best practice to keep up with best practices in your particular field, since both web design and web development constantly evolve.
Roger