You know that feeling of awe and love you get when you pop the hood of a brand new car? When everything inside is shiny, efficient, and ready to carry you for many thousands of miles in safety, speed, and comfort?
Our front-end code—the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—is just like that, but the journey is online and the passengers are you and your website visitors. We want to help you feel the same.
Top Tips:
- Separate content, style, and behavior. Most web designers have been separating content from style for years now, by using semantic HTML to describe content and CSS to control visual design. The same principle applies to the behavior layer (aka JavaScript). When using JavaScript, be sure to treat is as an enhancement to your page. Basically, if JavaScript isn't available for some reason, your site should still be usable and accessible.
- Responsive web design. All new sites built by Web Services are responsive. Simply put, responsive sites are designed to display and function across the ever-increasing variety of Web-enabled devices, from large HD displays down to tablets or older smartphones. Responsive web design can take a while to get used to if you've never done it before. An excellent place to start learning about responsive web design and how to apply its principles to your project is Ethan Marcotte's seminal article and book on the subject.
- Faster is always better. Web performance is a big deal. With so many users accessing the Web from mobile devices, the speed that your site renders is more important than ever. Yahoo's YSlow plugin and Google PageSpeed Insights are excellent resources for checking your site for performance. Both services provide tools for performance analysis and summarize page components, display page statistics, and offer concrete suggestions for improving performance.
Helpful Resources:
- Since 1997, A List Apart has explored the design, development, and meaning of Web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.
- A Book Apart publishes highly detailed and meticulously edited examinations of topics like HTML5, CSS3, content strategy, responsive web design, and more.
- Brad Frost is a web designer, speaker, writer, and consultant who is passionate about creating web experiences that look and function beautifully on the never-ending stream of connected devices. He has created some tools and resources for web designers, including This Is Responsive, Pattern Lab, Mobile Web Best Practices, and WTF Mobile Web.
- Luke Wroblewski is an internationally recognized digital product leader and the author of three popular Web design books (Mobile First, Web Form Design, and Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability), in addition to many articles about digital product design and strategy.
Front-end Development Services We Offer:
Front-end development forms the backbone of all websites we build. It includes content management tools to allow you to maintain your site without technical know-how. Complete our Getting Started form to get in touch!