I have been here at Pixafy for about a year and have learned so many things on a daily basis; it’s difficult to remember what my skillset was like before I was given the opportunity to become a front-end ninja. Although I can’t make a comparison between my pre-Pixafy skills and my skills now, at least not without writing a novel, I can mention a few general practices that have become second nature to me.
If there is one practice that has really helped me when creating a large website, or multiple websites simultaneously, it’s to be organized. I’ve found it incredibly helpful to not only comment my closing divs, or where important functionality will need to go, but to name my image files in a way that I can easily find them. I’ve been faithful to my image-naming convention since I began here and have found that it saves a lot of headaches.
Another practice that I’ve added to my growing arsenal and have found myself using repeatedly applies when floats are involved – I always have a clearing class at the end of closing divs. I have gotten so used to this technique that I immediately make a clearing class after setting up my reset CSS and before writing my normal styles when starting any website because I know that this class will be absolutely essential for me.
One last trick that I use is mainly for IE friendliness. If there is an element for which I’ve floated another element beside it, both elements should have floats. I’ve found that if you don’t follow this rule, elements would misalign even if I could get away with it in all the other major browsers such as Google and Firefox. IE, as always, is less tolerant and less forgiving.
Organization, clears, and floats – these items may not seem like much, but sometimes it’s the small things, especially in combination, that can make website creation go more smoothly.
