Web Development Best Practices
Choosing a Technology Framework
Does it really matter if you use ASP.NET MVC, Struts 2, Yii, or Rails? Well it might, but for many websites these modern frameworks are just as competitive as the next. Use the stack that is most appropriate for your customer’s situation and is the best choice at the time. Since this is the real world, it will probably change a couple of years in the future.
Leverage Community Extensions
Each framework out there has libraries of modules, extensions or plugins that enhance functionality and provide features that would you otherwise would need to write yourself. If it exists, and it’s in good shape, don’t write it yourself, leverage existing extensions that are appropriately licensed for your project.
Future Proof your URLs
It no longer makes sense to have a web site with extensions, be it .html, .php, .jsp, or .whatever you can think of. Arstechnica even created their own .ars, for no reason that I could tell. Yes the web started with .html because websites were simply serving static files, but that is no longer relevant anymore.
If you build a website with .jsp as the suffix to all URLs, and then a couple of years later your boss wants to re-write the website in python, does that mean you change all URLs to be .py, and setup mass url re-writing schemes to handle the old URLs? No, this would be a nightmare. Protect your future self by completely leaving the actual technology used to build the website outside of the URL.
Another bonus is that these URLs also end up being more SEO friendly!
Use a JavaScript Framework (maybe)
If you are building an AJAX heavy website such as GMail or Facebook, use a JavaScript framework. This is not relevant for many sites that simply use JavaScript to provide some enhanced functionality, but for websites that are heavily dependent upon JavaScript and simply cannot function without it.
I’m not talking about jQuery or Prototype, while those are good libraries that abstract the differences between browsers and provide easy to use functions, they are not built as a comprehensive framework. I’m suggesting you use a framework like JavaScriptMVC, SproutCore, or Spry. These frameworks can be used in tandem with jQuery, but go much farther in helping you organize and control your JavaScript code.
Watch a demo video of what JavaScriptMVC can do for you.