The Compulsive Coder

I originally wrote this bit of snark at the very end of 2006, just barely over two years ago.  It’s been sitting in my “Drafts” folder ever since.  The funny part is that two years later, I pretty much employ all of this stuff (or encourage my graphic designers to do so).  Yesterdays snark has become today’s best practice.

Having made a decent living from “Web 1.0″ back in the late nineties and early part of this decade, I have to say that I’m really happy to see that “Web 2.0″ has arrived. Hopefully I can get in on some of that sweet Google buyout scratch, because I need a new BMW.

But to do so, I need to make sure that the sites I create are Web 2.0 compliant. After doing some research, I’ve compiled a short list that defines a sure path to Web 2.0 success.

1) Take up the whole screen width.

Seriously, keeping the width of your screen limited to 780 pixels or 1200 pixels or whatever is SO 2002. None of the cool kids do that anymore, and you want to be one of the cool kids, right?

2) Use LOTS of gradients and rounded corners. Bonus points if your gradients are blue.

Nothing says “I’m ready for some of that sweet buyout money” like gradients. And nothing says “I rock the Web 2.0″ like blue gradients. Look at all the coolest sites: Digg, Flickr, etc. Blue gradients abound!

Furthermore, nothing shouts “I’m a square” like square corners. And you don’t wanna be a square.

3) Make graphics all glass and mirrorish looking

Everybody knows that glass and mirrors are totally sweet.

4) Big bold fonts in big colored text input boxes.

Now that you can buy a 19″ LCD for under $200 bucks, you’d think that since these displays are vastly superior to the CRTs of Web 1.0, we webbish folks can use 10 point fonts with impunity.

Think again. Black is white, what’s new is old, blah blah blah. The really clever thing is to use BIG fonts, especially in your input text boxes. Just remember that only the kids with velcro sneakers leave the background on those boxes white. Throw some color back there…and don’t forget rule number 2.

5) Do something AJAXy.

Nobody has time to wait for a screen refresh these days. Those are just annoying. So be sure to have stuff that happens without a screen refresh. And note that since AJAX is the new Kleenex, you don’t really even have to go to the trouble of actually doing any nasty AJAX. Just make sure to have some stuff that bounces or jiggles or fades in and out or opens up like venetian blinds. Don’t worry, these are TOTALLY different than the Stupid Javacript Tricks ™ of Web 1.0.

6) Don’t use tables.

Tables are for losers. People that use tables are like the kids that got the plain metal braces. But people that use DIV tags and CSS are like the kids that got the super cool braces with the clearish anchors and colored wires. The results are the same, but you look so much cooler getting there.

It doesn’t matter that tables are (pretty much) homogeneously supported across all browsers and that getting anything beyond basic CSS layouts to render consistently across all popular browsers is a game of Sisyphean whack-a-mole.

Just don’t be the kid with the metal braces.

7) Arbitrarily drop a vowel, add a consonant, or 1337itize to your url

Digg.  Flickr.  Del.ico.us.  What do these sites have in common?

That’s right, a sweet domain name that has a really clever spelling.

Naming your site something relevant to the service it provides is so Web 1.0, so here’s how you figure out a sweet domain name.  Let’s use this site, “CompulsiveCoder” as an example.
Step 1, drop a vowel…CompulsiveCodr

DONE!!! Heck yeah, that looks awesome!!!

That’s pretty much it.  All you really gotta do know is figure out what you are going to do when you get bought out for millions of dollars.