I’ve recently been trying to improve on one particular skill both at work and generally in life. That skill is attention to detail.

I have always been pretty slap dash and I like to do things as fast as possible, in addition I’ve been known to lose interest on things over long periods of time.

I don’t mind doing things fast at home but I figure now that I’m becoming a better web designer it would benefit my career to hone this skill at work.

 

The past few months I’ve learnt to relax and take a step back when things get tough. I’ve also learnt to make use of pen and paper more frequently. Last week I was getting a little frustrated with a project and the thought of hundreds of tasks were getting me down and overwhelming me. I stopped, took a break for five minutes, found a pen and paper out and wrote – in detail – what I had left to complete. As I progressed through each task I simply ticked them off. Visually seeing progress made me feel an awful lot better!

Today I approached the end of a project and sent an email to the workforce on behalf of our team asking if they could spare a few minutes for some testing. The response was great and rather extensive!

When you’ve been working on a project for a few weeks it’s pretty easy to lose focus towards the end. The bugs/amends my colleagues suggested were all pretty simple stuff, and I felt a bit guilty not thinking of these things myself! This is a fine example of where I’m lacking attention to detail.

So I figured it would be useful to write a post with a list of things that MUST be checked towards the end of a project. How simple is that! I just run through this list and ensure I’ve covered everything and hey presto, we have a bit more guaranteed attention to detail!

 

Some things on the list may not apply to you, or maybe the lost needs to be extended, it depends on your project. With so many different factors in any web project this list is impossible to perfect and it’s most certainly a work in progress. If you think of nay more I’ve missed off then don’t hesitate to let me know, maybe on twitter ? I will be making a print version of this list soon so will update it when complete.

 

 Design ones

• Does the design match the code. Go through and check each page.
• Retina images served to capable browsers
• Are all images optimized before being used on the site

Code ones

• HTML validation (Maybe not 100% but you must be aware why something hasn’t validated and have a reason for it).
• HTML Character encoding present
• Favicon icon present
• Working ok down to IE(whatever)
• Page speed performance check
• Does the site work with JS disabled?
• Is the code mimified?
• Is the CSS neat and tidy?
• Does the site have the applicable titles and meta data?
• Do your images have alt tags?
• Is the JS neat and tidy and generously commented for any future dev who takes over?
• Are all links ok (absolute/relative) and opening _blank if needs be?
• Does everything function ok? Thing of every potential occurrence!
• Do you need a RSS link? Google analytics? Sitemap(http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/)?
• Is there a 404 page?

Responsive

• If the site isn’t responsive does it look ok on mobile? Default zoomed out version?
• Does all the responsiveness work across a range of devices.
• Does all the responsiveness look how it should?

General

• Proofread everything. More than once.
• Make sure EVERYTHING is backup up prior to deployment, both the new and old code, including the SQL, XML, JSON or whatever.
• Are all required social media links in?

 

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