Web Coding Commandments

The Web Standards are the letter of the law — every rule, checkable and checked. These commandments are its spirit: the developer you're becoming when you follow them.

1. Write code another developer can read without asking you questions.
2. Semantic first — avoid spans, divs, classes, and ids where tags/elements will do, and defend the ones you keep with a comment.
3. One site, one look — pages that belong together should feel like it.
4. Validate as you build, not after you're done. Both validators, every page, all green.
5. Design on purpose with the CRAP principles: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity.
6. Name things — files, images, folders — so their names answer the question.
7. Test, test, test: readability, other browsers, other devices, and someone who didn't build it. Your grandma counts.

When a commandment and a standard seem to disagree, the standards win — and tell me, because one of them needs fixing.