FRONT END GUIDELINE HANDBOOK

Updated June, 2021 - Mike Vo

HTML

• Use HTML5
• Define character encoding UTF-8 <meta charset="utf-8">
• Use Semantics
• Do not use table for layout
• Use th tags for table header elements
• Don’t mix quotation marks
• Define title
• figcaption first or last child of figure
• Close tags
• No inline styles
• Place External CSS Files Within the head tag
• Place Javascript files at bottom of body
• Do not inline Javascript
• Lowercase tag names
• Use h1-h6 to outline the page content
• Further readings: https://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_syntax.asp

CSS

• Use a Reset or Reset with Normalize.css
• No Inline Styles
• Organize the Stylesheet with a Top-down Structure
• Divide your stylesheet into specific sections: i.e. Global Styles
• Use Hex Code instead of Name Color
• Combine Elements
• Use Shorthand
• Use Absolute Positioning Sparingly
• Hyphens Instead of Underscores for CSS classes
• Make Use of Generic Classes - design patterns / modules
• Shorten Selector Chains
• Name something, be it an ID or a class, by the nature of what it is rather than by what it looks like

Example CSS file structure:

/* Reset */
/* Typography */
/* Layout */
/* Navigation */
/* UI-elements */
/* Forms */

Javascript

• Call things by their name – easy, short and readable variable and function names
• Avoid globals
• Stick to a strict coding style
• Comment as much as needed but not more
• Keep DOM access to a minimum
• Don’t yield to browser whims
• Don’t trust any data
• Add functionality with JavaScript, don’t create too much content