Lucile Braucks

Front End Developer/ Web Designer

Most people think the most important thing on a website (other than the content) is the layout. Of course that having a nice layout is very important, but if a cool layout doesn't have the right code behind it, it is very likely that this website will fail miserably because search engines won't be able to find it.

Some 8 years ago people didn't value coding much because they didn't realise how important search engines were. Other issues such as usability and accessibility were also not a relevant concern at that point. Nowadays people seem to be waking up as to how important it is for their site to be on the first ten entries on Google when people search for what they are selling.

In order to avoid working on a code that will be hard for search engine spiders to read and index, and a code that will display incorrectly in different browsers or even a code that might not be accessible to people using screen readers, I avoid at all costs the use of any WYSIWYG editor, as they focus on design and not functionality. My coding is always done by hand, ensuring a clean, functional and SEO friendly code.

When it comes down to coding, I try to use the latest techniques, but that doesn't mean that I don't know how to put it aside when requested. I have worked for 2 years with HTML templates for applications, where the use of tables is mandatory. And I also have some experience with HTML for e-mails, where you have to be as simple as possible, and forget about CSS and tableless, if you really want it to work on several e-mail clients.

And let's not forget about different browsers, most people code having only IE in mind. I work on my codes having Firefox (and most standard compliant browsers), IE7 and IE6.

I've been working with front end development since 2004, so I had lots of years to learn how to work on a clean and functional code. And I try my best to keep up with the W3C standards.