Code: Flickr Developer Blog » Lessons Learned while Building ...
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Saved by 17 people (-5 private), first by anonymouse user on 2008-10-28
- Xenogene on 2009-02-05 - Tags no_tag
- Johnmunsch on 2009-02-05 - Tags iphone , mobile , webdesign , webdev , flickr , development , web
- Aetles on 2009-01-30 - Tags General
- Jtinsky on 2008-12-26 - Tags iphone , mobile , javascript , webdev
- Bigod27 on 2008-11-26 - Tags iphone , webdevelopment , webdesign , css
Public Sticky notes
Highlighted by marcel
1. Don’t Use a JavaScript Library or CSS Framework
This was one of the hardest things for me to come to terms with. I’m a huge fan of libraries, especially YUI, mostly because they allow me to spend my time creating new stuff instead of working around crazy browser quirks. But these libraries walk a fine line; by definition, they must work across a wide array of browsers and offer enough features to make them worth using. This means they potentially contain a lot of code that you don’t care about and won’t use. This code is dead weight to your site.
Highlighted by joel
Highlighted by marcel
Highlighted by joel
Highlighted by marcel
3. Don’t Build for Just One Device
It’s really tempting to build the site for just the iPhone: you can use modern CSS (including things CSS3 selectors and transformations), you don’t have to hack around annoying browser quirks, and testing is extremely easy. But any single device, even one as ubiquitous as the iPhone, has a limited share of the mobile market, especially internationally. Rarely can you justify the cost of creating a one-off site for a very small number of your users.
Highlighted by joel
Highlighted by marcel
4. Optimize Everything
The browsers on mobile devices operate under much stricter constraints than their desktop cousins. Slower CPUs, smaller amounts of memory, and smaller hard drives mean that less data can be cached. On the iPhone, for instance, only files smaller than 25 KB are cached. This puts very specific limits of the size of your files. For a large site like Flickr, 25 KB worth of JavaScript and CSS barely scratches the surface. To put our files under the limit, we ran everything through the YUI Compressor using the most aggressive settings. We ran all images through compression tools as well (we like pngout and Smushit), reducing each image file by an average of 40%. We also made heavy use of sprites, where possible.
Highlighted by joel
Highlighted by marcel
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