Who cares about source code

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Admittedly I am very particular coder, I do my best to work to the 'web standards' – by which I mean those set by the W3C, I validate all my code against the online tools provided by this service. But making your code validate is not too difficult a task, in comparison making it validate and also work in IE is far more challenging! I also try and keep my code as minimal and light weight as possible, I shorthand all my CSS, re-use common classes and build the HTML is a logical and easily identifiable way.

This is all well and good, but I then push this through a content management system (mainly Drupal), as logical and practical as I can make the code at demo stage, once filtered through a CMS you inevitably get a little extra code, CSS classes and ID's added by the modules to work with, not a major problem or issue as this is generally minimal. After-all who cares about source code anyway. The client wants a website that works, they don't really care how, are they even aware of web standards? - Unless I take the time to educate and inform them in the spec and briefing process, generally not. (In some cheap and cheerful design agencies a lot of  'developers' may equally have no concept of these.)

As a mostly localised business, with a few blue chips builds under our belts on the web front I personally treat all our builds the same, I give them the same royal treatment as if they were for the Queen herself (BTW the new monarchy website leaves a lot to be desired to!)

So, what would expect to find under the bonnet and a major international website, the very least some sensible and well planned and written code, maybe some cutting edge design that in reality is surprisingly easy to code. Even if this website is passed through a CMS, code bloat would be minimal, the good people at FujiFilm maybe don't see it this way?

I was sent an email overnight, that simple said “and thought it would make you smile, look at the source!” Well OK so I did, I loaded up www.fujinonbinos.com, the actual design setup is fine, it is after all a micro site to promote  binoculars, it has a logo, simple navigation, a large image and then some links, easy. Now check the code..... arrrrgggggh!! WTF is that? OK, according to the date is was written somewhere between 2001 & 2007, but as far as I am aware, never during those dark web times what that code structure considered exceptable.

The guilt culprit, Web Studio, Version 4.0 for Windows, a licensed (only a small fee) CMS. The scariest thing to me is not the fact that is has the most over excessive duplication of tags, but it also feels the need to render them in such an organised way, as if if the replication was deliberate, its planned chaos on the grandest of scales!!