What you need to start web development

photo credit: thatpicturetaker

One very tedious project of mine came to an end today. This is definitely occasion to celebrate thus I will be doing just that and not writing lengthy blog posts today.

One question that kinda got me thinking today was this: “what you need to start web development?” We are talking front end here. So what is it?

In an ideal world I can image me getting wireframes for general template coding, hopefully cut out images that will become the part of the site, maybe a style guide specifying color palette, typography (typeface, size, line heights) and image sizes. Additional bonus is a complete rundown on margins for template elements (yes, I’m a spoiled developer and yes, I did come across a client that provided all that).

In a real world I would get Photoshop designs. 

Is this all that takes to begin coding HTMLs like crazy? Yes and no. This is enough is you do continuous releases every day or two. But being left alone to the whole project based on some PSDs is in my opinion not the way.

One more thing. All sorts of user interaction effects. You can not provide uber-cool animation effects though PSDs. This automatically impairs your site’s look and feel - not cool.

So what is the common ground here? Something else than PSDs? I think yes. Style guide is the key. Lets you keep consistent and allows double checking before giving the designs to development. How the double checking occurs? Well, my recent project (where design was provided as PSDs only) took me whole day to go through files and compose style guide and the result was a full page of my notebook filled with different font sizes, colors not to mention changing line heights and so on. 

Creating such a guide earlier in the project’s life cycle can be quite a good sanity check. Whole page of font sizes clearly shows something somewhere along the way went wrong. 

If you want me to be a happy developer provide a style guide. That is the bottom line. Everything else is just to spoil me. Everything less than that is to make my work really painful. That’s my opinion.

What about you? Are PSDs enough for you? Are are you as demanding as I am? Maybe more? Do share.