Well I was bored and had nothing to do but to check out how some of the big guys in the web code their web pages. And what I found on Yahoo's index page is a very messy code. View the page source code here: http://www.yahoo.com/ Currently, the website does not use XHTML 1.1 mark-up language and if it were to go through validation as XHTML, it would have 37 errors. Here's the link to it: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%...ww.yahoo.com%2F It seems that in the source code, all Javascript codes are all in their, no external JS files even CSS files. It uses JS and CSS extensively that 90% of the code is made up of these two. I have no objection to that but why not take the time to tidy up the coding and separate JS and CSS scripts from the actual HTML page. What do you guys think?

Reply

For a site as big as Yahoo! You would think that they would have a clean structure but as with most big sites, this isn't the case. They have one of the most messy structures you would find. What they are validating against is HTML 4.01 Transitional and it already has 37 errors, that shows how outdated their coding is. Imagine now that majority of the sites are using XHTML Transitional and Strict to code their sites out. They really need to clean up their website.

I also see a lot of tables, I thought most sites are coded using DIVs and CSS nowadays. Tables are the past and should not be used for such a big website, it will only slow it down.

Reply

Maybe the site is too big to handle or manage. If the staff is too busy, why not freelance a coder to do the job for them.

Reply

I dont see embedded JS or CSS as a problem, usually i have an external CSS just to make formatting a lot easier and i only have to edit one file.

I think the issue for big sites like yahoo is the huge number of pages, imagine a team of ten elite coders it will take them so long to update each and every page of a site like yahoo and thats with ten people on it! Yahoo cant really afford to have much downtime either, the only way would be to edit off-line to completion and then overwrite everything with the new version and then you might have unseen errors etc causing downtime. And the price tag for all that wont be small!

im sure yahoo have one or two coders just to maintain it but to do a whole revamp of a website that, for all purposes, works fine for 99% of users probably isnt a thing they're interested in!

Reply