Ci sono segnali, cose, aspetti di un sito che uno sviluppatore web va a cercare per stabilire la qualità del sito in questione. Un po’ di tempo fa, ridimensionavo ossessivamente la finestra del browser a tutti i siti nuovi che incrociavo.

Adrian Holovaty nota come questi aspetti cambino nel tempo; com’è cambiato ciò ci aspettiamo da un sito:

In 18 years as a web developer, I’ve come to love these subtle hints: Oooh, nice URLs on this site. Or: Lovely job making the site responsive on smaller screens. If you’re a web developer or designer, how many times have you resized your browser window while looking at a site you didn’t make, just to admire the responsiveness?

Over time, technology stabilizes and the techniques become expected. 10+ years ago, in the era of .cgi and .asp, I remember geeking out with Simon Willison about beautiful URL structures we’d seen. No file extensions! Readable! Hackable!

To us, they were signals that a web development team sweated the small stuff. It’s like the famous Steve Jobs story about making the inside of the hardware look just as nice as the outside, even if nobody ever sees it, because you have pride in your work.