The Need for Careful Web Development

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Today, there is a crisis in Web development similar to the "software crisis" of the late 1960s. A few years ago, most Web sites were little more than digital brochures , or "brochureware." Creating such a site didn't require a great deal of planning ”often, it was sufficient simply to develop an interface and then to populate the site with content. Since then, sites have become much larger and more complex. With the introduction of interactivity and e-commerce, sites have clearly moved away from brochureware to become full-fledged software applications. Despite this, many developers have yet to adopt a robust site-building methodology, but continue to rely on ad hoc methods .

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The "software crisis" refers to a time in the software development field when increasing hardware capabilities allowed for significantly more complex programs to be built. It was challenging to build and maintain such new programs because little methodology had been used in the past, resulting in numerous project failures. Methodology such as structured or top-down design was introduced to combat this crisis.

Evidence of the crisis in Web development practices is everywhere. Unlike the in-house client/server software projects of the past, the dirty laundry of many failed Web projects is often aired for all to see. The number of pages that seem to be forever "under construction" or "coming soon" suggests that many Web sites are poorly planned. Some sites have been in a state of construction for years, judging by their lack of content or date of last modification. These online ghost towns are cluttered with old information, non-standard HTML, dated technologies, broken links, and malfunctioning scripts. Don't discount some of these problems as mere typos or slight oversights. A broken link is a catastrophic failure, like a software program with menus that just don't go anywhere !

Sites exhibit problems for a variety of reasons. Some sites may deteriorate simply because their builders got bored or moved on. Other sites may fall apart because the site wasn't considered useful or funding was withdrawn. Still other sites probably just couldn't be completed because the sites overwhelmed the developers; the developers may not have understood the tools they were working with, or they were not versed well enough in the medium's restrictions. The vast number of poorly executed sites on the Web suggests that Web development projects are risky and often fail.

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