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Front-End Checklist

Join the chat at https://gitter.im/Front-End-Checklist/Lobby Front‑End_Checklist followed Contributors StackShare CC0

The Front-End Checklist is an exhaustive list of all elements you need to have / to test before launching your site / HTML page to production.

It is based on Front-End developers' years of experience, with the additions coming from some other open-source checklists.

Help to share the Front-End Checklist by voting and recommending on Product Hunt

Table of Contents

  1. Head
  2. HTML
  3. Webfonts
  4. CSS
  5. Images
  6. JavaScript
  7. Security
  8. Performance
  9. Accessibility
  10. SEO

How to use?

All items in the Front-End Checklist are required for the majority of the projects, but some elements can be omitted or are not essential (in the case of an administration web app, you may not need RSS feed for example). We choose to use 3 levels of flexibility:

  • Low means that the item is recommended but can be omitted in some particular situations.
  • Medium means that the item is highly recommended and can eventually be omitted in some really particular cases. Some elements, if omitted, can have bad repercussions in terms of performance or SEO.
  • High means that the item can't be omitted by any reason. You may cause a dysfunction in your page or have accessibility or SEO issues. The testing priority needs to be on these elements first.

Some resources possess an emoticon to help you understand which type of content / help you may find on the checklist:

  • 📖: documentation or article
  • 🛠: online tool / testing tool
  • 📹: media or video content

Head

Notes: You can find a list of everything that could be found in the <head> of an HTML document.

Meta tag

  • Doctype: High The Doctype is HTML5 and is at the top of all your HTML pages.
<!-- Doctype HTML5 -->
<!doctype html>

The next 3 meta tags (Charset, X-UA Compatible and Viewport) need to come first in the head.

  • Charset: High The charset declared (UTF-8) is declared correctly.
<!-- Set character encoding for the document -->
<meta charset="utf-8">
  • X-UA-Compatible: Medium The X-UA-Compatible meta tag is present.
<!-- Instruct Internet Explorer to use its latest rendering engine -->
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge">
  • Viewport: High The viewport is declared correctly.
<!-- Viewport for responsive web design -->
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
  • Title: High A title is used on all pages (SEO: Google calculate the pixel width of the characters used in the title, cut off between 472 and 482 pixels. Average character limit would be around 55-characters).
<!-- Document Title -->
<title>Page Title less than 65 characters</title>
  • Description: High A meta description is provided, it is unique and doesn't possess more than 150 characters.
<!-- Meta Description -->
<meta name="description" content="Description of the page less than 150 characters">
  • Favicons: Medium Each favicon has been created and displays correctly. If you have only a favicon.ico, put it at the root of your site. Normally you won't need to use any markup. However, it's still good practice to link to it using the example below. Today, PNG format is recommended over .ico format (dimensions: 32x32px).
<!-- Standard favicon -->
<link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="https://example.com/favicon.ico">
<!-- Recommended favicon format -->
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://example.com/favicon.png">
  • Apple Touch Icon: Low Apple touch favicon apple-mobile-web-app-capable are present. (Create your Apple Icon file with at least 200x200px dimension to support all dimensions that you may need)
<!-- Apple Touch Icon -->
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/custom-icon.png">
  • Windows Tiles:Low Windows tiles are present and linked.
<!-- Microsoft Tiles -->
<meta name="msapplication-config" content="browserconfig.xml" />

Minimum required xml markup for the browserconfig.xml file is as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<browserconfig>
   <msapplication>
     <tile>
        <square70x70logo src="small.png"/>
        <square150x150logo src="medium.png"/>
        <wide310x150logo src="wide.png"/>
        <square310x310logo src="large.png"/>
     </tile>
   </msapplication>
</browserconfig>
  • Canonical: Medium Use rel="canonical" to avoid duplicate content.
<!-- Helps prevent duplicate content issues -->
<link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/2017/09/a-new-article-to-red.html">

HTML tags

  • Language tag: High The language tag of your website is specified and related to the language of the current page.
<html lang="en">
  • Direction tag: Medium The direction of lecture is specified on the body tag (It can be used on another HTML tag).
<html dir="rtl">
  • Alternate language: Low The language tag of your website is specified and related to the language of the current page.
<link rel="alternate" href="https://es.example.com/" hreflang="es">
  • Conditional comments: Low Conditional comments are present for IE if needed.

  • RSS feed: Low If your project is a blog or has articles, an RSS link was provided.

  • CSS Critical: Medium The CSS critical (or "above the fold") collects all the CSS used to render the visible portion of the page. It is embedded before your principal CSS call and between <style></style> in a single line (minified).

  • CSS order: High All CSS files are loaded before any JavaScript files in the <head>. (Except the case where sometimes JS files are loaded asynchronously on top of your page).

Social meta

Facebook OG and Twitter Cards are, for any website, highly recommended. The other social media tags can be considered if you target a particular presence on those and want to ensure the display.

  • Facebook Open Graph: Low All Facebook Open Graph (OG) are tested and no one is missing or with a false information. Images need to be at least 600 x 315 pixels, 1200 x 630 pixels recommended.
<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/page.html">
<meta property="og:title" content="Content Title">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/image.jpg">
<meta property="og:description" content="Description Here">
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Site Name">
<meta property="og:locale" content="en_US">
  • Twitter Card: Low
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary">
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@site_account">
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@individual_account">
<meta name="twitter:url" content="https://example.com/page.html">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Content Title">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Content description less than 200 characters">
<meta name="twitter:image" content="https://example.com/image.jpg">

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HTML

Best practices

  • HTML5 Semantic Elements: High HTML5 Semantic Elements are used appropriately (header, section, footer, main...).

  • Error pages: High Error 404 page and 5xx exist. Remember that the 5xx error pages need to have their CSS integrated (no external call on the current server).

  • Noopener: Medium In case you are using external links with target="_blank", your link should have a rel="noopener" attribute to prevent tab nabbing. If you need to support older versions of Firefox, use rel="noopener noreferrer".

  • Clean up comments: Low Unnecessary code needs to be removed before sending the page to production.

HTML testing

  • W3C compliant: High All pages need to be tested with the W3C validator to identify possible issues in the HTML code.
  • HTML Lint: High I use tools to help me analyze any issues I could have on my HTML code.

  • Desktop Browsers: High All pages were tested on all current desktop browsers (Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, EDGE...).

  • Mobile Browsers: High All pages were tested on all current mobile browsers (Native browser, Chrome, Safari...).

  • Link checker: High There are no broken links in my page, verify that you don't have any 404 error.

  • Adblockers test: Medium Your website shows your content correctly with adblockers enabled (You can provide a message encouraging people to disable their adblocker).
  • Pixel perfect: High Pages are close to pixel perfect. Depending on the quality of the creatives, you may not be 100% accurate, but your page needs to be close to your template.

Pixel Perfect - Chrome Extension

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Webfonts

  • Webfont format: High WOFF, WOFF2 and TTF are supported by all modern browsers.
  • Webfont size: High Webfont sizes don't exceed 2 MB (all variants included).

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CSS

Notes: Take a look at CSS guidelines and Sass Guidelines followed by most Front-End developers. If you have a doubt about CSS properties, you can visit CSS Reference.

  • Responsive Web Design: High The website is using responsive web design.
  • CSS Print: Medium A print stylesheet is provided and is correct on each page.
  • Preprocessors: Medium Your page is using a CSS preprocessor (Sass is preferred).
  • Unique ID: High If IDs are used, they are unique to a page.
  • Reset CSS: High A CSS reset (reset, normalize or reboot) is used and up to date. (If you are using a CSS Framework like Bootstrap or Foundation, a Normalize is already included into it.)
  • JS prefix: Low All classes (or id- used in JavaScript files) begin with js- and are not styled into the CSS files.
<div id="js-slider" class="my-slider">
<!-- Or -->
<div id="id-used-by-cms" class="js-slider my-slider">
  • CSS embed or line: High Avoid at all cost the use of CSS embed or inline: only used for valid reasons (ex: background-image for slider, CSS critical).
  • Vendor prefixes: High CSS vendor prefixes are used and are generated accordingly with your browser support compatibility.

Performance

  • Concatenation: High CSS files are concatenated in a single file. (Not for HTTP/2)
  • Minification: High All CSS files are minified.
  • Non-blocking: Medium CSS files need to be non-blocking to prevent the DOM from taking time to load.
  • Unused CSS: Low Remove unused CSS.

CSS testing

  • Stylelint: High All CSS or SCSS files are without any errors.

  • Responsive web design: High All pages were tested at the following breakpoints: 320px, 768px, 1024px (can be more / different according to your analytics).

  • CSS Validator: Medium The CSS was tested and pertinent errors were corrected.

  • Reading direction: High All pages need to be tested for LTR and RTL languages if they need to be supported.

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Images

Notes: For a complete understanding of image optimization, check the free ebook Essential Image Optimization from Addy Osmani.

Best practices

  • Optimization: High All images are optimized to be rendered in the browser. WebP format could be used for critical pages (like Homepage).
  • Retina: Low You provide layout images x2 or 3x, support retina display.
  • Sprite: Medium Small images are in a sprite file (in the case of icons, they can be in an SVG sprite image).
  • Width and Height: High All <img> have height and width set (Don't specify px or %).

Note: Lots of developers assume that width and height are not compatible with responsive web design. It's absolutely not the case.

  • Alternative text: High All <img> have an alternative text which describe the image visually.
  • Lazy loading: Medium Images are lazyloaded (A noscript fallback is always provided).

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JavaScript

Best practices

  • JavaScript Inline: High You don't have any JavaScript code inline (mixed with your HTML code).
  • Concatenation: High JavaScript files are concatenated.
  • Minification: High JavaScript files are minified (you can add the .min suffix).
  • JavaScript security:
  • Non-blocking: Medium JavaScript files are loaded asynchronously using async or deferred using defer attribute.
  • Modernizr: Low If you need to target some specific features you can use a custom Modernizr to add classes in your <html> tag.

JavaScript testing

  • ESLint: High No errors are flagged by ESLint (based on your configuration or standards rules).

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Security

Scan and check your web site

Best practices

  • HTTPS: Medium HTTPS is used on every pages and for all external content (plugins, images...).
  • HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS): Medium The HTTP header is set to 'Strict-Transport-Security'.
  • Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF): High You ensure that requests made to your server-side are legitimate and originate from your website / app to prevent CSRF attacks.
  • Cross Site Scripting (XSS): High Your page or website is free from XSS possible issues.
  • Content Type Options Medium Prevents Google Chrome and Internet Explorer from trying to mime-sniff the content-type of a response away from the one being declared by the server.
  • X-Frame-Options (XFO) Medium Protects your visitors against clickjacking attacks.

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Performance

Best practices

  • Weight page: High The weight of each page is between 0 and 500 KB.
  • Minified: Medium Your HTML is minified.

  • Lazy loading: Medium Images, scripts and CSS need to be lazy loaded to improve the response time of the current page (See details in their respective sections).

  • Cookie size: If you are using cookies be sure each cookie doesn't exceed 4096 bytes and your domain name doesn't have more than 20 cookies.

Preparing upcoming requests

  • DNS resolution: Low DNS of third-party services that may be needed are resolved in advance during idle time using dns-prefetch.
<link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://example.com">
  • Preconnection: Low DNS lookup, TCP handshake and TLS negociation with services that will be needed soon is done in advance during idle time using preconnect.
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://example.com">
  • Prefetching: Low Resources that will be needed soon (e.g. lazy loaded images) are requested in advance during idle time using prefetch.
<link rel="prefetch" href="image.png">
  • Preloading: Low Resources needed in the current page (e.g. scripts placed at the end of <body>) in advance using preload.
<link rel="preload" href="app.js">

Performance testing

  • Google PageSpeed: High All your pages were tested (not only the homepage) and have a score of at least 90/100.

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Accessibility

Notes: You can watch the playlist A11ycasts with Rob Dodson 📹

Best practices

  • Progressive enhancement: Medium Major functionality like main navigation and search should work without JavaScript enabled.
  • Color contrast: Medium Color contrast should at least pass WCAG AA (AAA for mobile).

Headings

  • H1: High All pages have an H1 which is not the title of the website.
  • Headings: High Headings should be used properly in the right order (H1 to H6).

Landmarks

  • Role banner: High <header> has role="banner".
  • Role navigation: High <nav> has role="navigation".
  • Role main: High <main> has role="main".

Semantics

  • Specific HTML5 input types are used: Medium This is especially important for mobile devices that show customized keypads and widgets for different types.

Form

  • Label: High A label is associated with each input form element. In case a label can't be displayed, use aria-label instead.

Accessibility testing

  • Accessibility standards testing: High Use the WAVE tool to test if your page respects the accessibility standards.
  • Keyboard navigation: High Test your website using only your keyboard in a previsible order. All interactive elements are reachable and usable.
  • Screen-reader: Medium All pages were tested in a screen-reader (VoiceOver, ChromeVox, NVDA or Lynx).
  • Focus style: High If the focus is disabled, it is replaced by visible state in CSS.

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SEO

  • Google Analytics: High Google Analytics is installed and correctly configured.
  • Headings logic: Medium Heading text helps to understand the content in the current page.
  • sitemap.xml: High A sitemap.xml exists and was submitted to Google Search Console (previously Google Webmaster Tools).
  • robots.txt: High The robots.txt is not blocking webpages.
  • Structured Data: High Pages using structured data are tested and are without errors. Structured data helps crawlers understand the content in the current page.
  • Sitemap HTML: Medium An HTML sitemap is provided and is accessible via a link in the footer of your website.

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Translation

The Front-End Checklist is also available in other languages. Thanks for all translators and their awesome work!

Front-End Checklist Badge

If you want to show you are following the rules of the Front-End Checklist, put this badge on your README file!

➔ Front‑End_Checklist followed

[![Front‑End_Checklist followed](https://img.shields.io/badge/Front‑End_Checklist-followed-brightgreen.svg)](https://github.com/thedaviddias/Front-End-Checklist/)

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Contributing

Open an issue or a pull request to suggest changes or additions.

Guide

The Front-End Checklist repository consists of two branches:

1. master

This branch consists of the README.md file that is automatically reflected on the Front-End Checklist website.

2. develop

This branch will be used to make some significant changes to the structure, content if needed. It is preferable to use the master branch to fix small errors or add a new item.

Contributors

Check out all the super awesome contributors.

Support

If you have any question or suggestion, don't hesitate to use Gitter or Twitter:

Authors

David Dias

License

CC0

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🗂 The perfect Front-End Checklist for modern websites and meticulous developers

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