I call them trends some might call it practice. I think both are fairly close to one another but practice is more the term I should be using since I am referring to code.

What makes for a practice? Especially when it comes to programming? Who decides and says a certain way is good? Yeah are groups that try to make standards for everybody to use and follow but that doesn’t always mean they will be followed.

But all of this is just a small bit to entertain the main reason behind this post. Navigation menus. I have come across quite a few that really intrigued me and wonder if i would ever implement in my own projects or future projects. Yet some that I have to ask the question of what that developer what thinking when he, or she, designed it.

The most popular of the bunch being the hover over and dropdown method. Fairly simple and doesn’t require anything major outside of HTML and CSS.

The next one I’ve come across is the the jQuery style of menu. Or at least a javascript enabled navigation menu. Used to hide, resize and modify to fit and often times create more interaction for the end user.

One I haven’t seen in some time is the click and the menu displays. Been far too long since I’ve seen that one but there is most likely a reason – UX/UI related is my guess.

Granted these are good but when it comes to scaling them down the behavior has to change accordingly. Going from a screen size that is greater than 8 inches down to a four or even three inch screen is, and can be, a pain. Figuring out a good solution can be difficult but thankfully there are resources out there that reduce that pain.

The one menu system I have come to not like is tiny nav. For some weird reason I don’t really like the look of it. It almost seems overly simple. Keep in mind that is my personal opinion on that particular method. Moving forward with my thoughts the next thing I have noticed is how some people in WordPress themes use the good old copy/paste.

Yes, I have been known to do that but I at least change my code to suit my needs. Some of the themes I have looked at don’t try. They leave everything intact. Very lazy if you ask me. A perfect example would be a recent one that used Twenty Twelve files verbatim. It kind of hurt to see that.

Part of that reason is because as an aspiring developer I wouldn’t want my code to be used in that manner. One of the reasons I have the utmost respect for those that have been doing what they do for so long. They worked hard to achieve their goals. I know I am so why wouldn’t they? At least that is how I see it.

Practices are a great thing. Guitar lessons are the same. I practice my guitar to get better. Coding is the same. But at what point and when does one encounter a bad practice? One more practice I have noticed in themes is the use of actions.

do_action()

in particular.

This just goes to prove that I need to read the source code more and more. So here I go!