molly.com
Monday 14 November 2005
Web Standards and The New Professionalism
WITH THE AFTERMATH of the Disney UK Store redesign fiasco still ringing in our collective ears, I am coming to believe that we’re in a process of defining a new professionalism for Web developers and designers.
In an interview with Accessify’s Ian Lloyd, Accessibility: The gloves come off, my oft-colleague in the education and training of Web designers and developers, Andy Clarke, delivers a strong message that truly needs to be heard:
“Those people still delivering nested table layout, spacer gifs or ignoring accessibility can no longer call themselves web professionals.”
The heart of the issue is simple: We must know our craft! And what we don’t know, we must be willing to say we don’t know and be open to learning. As Clarke points out:
“There are now so many web sites, blogs or publications devoted to helping people learn standards and accessible techniques that there are now no excuses not to work with semantic code or CSS.”
We also have each other. Between the blogs and various sites, lists, wikis, meetups, geek dinners, and conferences there simply is no excuse to not reach out and help each other understand the difficulties, nuances, and challenges of our craft.
In another recent article AT&T: One Full Year with Web Standards, Joe D’Andrea discusses his experiences bringing that monolith into the standards age.
Joe writes:
“I’m incredibly pleased - and proud - to have helped www.att.com and others at AT&T evolve from a hodgepodge of largely nutritionless mid ’90s-era markup to their current leaner, healthier state.”
Whatever we call it - Web 2.0, evangelism, religion, or simply the best way to do our jobs, I can’t agree more with the strong yet very clear message that real-world Web professionals are sharing. No doubt that getting to a highly skilled level isn’t that easy. Believe me, I understand. I’ve been at it for the majority of my career and as the old adage goes, the more I learn, the less I realize I know.
The essence of this new professionalism isn’t about being perfect at what we do. It’s being able to say: Hey, I don’t know that. Let me go find out.
It isn’t about knowing it all, because we surely never will. And, there will be shifts and changes. D’Andrea, for example, expresses that he’s concerned how new senior management at AT&T will deal with the site from here forward.
We can save the discussion of consumer rights and our role in assisting consumers for another day. That, and the subtle fixes that Disney Store UK has made since the public outcry less than two weeks ago. Obviously, someone got the message, but it still isn’t good enough. Again, more for another day.
Today, I want to express that I believe that this new professionalism means taking responsibility for the education of ourselves and each other, and ensuring that reversions like Disney Store UK never happen again.
Filed under: standards, web design and development, WaSP
Posted by: Molly | 10:10 pm |
November 14th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
Amen Molly. Amen.
November 14th, 2005 at 10:42 pm
I hope this message be heard by every single web designer on earth, because maybe it’s time for this new professionalism in europe and america but over here in the Middle East I barely see any body who believe in web standards or even user experience issues.
Let’s hope that one of those great conferences be held in the Middle East soon, I hope and be glad if I can be part of letting it happened.
Thank you Molly and thanks to all the community for making the web a better place and for having the time and care to guide newbies like me.
November 14th, 2005 at 11:14 pm
I’m pleased to know that i will be a web professional. I’m currently a college student and i’m learning in web developpement. Some of my teachers learned to me what is XHTML, CSS, web standards and accessibility. And now, i apply these concepts to all of my web productions. Web professionals of tomorrow will realize the web 2.0. We are on the good way…
November 14th, 2005 at 11:58 pm
[…] o 08.57 FOSS, Web, IT, Business
Digital Web Magazine: Microformats Primer Molly: Web Standards and The New Professionalism Adaptive Path: The Web 2.0 […]
November 15th, 2005 at 12:10 am
It’s funny that you’d bring this up Molly. Last night as I lay in bed I was thinking of this very issue. I think we’ve reached a point where we really need to make a real effort at converting the masses (can I say heathen?) to web standards. It’s time that we created the web design renaissance.
We need to focus firstly on the education arena and make sure that people are learning to design in standards from the beginning. Avoid the frustration of relearning by getting it right from the start. Secondly, we need to help our peers in the web design industry to make the steps to convert.
I think a huge part of this is going to be focussed around marketing our beliefs. spreadwebstandards.com anyone?
November 15th, 2005 at 12:43 am
if we want people to learn web standards we need to teach them web standards, i work in a college in england and we run a web design course which teaches nothing about CSS, when i spoke to the tutor he said its what the exam board had specified, these people are going to go on to become professional web designers surely they should be taught the right way
November 15th, 2005 at 12:51 am
I find it so very strange that Disney would go *backwards* in their accessibility. Does anyone have any insight as to the design process? Who gets in trouble due to the failure to comply with the UK accessibility laws?
There has to be a story behind this.
November 15th, 2005 at 1:44 am
Molly.com has a great little post on Web Standards and The New Professionalism, a look at how anyone who st […]
November 15th, 2005 at 2:08 am
Molly,
Whilst agreeing with the sentiment, I’m afraid I can’t be as enthusiastic. There are two problems with web standards:
1) Not enough designers/developers use them
2) The general public, or more importantly the website purchasing public don’t have much of a clue what they are
So point one is slowly, but surely being addressed, but without education of the group in point two there will be no real pressure on designers/developers to adapt.
This is made worse by some companies now realising that they can get away with saying their developing to a specific set of rules, and then delivering the same old solutions knowing they wont be checked since the group in point two knows buzzwords, but not how to check. Or the group in point two uses conflicting, or at least seemingly conflicting criteria based around those buzzwords.
Personally I am looking forward to seeing what PAS 78 comes up with. Hopefully it will be a model to help those purchasing websites make the right choices, but we will have to wait and see.
November 15th, 2005 at 3:50 am
Good post Molly, but I believe Richard is spot on. How do we reach the rest?
November 15th, 2005 at 4:17 am
I do not like the idea of “selling” web standards to clients that much.
We should surely make everything possible to increase
awareness between developers, but for clients?
When we buy TV set or a car do we ask “please, make sure it is built with quality”? We assume we’ll get quality product.
Ok, web is different beast, so I see the benefits of clients asking for web standards compliant and accessible site - it can force some developers to change their attitude. But I won’t rely on clients push that much. Developers must understand, that working “the right way” is very much beneficial for them.
November 15th, 2005 at 4:30 am
Good post, thank you. This and Andy’s interview were very timely for me as my hyperlink will reveal
It’s not just the developers we need to catch though. For all our good work as a collective we somehow need to reach out to those people commissioning websites also. They must be educated on the benefits and protected from charlatans at the same time. The DDA / Section 508 stick is not big enough while we wait for the first prosecution.
Like Richard, I hope PAS 78 does some good and Jedi Master Clarke sees a need for government information campaigns - good call. But how? that’s another challenge we face.
November 15th, 2005 at 4:52 am
Molly, thanks for posting this. I’ve had the same feelings for a while, and haven’t been able to put it into words in a way that’s at all helpful (it always comes out with more venom than I intend).
Rimantas, we definitely need to sell standards!! For all of those “clients” out there, they need to know the price they’ll pay in user experience if their site isn’t accessible, doesn’t perform well, and doesn’t work across as many devices as possible. Same thing with designers.
If they’re going to be on the web, they need to learn the basics. I feel now that knowing a little bit about accessibility and standards is certainly part of “the basics”. The web is mature enough that we shouldn’t be “dumbing it down” anymore.
November 15th, 2005 at 5:01 am
I completely and totally agree, that there are no excuses for ignoring standards. And no real professional would ignore the basic requirements for doing a good job. Using standards can help us in the future, by limiting the number of “adjustments” made for each and every browser. You cant do everything right, but there is a good point in trying doing some stuff. And about the accessability - a person ignoring it should be living inside a closed room with no connection to the real world. Disney store is a very nice example and i am glad that they made this stupid redesign - and thanks to you, Molly, and others who made this info available everywhere on the web - hope it will teach something the responsables.
November 15th, 2005 at 5:45 am
Maybe they can no longer call themselves web professionals, but they are the big majority.
There might be a lot of resources out there, but why should they care? How should they know?
I think that developers using standards are a very small minority. Our way might be the right way but it is not the high way.
I wanted to do a little test. I went to Yahoo! Picks and checked the last 7 sites posted there and looked into the source of their front page.
Here is what I found:
2 Blogs, no table.
4 Site with tables. (1 site with just an image on the front page (Who the hell still does splash pages???), the next page was with tables.)
And those are supposed to be new sites, interesting sites, important sites, and they are, but most of them are not using standards.
I think we are just the first (small) wave, but the tide is far far behind.
I also think that calling the entire mass non-professionals is a little harsh, a little early.
November 15th, 2005 at 5:47 am
come out and said what many of us wish we could, but don’t.
Via Molly’s Web Standards and The New Professionalism Those people still deliveri […]
November 15th, 2005 at 6:02 am
I love this new era, its bringing back that warm fuzzy feeling I had long forgotten
November 15th, 2005 at 6:44 am
Very good post.
November 15th, 2005 at 7:05 am
Hi Molly & Guest,
As usual your poignant and direct. Thanks for telling for your candor regarding web standards.
Now let’s address the insulting wages sometimes offered new web professionals, see craiglist.com for examples.
November 15th, 2005 at 8:24 am
No doubt Amazon and Google will soon make their sites “professional” too - after all there is a clear business case for throwing money at a re-design that ends up looking exactly the same for most people, but now doesn’t work in IE on the Mac, crashes NN4 and goes a bit mondrian in Opera 6…
… ensuring that reversions like Disney Store UK never happen again.
Why? Have you checked with Disney Store to see if sales have gone up or down? If sales have gone up, would this change your opinion about what professionalism is?
November 15th, 2005 at 8:29 am
In response to Robert’s post, we have to reverse Dominic’s experience and provide teaching materials that instructors can use in their classrooms. Don’t think that I am trying in any way to diminish the value of the books that Molly, Dan Cederholm and many others have written but they are generally not the books of classrooms. While my books do not have the same impact as Molly’s and others (for oh so many reasons), mine are written for the classroom and I am trying my best to create books with lessons and exercises and references to current and best practices for standards-based web design.
(Sorry for the promotion but I am just trying to say that there are some of us who are targeting the classroom market.)
I would like to comment on Rimanta’s remark about selling web standards to clients. There have been others who have said something similar (my recollection is with regard to selling web accessibility but the idea is similar). The response I liked was not to sell web standards but to sell the benefits of web standards such as higher SEO ranking, faster downloads, faster redesign, and others. Unless your client knows about (X)HTML, it is unlikely that they are going to ask You are going to use nested tables, right? or Don’t give me any of that DOM-scripting crap, I want browser sniffing!. Most clients are more concerned about appearance and effectiveness of the web site, not the underlying code.
Molly, you are both a strong and determined woman, my hat is off to you.
November 15th, 2005 at 8:31 am
Hello!
Can i join conversation?;)
If you want opinion from Ukraine;)
November 15th, 2005 at 8:33 am
Because I live significantly farther north than many of the readers, perhaps I should have said, my touque is off to you.
November 15th, 2005 at 8:38 am
mattur, I hope you’re being sarcastic, but in case you’re not… All three browsers you’ve mentioned are already, or on their way to being, in the browser graveyard. No serious web surfer uses Netscape 4. IE Mac’s now barely a blip on the browser landscape (well less than 1%), and Opera, ANY version, barely shows off at all (I know, most because it lied about who it was early on).
The benefits of standards-based development far outweigh leaving already left browsers behind.
November 15th, 2005 at 9:38 am
Mattur, you have a good point !
If sales at the Disney Store UK have gone up, i would give them my congratulations, and then assure them that there is a significant part of the auditory which they will never get. But hey, i know, that what they really want to know is if they get more money. I am confident, that if they would implement a standard based solution with the same grafical design, they would have a better chances to get more users buying their stuff.
Professionalism in sales - maybe, but it would go more to the marketing and grafical design departments, but not for the implementation. As a matter of a fact - a good looking cake(car/monitor/site), and a good cake(car/monitor/site) are not exact synonyms for me.
November 15th, 2005 at 9:53 am
I agree with what Ranaan said about real “professionals” being such a small minority. It is furstrating to see so many “web designers” ignoring standards. I think we need to do a better job of spreading the message and convincing these people that standards compliant design methods are worth learning. There are millions of people selling web design who don’t even seem to know what professionalism means, and standards are just a small part of that.
Some of us have been designing with standards for years - why is it taking so long for the majority to catch up?
November 15th, 2005 at 9:58 am
This is an excellent article to read right before heading off to my first community college advisory committee meeting tonight.
November 15th, 2005 at 11:34 am
Clients may not care about standards, but they do care about SEO.
My favorite experience before leaving my last job was when we were doing a redesign for a ecommerce client.
I had done everything as semantic markup and CSS, with the exception of the navigation which I grudgingly did with tables. My boss never saw the light of standards, but generally let me do it my way on most sites.
Since this was our biggest client, and he did the programming (with frequent changes), I couldn’t do my usual method of just doing it right the first time anyway.
In any event, he got a phone call from an SEO expert the client had hired while we were in development. He gave the link to her, and she wanted to change the source order, to have certain navigation links come before the content on the home page, and the content first on the rest of the site. She also wanted to get rid of the tables.
He sighed and started arguing with her (I could only hear his end of the conversation). Apparently, she was yelling at him about standards and how he could call himself a professional, telling him to go check out the W3C site.
After a while, he looked at me and stated that she wanted to change the source order and to use lists instead of tables for the header nav. I guess he expected me to complain, so he could use some financial/too hard excuse on the phone.
Instead, I said “great, that’s what I wanted to do anyway, but I didn’t think you’d be able to deal with it”. In that moment, he knew he didn’t stand a chance.
That was a happy day. A SEO expert that actually knows what they’re talking about. In 2003, no less.
November 15th, 2005 at 11:36 am
While I wholeheartedly agree with Molly, I see the following problems:
1. Many so-called web designers are completely oblivious, having never even heard of many of the web sites that most of us visit regularly. I spent five years in the aforementioned oblivion until finding Evolt.org, which then led me to ALA, and the multitude of sites I now subscribe to via RSS; how I found Evolt.org I don’t even remember.
2. There’s a lot of good stuff out there, with more coming every day, but from my perspective it’s very spread out. I can’t help but wonder if there’s some way to bring things closer together.
3. Personally I’ve been having a hard time convincing upper management and my colleagues about the importance of standards and accessibility. It wasn’t until the latest ALA article that I felt we had something that covered all the issues. I’ve managed to convince upper management, but my colleagues still see standards and accessibility as an annoyance that makes life more complicated.
4. There’s still work to be done on the software front. Despite all the improvements to Dreamweaver with version 8, it still produces ugly code.
Here are some of my thoughts on some next steps… The root of the problem seems to be high school computer teachers (or at least that was the case with me). They teach HTML for a few months, and then turn the students loose in Frontpage and/or Dreamweaver. I hope that by now they are also teaching CSS, but regardless they are teaching structure and not semantics. About the only best practices they might be aware of is that external stylesheets are better than inline style attributes. Post-secondary teachers seem to be a little bit more in-the-know, though I would venture to say they also don’t understand the importance of standards and accessibility. We need to get students started on the right foot.
In this paragraph I’m going to think out loud for a bit, so please don’t take this personally. A lot of people are writing articles and books. In the case of books, it’s a portion of your income. Granted, as we learn new things and get a better understanding of old things, new articles and books are needed to pass this knowledge on to others. But how do people know that previous books should be used as reference anymore? Disagree if you want, but I can’t help but think there needs to be some process improvements. For example, using the same title and incrementing the edition number has better clarity than writing a new book with a new title. A new title is fine for a supplement where the original book is still valid. My idea, and maybe some of you have had this idea too, is if books were published under a common series (similar to the …For Dummies books). They could be broken up both by technology as well as by skill level. Maybe you have also experienced the frustration of reading the same basic stuff over and over, and then the advanced chapters are shorter and don’t go into as much depth; suddenly the book is over because either the author didn’t know enough about the advanced topics to write about them with confidence, or the editor/publisher didn’t want the book to be so long.
November 15th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
I will take this pledge.
* I am an idiot and sometimes don’t know what I’m doing
* I am willing to learn
* I have a responsibility to make websites accessible
* I AM and will strive to be: A Web Professional
November 15th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
I think those who are willing to learn are all WEB PROFESSIONAL because it’s the nature of web development.
November 15th, 2005 at 6:24 pm
Uh, what just happened to Molly.com?
November 15th, 2005 at 7:27 pm
Ed, for some reason, screen.css is truncated.
November 15th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
I can’t help but think a lot of this is about having a decent *work ethic*. I try to do the best I can in any job I’ve agreed to do, which started in my very first (dreadfully underpaid) job.
It doesn’t matter to me if you’re flipping burgers or running a multinational corporation - if you agreed to do it, you should do it to the best of your abilities. If you don’t want to do it, don’t agree to do it.
While keeping up in the web industry can be very tiring, we have to do it… the flip side of course is we get to shape it as we go
November 15th, 2005 at 8:36 pm
Yay to Dustin. If everyone were willing to say this, we’d actually be in a better place to make it happen.
Unfortunately, the pledge I mostly hear:
- I’m the smartest person in the room, just ask me
- I already know enough
- Huh?
- Pay me now
(yes, I’m having one of those days)
November 16th, 2005 at 2:57 am
There needs to be an international standard for certification.
The industry has been victim to cowboys and children for too long!
November 16th, 2005 at 6:44 am
Blame Dreamweaver, Fireworks and (shudder) GoLive.
Couple that with the belief that the visual appearence of a site constitutes it’s “design”.
Add a splash of print designers that are given the job of redesigning a client’s website and think they can do it because they have the aforementioned tool.
There’s the problem.
I think the education effort needs to be focussed on those “designers”. They need to appreciate that web design is not just a matter of drawing something nice in Photoshop and slicing it up with ImageReady to get the HTML.
I’ve tended to find that those people don’t really “use” the web. Sure they browse a few sites, but for them it still hasn’t quite clicked what a powerful tool it can be. That it is so much more than a way to deliver a brochure.
November 16th, 2005 at 7:53 am
[…] tlight gets turned on them to lead, America will see that they don’t have anything. Molly.com - Web Standards and The New Professionalism - The magnifice […]
November 16th, 2005 at 8:17 am
I think you (and Andy) are absolutely right, Molly. Perhaps we can accept the millions of inaccessible and table heavy websites currently on the web; of course it will take some time to replace them. But I shudder to think that complex table layouts and spacer images are being used by web “professionals” in 2005.
It’s about time we upped the standards. Colspan is the new .
November 16th, 2005 at 8:31 am
[…] oarticles categories
Call yourself a Web Professional
Plenty of people have been talking about whether or not those that ref […]
November 16th, 2005 at 10:43 am
[…] and f*cked it all up). This is a perfect example of Molly Holzschlag’s post, ‘Web Standards and The Ne […]
November 16th, 2005 at 10:44 am
[…] and f*cked it all up). This is a perfect example of Molly Holzschlag’s post, ‘Web Standards and The Ne […]
November 16th, 2005 at 11:15 am
Hey Donna,
that’s exactly what we’ve heard for the last ten years. Look at me look at me! I know FrontPage, I have a pirated version of photoshop, I’m hosted on Tripod, I got mad skills.
November 16th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
Oops, I wanted to say,
Colspan is the new <blink>
Why would the blink tag be stripped?? ha
November 16th, 2005 at 2:38 pm
was always a personal fave!
November 16th, 2005 at 2:38 pm
that’s <marquee> by the way!
November 16th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
Thanks Chris - I was just about to mention that. I think the only real possible way of getting all web designers and developers up to speed is to have certification, and eventually make it (as much as possible) a mandatory qualification to have to get a job in the industry.
Something along the lines of Microsoft’s certifications and trying to get a job as a Windows NT Server administrator; quite often holding a Microsoft certification for a job like that is mandatory.
But I guess that’s not going to work for freelancers who don’t have to answer to anyone except their web standards-nieve clients.
November 17th, 2005 at 1:36 am
Holding an MCSE is useful, but I wouldn’t say manditory for those types of jobs. To be honest some of the best engineers I’ve worked with didn’t hold MCSEs, and felt that they were frankly useless since they taught you how to use the software by rote, without ever understanding what you were doing. Sorry, that’s enough off track.
I don’t think you will ever be able to have manditory qualifications for individuals or certification for companies.
November 17th, 2005 at 2:47 am
We can hope though. I think it is possible, but to achieve something like that would require support from alot of people like us at a global level.
We have seen successful certification programs implemented, such as the Microsoft ones I mentioned, and organisation level ones like the Registered Training Organisation (RTO) one in Australia for training standards and the ANSI/QA certification which shows a company has quality assurance proccesses that meet a national standard.
I guess we can try and put a proposal like this to the W3C and see what they think? IMO they’re probably the best placed to oversee something like this.
November 17th, 2005 at 3:49 am
[…] n’t you just love coincidence? All of a sudden Web Education is a hot topic, check out Molly’s post on […]
November 17th, 2005 at 8:28 am
[…] s Next Entry: Web Professionals and Learning There have been alot of people talking about web professionals adopting web standards and i […]
November 17th, 2005 at 10:53 am
The New Amateurs
t’s time for New Professionalism in the website industry. Basically the idea is that any web developer who refuses to learn CSS and modern, unobtrusive JavaScript, either from ignorance or from a refusal to break old habits, is no longer worthy of the…
November 17th, 2005 at 8:12 pm
Thank you so much. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
November 17th, 2005 at 8:17 pm
Just to add on, I think one of the most important things we should do is educate the educators; the universities and technical schools that teach web design. They need to know that they are teaching something very complex; I think of it as engineering. They need to be producing standards-minded students who will become a better generation of designers. As long as we have schools where people can learn 90s markup, we’ll never win.
November 17th, 2005 at 8:41 pm
[…] d each other, and ensuring that reversions like Disney Store UK never happen again. [This entry cross-posted to take your comments and trackbacks.] […]
November 17th, 2005 at 11:53 pm
At the risk of repeating what’s already been commented, thank you for writing this article. Far too long has this profession been looked upon as a passing fancy: at best a hobby in which you can make money if you’re in the right place at the right time. While we’ve been taking ourselves seriously over the last 10 years, the business world as a whole has never found a need to share the sentiment until now. Because now we are the business world. Weird, huh?
So we talked the talk, now we’ve got to hop in the big boy shoes to walk the walk. If you want what you do day-in, day-out, what you pour your passion into, what you’ve spent years honing, why you swear at your computer at 2am on a Saturday night, to not be looked upon as just a hobby, then you need to get serious.
Web standards *are* crucial. Accessibility is *not* a buzzword. And this is *not* a goddamn hobby.
March progress to their fucking doorstep and let them be the ones to say they’re not ready.
November 18th, 2005 at 2:39 am
[…] A web professional can never stop learning - 456 Berea St. The New Amateurs - Quirkblog Web Standards and The New Professionalism - Molly E. Holzschlag
[…]
November 18th, 2005 at 3:15 am
Education! education! education!
Check out the all new and highly praised Crimestoppers - I know its slow but its worth it, go on, view that code!
November 18th, 2005 at 4:08 am
[…] ints out), what we really need is to consider what web development really is about. Both Molly and Roger are heading in the right direction by bringing up and […]
November 18th, 2005 at 5:51 pm
Darren, perhaps you can give us a summary of the code on that site … all I get is a “Microsoft VBScript runtime error ‘800a01a8′”
November 19th, 2005 at 6:32 am
As has been already pointed out for the past year, however: how to reach those who don’t even know that they’re running behind?
Maybe with this issue resurfacing with such clear focus, we’ll see more people trying to come up with ways to get that done.
November 19th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
Hey Molly, spot on as ever!
I’ve thought long and hard about this issue of the new professionalism since it was mentioned by Andy Clarke and now yourself. If you’re interested on my take of things check out my blog post Education and the role of Professional Recognition. I’d be very interested to hear people’s comments and opinions on my thoughts.
November 19th, 2005 at 9:33 pm
I can’t say that I disagree. Although, however good intentioned this sort of egotistical elitism never helps anything.
“Those people still delivering nested table layout, spacer gifs or ignoring accessibility can no longer call themselves web professionals.”
There are an arse-load of factors that could contribute to this sort of development. One of the biggest is if you have a ‘tard for a client and you accepted the job knowing it wouldn’t make you money. Then you do it the fastest way possible.
There are a ton of excellent points here, but trying to brute force anything never works the way you intend it to. Unless your Deep Pockets Billy - then you just do whatever the hell you want and everyone else follows…
November 20th, 2005 at 4:29 am
Suddenly 90% of the webs so called professionals turn amateur. I bet allot of them didn’t see that coming.
I’m definitely with you on this one!
November 20th, 2005 at 6:29 am
retsoced,
I simply do not agree that this standards revolution is an example of egotistical elitism. I believe that everyone should have a level of professional pride in what they do, whoever it is for and whatever personal gains you make from it.
No matter what you do it has an impact on someone. But you can control whether it is a positive or a negative impact. Continually pushing web standards will have an overwhelming effect on the long term sustainability of the web which has got to be a good thing. Of course some developers are going to feel alienated (although it is no-one’s intention for them to feel this way) to some degree but they simply have to move with the times.
I am working with a Christian charitable organisation based in the North East of England on developing a web presence to promote their work and raise funds for them. I stand to make zero profit from this but that doesn’t mean that I do not want to do a professional job and leave them with something that is fit for purpose and remains sustainable for the future.
Of course I could just knock something up in MS Frontpage and say there ya go! But that goes against my professional pride. Maybe that’s just my perfectionist side coming through but I’d like to think that that is the essence of any true professional.
I would argue that it is better not to take on a job no matter what it pays if you cannot do justice to it and yourself.
November 20th, 2005 at 2:44 pm
I’m sure that lots of people that have to employ a web professional do not know how to recognise a web professional. So I wrote a little guide:
How to spot a REAL web professional
November 20th, 2005 at 7:50 pm
There seems to be a lot of attention paid to whether or not a page validates - so what if it doesn’t completely validate?
Whether a page is 100% valid has little to do with it being a Standard Oriented site or not. There are plenty of sites out there that have been designed/developed with standards in mind, that do not validate to 100%
http://www.mi6.gov.uk is a good example…
You misrepresent what I stated though, Tom. I never stated that the standards revolution is an example of egotistical elitism, simply that the types of statements I quoted are. Also realizing that that statement was taken completely out of context. As a point of fact, I agree with every word. It would be a better intarweb if everyone developed the “right” way. They don’t, and it’s never going to be 100%.
It’s a shame too that the sort of argument about a designers responsibility always comes up. You do what you have to live. And if that means making arse-like websites. So be it. I don’t begrudge anyone for that. I’ve made a few in my day - and honestly so has everyone else. To say otherwise is a lie. Telling people how to their job very seldom works. Asking them politely has a far better chance. And since the Internet isn’t in danger of collapsing into a black abyss of despair due to poor development, I vote for the Honey Bees…
November 21st, 2005 at 2:21 am
Nathanael, you should be able to see the site this morning, I think their commnent
says it all really!November 21st, 2005 at 2:22 am
:-( where’d the comment go, I used the code tag and everything!
Missing text from last post - Document coded using XHTML 1.0 rules | HTML 4.01 DTD used for backwards campatibility
November 21st, 2005 at 3:46 am
retsoced, I like to see the statements and comments from Molly as being something other than egotistical or elitist. But I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.
As for the point of view that you do what you do to live then yes I do agree that everyone has probably done this at some point in their careers. And I dare say on reflection I have been guilty of this myself from time to time.
If our only motivating factor for doing something is the pay cheque we will recieve for it then without a doubt we are going to get away by doing just the minimum.
But I believe that we do have a duty if we actually care about what we are doing or are working towards a vision or making the web better.
In my mind the later is what sets a true professional apart from your regular craftsman. And I think it’s that professionalism that we should be encouraging.
By the way, 6 months ago I’d never heard of web standards, I’d barely been developing for the web for six months previous and I am for all intents and purposes a newbie (hate that term but right now it was the only one that came to mind) with far more to learn. I just happen to believe in what I say passionately.
Does anyone else think the way I do or agree with any of this? Remember it’s just my take on things.
November 21st, 2005 at 5:34 am
I like a bit of css, often comes in handy. Had no idea that using tables was such a crime. What about divs, I use a lot of those, are they ok? Things change so fast it’s impossible to keep up with latest coding fashion.
Guess I’m just a crap programmer. I try to keep my program nice and tidy, but eventually it all just gets out of hand, code weaving all over the shop like tangled spaghetti, and soon I’m too busy fixing holes to worry about standards and style.
Yup, the New Professionalism mill would definitely spew me out on the chaff pile. Can’t help thinking IT would be better off without my bodging efforts, but it’s the only job I can keep that pays enough, so I don’t feel ready to give it up yet to become a janitor, even though I’d probably be happier and more content.
November 21st, 2005 at 6:25 am
topdowngoto
I don’t doubt that many of us find ourselves in this situation. And I certainly wouldn’t call you a crap programmer. I am probably at best an average programmer, even though I come from a Computer Science background my knowedge of more traditional languages such as Java, C++ and even VB is shady to say the least.
I guess we all need to start somewhere. I’ve had to teach myself everything that I’ve learned thus far with regards to web programming. I’ve found the blogs, the wikis and the books that I have read far more useful than the City and Guilds Web Design course I did which encouraged the use of blockquotes for layout!
And I think this is part of the problem. Education in the traditional sense means taking a class or a course, getting qualifications etc… But I’m guessing you’d be hard pressed to find an affordable evening course which teaches web standards in the more traditional environment that people are used to.
November 21st, 2005 at 3:04 pm
Has anyone considered that delivering content and design in nested tables IS the standard? for better or worse
AND your nobel efforts are non-standard at best
November 21st, 2005 at 6:33 pm
retsoced: you are not alone in your thinking, my friend. At least one other person agrees with you.
The problem with “the new professionalism” is that it isn’t being conveyed in a professional manner. Instead, many of the so-called “evangelists” out there believe that, by casting a negative light upon people who choose not to conform for whatever reason, those people will somehow “see the light” and become “Web 2.0 professionals.”
But most won’t. And here’s why:
1) There are very few, if any, CSS formal training resources available. Are there any web design courses that deal with XHTML? Not that I’ve ever seen. What about video instruction? Not really.
Now, compare that to HTML. There are a buttload of formal and informal resources out there, some of which have been around for years and have stood the test of time (e.g. www.htmlgoodies.com , where I cut my eyeteeth back in 1998).
2) Extending on point 1), what happens to someone working with semantic code when he/she has a CSS or browser compatibility issue? With a comparatively small “converted faction”, there are a lot fewer people to turn to for help.
I’ve run into this issue quite a bit over the past year as I’ve learned (and continue to learn) CSS. I’ve had quite a few issues, and I’ve only ever found 2 people online that were consistently able to help me when I didn’t figure it out eventually myself (which was most of the time).
3) The learning curve.
Where and why to use DIVs over tables.
Browser incompatibility issues.
Padding and margin issues.
Issues of fonts and how they appear in the different browsers.
The removal of certain doctype aspects (e.g. the target attribute of a hyperlink in XHTML Strict.)
Floats and how they work.
Order of code.
Positioning.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but learning HTML 7 years ago was a lot easier for me personally than learning CSS is now.
4) The “I can build it without coding” idea created by the WYSIWYG editor manufacturers. If you give someone who is typing and/or coding challenged a point-and-click editor and make life comparatively easy for him/her, guess which road that person is going to take?
5) To a certain extent, the elitism that retsoced mentioned sounds like a bully tactic. “Learn this, or don’t call yourself a web pro.” “There is no excuse not to use CSS.” The tone of these statements can be taken as a veiled threat.
6) There are still a large number of web designers out there that don’t even know CSS exists, never mind how to use it.
By the way, Disney making changes since the “public outcry”? What public outcry? A bunch of web designers writing on their blogs about how the site has regressed in their eyes and is no longer accessible? That wouldn’t exactly qualify in Disney’s eyes.
As I stated in the previous blog post on this topic, Disney doesn’t give a damn about that; they give a damn about money and making as much of it as they can. If there were changes made, it’s far more likely that they were made based on the way the site appeared in SERPs.
It would explain why changes were subtle and not sweeping; the problem wasn’t ranking highly in various SERPs, it was how the page content was displayed. Commenting on the changes, as if “the public outcry” was somehow responsible and Disney responded accordingly, is another example of the elitism retsoced was referring to.
If web designers are to follow “the new professionalism”, then two things must happen:
1) We need to understand that, in the eyes of the majority, we are not the omnipotent voice and thus lose the collective egomania that goes along with such. Just because we believe something doesn’t mean that others will automatically follow.
2) We need to remember that the idea is you’re trying to convince people who aren’t experienced and knowledgeable as it pertains to CSS to switch over.
We need to give people valid reasons to switch, and make them both clear and positive in tone.
We need to tell them about the SERP benefits (which do exist).
We need to tell them about the different ways CSS can be used.
We need to tell them how much better their stuff can look.
The problem with being an evangelist is that evangelists preach to the converted and loyal, while giving less guidance to, and often ignoring, the unconverted. This should be the other way around.
November 21st, 2005 at 7:42 pm
But we will continue to have people, professing to be knowledgeable, dishing out bad advice.
Take this example on Whirlpoool.net.au Coding forum - a place where senior or knowledgeable coders can help out other coders. Someone is having some difficulties with DIV positioning … so someone posted the comment:
“use tables. this is what they’re for”
ARGH!!
*thud of head on glass or other solid surface*
November 21st, 2005 at 9:16 pm
That’s easy enough to deal with. Present the DIV option as a positive alternative, and list the benefits, without trashing the other guy’s advice…no matter how much you may disagree with it.
November 22nd, 2005 at 3:05 am
Web standards e professionalit
November 22nd, 2005 at 4:26 am
What you guys are saying seems to fit what I was thinking. I DO think that web standards are the right way to code and that if designing with tables is still the norm then we simply have to change that. But we need more ways to reach out to the masses. It’s quite clear that we need more traditional approaches to teaching web standards because those traditional approaches are what a lot of people are used to and hence work for them. Schools are not teaching this stuff. Andy Clarke tocuhed on this just the other day. Schools are still treating FrontPage as a serious web development tool, City and Guilds are still advocating the use of presentational html and CSS is even mentioned until level 3 of that particular programme. I know this because I have taken these classes and certificates and it seems to me that they ain’t worth the paper they are written on when it comes to getting a job with a professional outfit.
On a lighter note perhaps that explains why I’m stuck working for the Civil Service?
November 22nd, 2005 at 4:45 am
[…] l formedness—what with it being written in XML and all. But it seems I was mistaken (and I’m willing to admit it). Recently I’ve been reading a […]
November 22nd, 2005 at 4:57 pm
You hit the nail on the head, Adam. I’m a standards-based developer (I code to DTD-strict virtually always) and I totally agree that the so-called “web 2.0 professionals” are conveying their message in fashion that is exactly the opposite of professional.
November 22nd, 2005 at 7:34 pm
I’m glad to see at least 1 person agrees with me…
You know what really makes my M&Ms melt? The fact that this would all really be a moot point if all of the folks who create all these “wonderful & innovative” browsers - would have it parse CSS, HTML, JavaScript, etc… the same stinkin’ way!
There was a post here a few weeks ago about Microsoft working with WaSP to make standards compliant tools & browsers. It’s a farce. They’ll never do it. They’re just scared on Firefox, so they are putting out a bit more smoke than usual.
I believe in the power of Standards, in fact I just finished a standards guidelines doc for the company in which I design for - but it’s such a raging pain in the arse to get it work across the board - that I find myself with bruises on my forehead longing for nested tables…
I agree that it needs to start in the schools. Knowledgeable professionals need to be the ones teaching this stuff - not out-dated would-be intellectuals who haven’t developed since the days of Fortran.
November 22nd, 2005 at 9:18 pm
Don’t forget Turing and Think Pascal.
I don’t necessarily agree that it should start in schools unless the instructors were prequalified. And therein lies the issue…where do you find people with enough of a clue to teach the stuff?
November 22nd, 2005 at 9:18 pm
Whoops…I guess I should have mentioned that I don’t totally disagree, either. I meant to add on that it depends on who exactly would be teaching the courses.
November 22nd, 2005 at 9:45 pm
ialmnrt, would be interested to hear you elaborate more on your point of view. Isn’t web standards, semantic coding etc ALL web professionals’ message? Or perhaps there are professionals (note I didn’t wrap that in quote marks) teaching and supporting the use of tables for layout, font tags etc?
How should a professional convey this message? What is your opinion on how Molly conveyed the message about Disney?
While I have some skills in Political Awareness 101, I’m not shy to state my point of view in order to meet mutual goals of increased productivity, better processes etc. I’m a professional, not a consultant.
PS: Don’t be shy, include your website URL next time. Your name would be great too … does kinda add credibility to anything you say if you are a “real person”
November 23rd, 2005 at 1:58 am
Nathanael
My name is irrelevant. We will never meet, we don’t know each other and we are most likely on the other side of the world. So, plain and simply, adding my name does not add credibility to anything. And my current name is a stab at my useless graphics card (it is the name of that card’s driver). For what its worth, though, my name is Billy.
Fair enough, I will eloborate. Yes I agree, that standards are important as is semantic coding etc. As I’ve said I always stick to XHTML/CSS, I code in strict (where possible, the exception being large legacy code). I believe in standards, I don’t believe, however, that belittling others’ coding style will achieve anything productive. In fact, it will most likely create contempt between the two parties (standard and non standard). If you think otherwise, read some of Dale Carnegie’s research - it will be a real eye opener.
As for Molly’s letter, I agree with some of the sentiment, I just don’t agree with how it was expressed. It bordered dangerously close to outright flamebait. I also cannot agree with the “public outcry” remark made. Most developers wouldn’t care, and I can guarantee you the public wouldn’t either.
It’s already been said before, but there are a myriad of factors that could still result in the creation of a table based site that are beyond the control of the designer (browsers, clueless clients, rewriting/reconstructing bloated legacy code, not enought time to figure out how to do it in standards etc). These are just the tip of the iceberg, and simply shrugging these off and labeling those designers who are frequently impeded by these problems (technical or political) as “unprofessional” is not only narrowminded, but also shortsighted as well.
I am sure you are aware of the lack of formal training for XHTML/CSS. I was fortunate enough to end up with a top notch lecturer that taught XHTML/CSS and standards, because not all of them at our university follow standards. I feel sorry for the other students who ended up with poor lecturers still teaching legacy coding techniques.
If this situation is to be rectified, the problem must be targeted at its source (education), and not at the results of the source (poor designers), so flaming away at those unaware of CSS is counterproductive and a waste of time and energy at best. A professional would do exactly that - target the source, do something about it (better inform Unis of current development technique, encouraging non-standards based developers to update their skills, spreading word of standards and their benefits, showing the benefits etc).
It is also important to remember the blight that is IE and the fact that this browser alone is still impeding the adoption of standards (and no I don’t hold hope for IE7).
The problem is so many “evangelists” are such fanatical zealots that they have the reached the point where they have lost sight of the problems that cause these results. They then proceed to just throw the blame on the developer completely ignoring other factors. It is a foolish exercise in absolutes (”you’re either 100% standards compliant or you are not worthy”). No, this is not the way to achieve results. There are many developers out there who would love to be fully standard compliant but are impeded by the aforementioned factors, including the inability to find time to fully understand the power of CSS.
Changes don’t happen overnight. It takes time to adopt to new techniques and ideas, especially when the technology is continually being developed. This is a dynamic industry, not a static one. Target education/information and eventually standards based development will become the norm and table-based layouts will decline. Once that happens, the rest will follow suit.
The solution must be sound and methodical, not a brute-force, mud-slinging, it-must-happen-NOW approach.
November 23rd, 2005 at 5:14 am
Hi Billy,
Some excellent points there, and I agree with you that the greatest hope with resolving these issues lies with attacking the problem at the source, with the unis and tech colleges … assuming that the majority of web designers and developers either now or in a few years time actually go through the education system rather than self-education, the latter being rather much out of our control I’m afraid.
I guess to some extent we just have to write off the current crop of designers “corrupted” by an outdated curriculum and work towards a future goal for the designers of tomorrow.
I’ve been throwing a few ideas around with the guys over here about how to go about approaching the local unis and tech colleges and suggesting they review their web courses - but so far we haven’t come up with any ideas on how to do this in a way that will ensure the outcomes we want (for the greater good).
If anyone has had any success in this department, I personally would love to hear from you.
Sorry Billy, I wasn’t having a go at you mate - but I’m instinctively suspicious of anonymous posters. In this case, those suspicions were incorrect, my apologies.
November 23rd, 2005 at 6:23 am
Wise words from ialmnrt/Billy there. Well done. “We” need to show the benefits of using web standards/CSS for layout etc rather than just tell other developers that they are wrong.
However, whilst reading the posts here I am becoming increasingly aware that it seems there is some confusion/misunderstanding of what “web standards” are. More importantly what it means to code to web standards.
In fact, I think the term is somewhat misleading.
It’s perfectly possible to code to web standards using HTML 4.01 and a table layout - the page will validate to W3C standards.
Personally I use XHTML 1.1 strict and CSS but my point is that there is a confusion between not using tables for layout and coding to W3C standards.
(Actually, maybe I’m wrong here - not thought about it that much before now)
It’s also certainly possible to create a site using XHTML and CSS that doesn’t validate and is a complete mess from a coding perspective.
Look at all those sites with 200+ classes called things like “.bluetextsmall”. That, in my opinion, is NOT what should be encouraged.
We should be preaching the seperation of content from style and the adoption of (to coin a phrase) Meaningful Markup.
Once we convince people of the benefits therein, it becomes a simpler task to get them to realise exactly WHY tables for layout is a bad idea - it doesn’t fit with the model.
I’ve recently “converted” a colleague, not a pro web developer - he’s a designer with Dreamweaver. This is the path I took.
1. Shout at him an mock him (lightheartedly)
2. Take one of his table designs and redo it in XHTML/CSS - took about 20 mins.
3. Show him the source code - it immediately becomes apparent what “seperate content from style” actually means. The code is lighter, easier to understand etc.
4. Explain that there are still some pitfalls in using CSS for layout but it’s not THAT hard to work around them.
5. Demonstrate that the first step of creating any webpage this way is to consider what the content you are marking up actually MEANS, then use the right tags to do so.
Now, he can’t do it yet, but he certainly sees the advantages of working the way I do and is starting to learn CSS (a big task I grant you). A convert.
In short, you can shout at someone till your blue in the face about how they are wrong and you are right. But unless you actually demonstrate WHY you feel that way with a compelling argument along the lines of - “but it’s actually easier to do it my way and you get a better result” they just won’t care.
And another point:
So long as the major search engines can successfully traverse and index table based layouts no argument about SEO of web standards will stand much ground.
It might be that it’s easier for an SE to index a Standards compliant site, but they’ve managed to do that with table layouts for a few years now. It’s just not an issue.
Where we CAN score points goes back to what I said about using meaningful markup. By implying the meaning of some content by the tags around it we help the search engine assign proper weighting to our content. Unfortunately this can, and is often, abused. So perhaps its only a matter of time until the search engines stop taking as much notice of this.
Clients think, “if it all works NOW, why do I want to change?” and quite rightly so in my opinion.
But at the same time I WANT them to change.
As for Nathaniel’s wish to get to the education system and convince them….
Why not get some students in on work placement and demonstrate the benefits to THEM?
November 23rd, 2005 at 6:41 am
I just had an idea….
To address the problem of “amateurs” not reading this kind of page, or taking time out to find sites that will educate them regarding web standards and it’s advantages.
Why not try this… it’s bold I’ll admit.
Next time you build a standards compliant site and have a good relationship with your client (who understands why you did what you did) - ask that client if you can add a page to their site containing info on how the site was built and WHY it was built that way.
Surely this would have the effect of making “the masses” aware of web standards?
Like I said, it’s bold and it’s hot of the brain - might be a dumb idea, but I like dumb ideas
November 23rd, 2005 at 11:27 am
I’m afraid I’m one of those college educators who’s teaching the “wrong way” to do things. My reason is simple — my students aren’t wealthy and many use older technology. They, their families, and everyone they seem to know are all addicted to IE. When I use CSS heavily in my course sites, the positioning always goes awry and things they need (some rollovers, some links) disappear. It’s not possible to convince students that this is the right way to go when they can see with their own eyes that it doesn’t work.
Until browsers are reliable and reliably cross-platform, I feel I’m stuck with tables.
November 23rd, 2005 at 11:43 am
I try and make sure that all my sites are built with tableless layouts, using web standards and semantic markup. One thing I hate is having to modify legacy, nested table code in sites I inherit, you forget what aggravation it is.
I truly believe this standards based approach is the way forwards in terms of website production. The question is how do we get more people doing this.
Education is one route, but I don’t think it’s the whole answer. I think we just need to get better at marketing.
Very few of the comments above seem to address the real world issues that clients don’t buy technical features, they buy benefits, advantages or outcomes. It’s very cliched but true.
Clients, in reality, don’t care if their website is standards compliant, they care that it loads quickly, is indexable by search engines and brings profitable leads or sales, nothing more / nothing less.
You may say to me, but Bryan modern, standards compliant websites bring all these benefits to you, which is great; just don’t tell me, tell your clients.
It’s a sad fact that most of the people involved in standards are probably more technically minded than marketing minded, they would rather discuss these issues in this type of forum than get out and preach it to clients.
If the guys that are developing table based layouts are better at marketing and selling, it really doesn’t matter how we alter the education systems, the marketers will win in the end and we’ll be left with the crap that they peddle. It’s the way of the world.
For a perfect example, have a look at Action Plan Marketing which has a massive subscriber list probably because they give some very good marketing advice.
They recently ran a web site design competition and give advice about what to look for in a website They even produce a web site toolkit manual. Standards is nowhere to be seen and from memory, only one of the 58 sites actually uses tableless layouts.
This is what we have to beat if we really want to win in the end.
The only answer is to tell people why they should use a standards based approach in terms that mean something to them.
November 23rd, 2005 at 3:04 pm
Jade,
Would you find or have found it useful if you had more contact with and support from your local web community; if you felt that the community was available to help you out, and that you could approach individuals to assist with preparing course material, such as your example layouts etc?
I would happily donate some of my time to the local unis and tech colleges to assist in that department, if it meant that the web designers I want to employ tomorrow have received the proper training.
As Pete pointed out, there is some confusion here. Yes, web standards is certainly and without a doubt a mandatory essential part of what we’re trying to achieve here … but I think overall what we’re looking at is “Best/Better Practice” all round.
And now I’m off to email Google and ask them to stop indexing pages that use tables for layout …
November 23rd, 2005 at 3:38 pm
Jade,
No offence intended here, but if you are finding it a problem that your demo sites don’t work cross browser then you are doing something wrong.
No, it’s not easy. But IE (v6 certainly) is good enough that you can do most anything in it that you can do in other browsers. At the most you may need a few, well documented, hacks.
I’m not a CSS genius, but I tend to find I can make sites work cross browser and cross platform using CSS layouts.
Perhaps you can grab some help in fixing these sites? I’d be happy to take a look as, I am sure, would others here.
November 23rd, 2005 at 8:45 pm
Something else to consider is that is no reason at all why you couldn’t start down the road of total CSS a little a time. Start with a table that wraps all of the CSS elements - that’s about how I got into it. It makes positioning a ton easier from the get go, until you figure out all the little nuances ( which I am sure I have not done yet).
My stance is that of “Standards Oriented”. I’m less concerned with busting my hump trying to figure out why there is a 5 pixel jump of one element in IE but not in Firefox - if there is a quick fix. CSS or not…
It’s far easier to pontificate than it is to accomplish.
November 24th, 2005 at 5:39 am
While I absolutely agree with all that has been said about web standards and I stick to them religiously, I believe that most, if not all, web designers/developers and by web designer/developer - I mean those who are doing this work for a living - know about standards and are probably sticking to them. With the exception of the Disney Store and a few possible others, people in the industry ARE using these standards? So who exactly are we preaching to? Joe Bloggs on MySpace or Geocities or whoever will have absolutely no knowledge of or interest in web standards. That they’ve got an online presence of some kind is what is important to them and in many way, that’s not such a bad thing. That’s what the web is about afterall, letting anyone put their message online, be it be read by 1 or 1 million people.
Those in the industry have absolutely no excuse not to stick to standards, but from where I’m standing, they’re absolutely doing that. Perhaps I’m mixing in the right circles though.
November 24th, 2005 at 10:44 am
Pete — The consistent problems I’ve had are with IE and Opera on both platforms. I’m less concerned about Opera since not many people seem to use it. I have in the past hacked around browser problems. I don’t do it now because there’s no way I can teach students those hacks. These students are brand new to creating anything for the web. I can’t even get the beginning class as far as basic javascript without losing too many of them.
Nathaniel — That hadn’t occurred to me. I may soon have the opportunity to design a curriculum for students who want to work with the web. I’d love to get as much input as possible from the people who will hire these students one day about what they want and expect from beginning designers. Would you (or anyone else here who hires new designers) be interested in joining a mail list or small online community devoted to just that, if I set one up?
November 24th, 2005 at 2:04 pm
Jade, I understand your perspective and appreciate the difficulty.
I would say that perhaps for students of this level you are in an ideal position to show them the benefits of “meaningful” markup. Imply the structure of a document in the HTML. This is simpler than teaching table positioning etc. (some of the people I have taught have a real problem with tables!).
The door is then wide open to demonstrate the power of CSS to style and positioning of elements and how they interact with one another.
How about using designs where pixel perfect positioning between browsers is not critical?
I hope I don’t come across as attempting to tell you your job here! But I would prefer you think of me as just trying to offer some helpful suggestions.
November 28th, 2005 at 5:25 am
What I don’t understand is why you would not use CSS and standards. I don’t get it. I’ve only been doing this for a few years but when I started out I made one table based design and I thought forget it there has got to be a better way. And there is!
November 28th, 2005 at 3:33 pm
[…] t, spacer gifs or ignoring accessibility can no longer call themselves web professionals. Molly Holz […]
November 30th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
[…] ation on an Intranet, who cares about some extra attributes? But at the same time, part of the new professionalism in web design is making sure that we abide by […]
December 1st, 2005 at 8:09 pm
Here’s something to ponder:
I found out the other day that a son of a friend and work colleague actually lost 10 points for his HTML assignment for using CSS to layout his page instead of tables (because his parent had showed him how to do it with CSS, which wasn’t being taught at the school).
Lost points for doing things the standards compliant, universally and almost unanimously agreed correct way??
>> Jade: Can you please email me through my site, so we can continue that discussion?
December 3rd, 2005 at 3:23 am
I think that is simplicity that fails nowadays. We try to overwhelm customers with oversophistication.
December 4th, 2005 at 1:22 pm
[…] , the gloves come off | And all that Malarkey A web professional can never stop learning Web Standards and the new professionalism Interview with Andy Clarke […]
December 5th, 2005 at 8:56 am
Seems to me that education is the answer to all of these concerns. Why not advocate for a list of courses taken in a specific order that results in certification. The advocates (W3C, WaSP, etc) should provide descriptions of each of the courses and should offer some level of program certification. Users/Students could identify programs by some sort of program certification seal. Commercial education providers, colleges, universities, city adult education progams could put together certificate programs based on the recommendations of the advocates. We need to guarantee some level of professionalism in Web Design/Development education to ensure that the “word” gets out. However, you can teach and preach, some will get it and the vast majority won’t. Looking at software written in your shop by trained folks will prove that.
December 6th, 2005 at 5:32 am
[…] im to be an “experienced team of web-doctors and nurses”, but in these days of new professionalism, we don’t need doctors with leeches, magic s […]
December 6th, 2005 at 11:23 pm
[…] ing to learn about modern web design and development. Molly E. Holzschlag follows up with Web Standards and The New Professionalism, where she notes that: Th […]
December 7th, 2005 at 5:02 pm
[…] rare that I don’t get the urge to block up my ears with cotton wool. All too often, so-called web professionals talk in terms of outdated techniques and t […]
December 10th, 2005 at 4:55 pm
The New Professionalism
Well I’m not in the place were I can define the new professionalism but I like to deliver a message from Andy clarke. “There are now so many web sites, blogs or publications devoted to helping people learn standards and…
December 12th, 2005 at 12:27 am
[…] olly Holzschlag (say that five times fast!) posted an article a couple of weeks ago called Web Standards and The New Professionalism. As a SMART PERSON™, M […]
December 13th, 2005 at 1:38 pm
[…] im to be an “experienced team of web-doctors and nurses”, but in these days of new professionalism, we don’t need doctors with leeches, magic s […]
December 13th, 2005 at 2:15 pm
Hi Molly,
Just wanted to share the newly redesigned Boeing.com with you. It took more than two years to convert the old Flash based site to a XML (transformed to XHTML with CSS) based site that is much more Web Standards compliant. Although not perfect, this redesign represents Boeing’s effort to highlight our products and services in a scalable, accessible and sophisticated format.
http://www.boeing.com/
Best of the season!
Chris
December 20th, 2005 at 8:36 am
I think Joe did a great job with the ATT site I wonder if they will tap him to create the SBC site now ?
December 20th, 2005 at 9:36 am
[…] Web professionals, it’s the topic du jour. (Follow-the-link goes: Andy Clarke, Molly Holzschlag, Roger Johansson, WaSP, PPK … and on.) If you a […]
January 3rd, 2006 at 7:07 am
Very interested theme, with attention I will read following registration fees.
January 6th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
[…] This site is created by a Hobart firm called Tweezy New Media here in Hobart and I’d probably dispute the word professional in their description simply because they don’t even have a DOCTYPE in there at all. Somebody needs to hire a decent coder instead of drag and dropping in DreamWeaver. Its table based for no apparent reason that I can glean considering the names in their portfolio are quite well known. These guys are reasonably established web developers in a prime city location. […]
January 10th, 2006 at 9:01 am
[…] I’ve just bought a new Linksys Wireless-G router. I’ve been very impressed with it’s performance and features so far (way more so than the Belkin Pre-N router I had before, which was very flaky and felt like a prototype device). However, I’ve been distinctly unimpressed with its web admin screen. First, it doesn’t work on a Mac. At all. Well, actually I only tried it on Firefox, Safari, Opera, Camino, Mozilla and Internet Explorer, but then I lost the will to live. On Windows, it only works in IE5/6. Some might say that this is a tad unprofessional. […]
January 11th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
[…] 100% of brilliant, and absolutely right. If you’re making money from building websites (i.e. you’re a web professional), bloody well do it properly you lazy sods. […]
January 13th, 2006 at 3:42 am
[…] The site itself is built on web standards and the CSS, HTML, and feed all verify. This time around I went with an em-based liquid layout, which means that the site is a bit more flexible and accessible than it was before. If you resize your window too small the layout will break, but that’s just the way the DOM crumbles, I guess. The goal for this redesign was to make the content more accessible and keep things simple. There are less images to load, and no scripts to content with. In 2006 I’d like to focus more on my writing, and I think this iteration of the site will facilitate that. Towards that end, I will be going through the archives and getting rid of some of the more ridiculous posts from my past… it’s time to privately archive those and move on. […]
January 13th, 2006 at 4:18 am
I’ve just followed this here after writting about Joe Clark’s Failed Redesigns blog. I’m helping recruit a web designer and I was begining to think I was being a complete fascist to expect a decent level of coding standards.
January 13th, 2006 at 6:44 am
At work, in 2002, I was the only person I knew who wrote HTML by hand or cared about standards. This is in a Fortune 100 bank. I coded my intranet sites as perfectly as I knew then. Today, we don’t build sites any longer, because of the mandatory CMS everyone uses. My days are spent in fulfilling business requests and trying to train co-workers to use document management software, Live Meeting, SharePoint, and the CMS. The sheer pointlessness of trying to push standards in this environment has lead to my throwing up my hands and just going with the flow.
Perhaps I can still find a way to build marketable skills in metadata or something, but valid code and table-free layouts are simply irrelevant in an environment where not one of the corporate design team was even aware that color-variant vision might be an issue for some of their users, much less making the intranet usable for visually impaired people or those with physical challenges.
January 13th, 2006 at 8:38 am
[…] Genug Kuschelblogging. Jetzt mal zu all diesen Murks-Websites da draußen. Joe Clark, der Henryk M. Broder der Webstandards-Welt, hat vor einer Woche die Reihe “Failed Redesigns” gestartet und in bester WaSP-Manier erbarmungslos mit dem Party-like-it’s-1999-Club abgerechnet. Wer im 21. Jahrhundert seine Website relauncht, soll dies gefälligst professionell machen und Webstandards verwenden. Alles andere ist Kindertennis. A failed redesign pretends that valid code and accessibility guidelines do not exist; it pretends that the 21st century is frozen in the amber of the year 1999. It indicates not merely unprofessional Web-development practices but outright incompetence. –Joe Clark […]
January 14th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
[…] I believe in standards, I don’t believe, however, that belittling others’ coding style will achieve anything productive. In fact, it will most likely create contempt between the two parties (standard and non standard). … [There] are a myriad of factors that could still result in the creation of a table based site that are beyond the control of the designer …. These are just the tip of the iceberg, and simply shrugging these off and labeling those designers who are frequently impeded by these problems (technical or political) as ›unprofessional‹ is not only narrowminded, but also shortsighted as well. … [The] problem must be targeted at its source (education), and not at the results of the source (poor designers), so flaming away at those unaware of CSS is counterproductive and a waste of time and energy at best (ialmnrt) Während die Debatte über die Professionalität ziemlich schwierig anfing, lieferte zumindest die kritische Diskussion Aussichten darauf, was Professionalität berechtigterweise bedeuten könnte – Education! education! education! sagte jemand passenderweise. Auch Peter-Paul Koch lenkt die Aufmerksamkeit auf die Frage: How do we reach web developers already working in the industry but blissfully unaware of modern web development? Dabei scheint es mir entscheidend, dass er nüchtern feststellt: The current structure of the standards-aware web development world is not suited to reach them. Damit hat er die ursprüngliche, rückwärts gewandte These »es gibt keine Entschuldigung« umgewendet. Although our standards-aware ecosystem has played an enormously important role in defining good practices, solving technical problems, and shaping a new theory of web development, it isn’t designed to handle this new challenge. It doesn’t reach the target audience. […]
January 14th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
[…] Es ist natürlich nicht alles verloren, im Gegenteil es tauchen vermehrt kritische Stimmen auf, die sich mit der ganzen Misere konstruktiv auseinandersetzen und versuchen Brücken zwischen den Hardlinern in der Webstandardsecke und den »normalen« Webdesignern zu schlagen. Seien es die Kommentare weiter unten auf Mollys Web Standards and The New Professionalism, Erics Antwort auf meinen Kommentar im »Vorsprung durch Webstandards Blog«: Ob allerdings der “Vorsprung durch Webstandards” dadurch zu verdeutlichen ist, dass wir “Nicht-Vorsprung durch Nicht-Webstandards” zeigen, daran kann man zurecht zweifeln oder der wirklich super gelungene Artikel von Matthias Schäfer im SELFHTML Blog, auf den ich die letzten Tage schon gespannt gewartet habe: Modernes Webdesign verbreiten - Aussicht auf 2006. Alle diese Menschen zeigen mir, dass es nicht nur die Basher gibt, die draufhauen um eventuell selbst besser dazustehen, sondern auch Leute, die sich wirklich Gedanken machen und auf Verbesserung der Lage aus sind. […]
January 16th, 2006 at 4:32 am
[…] Keine Gurke des Tages. Nicht nur Hobby-Blogger verwenden Webstandards. Während sich die Szene zofft, ob zu viel oder zu wenig gekuschelt wird, geht die taz hin und macht einen auf standardkonform. Einfach so: Sauberer Code. Und worüber sollen wir jetzt bitteschön diskutieren, liebe taz?? Am Ende wird noch das Internet besser. Das wär echt ne Gurke des Tages. […]
January 17th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
[…] Learning how to do communication isn’t meant to end. […]
January 21st, 2006 at 4:13 pm
[…] OK that’s getting off track I suppose. The important thing to know is that your Doctype tag points to a specific set of rules for what can and can’t be in your document to meet that specification. When I assess a site its the first thing I’ll notice is wrong - and many so called professionals out there making big money seem not to even know they exist! Professionals? Read Molly’s Web Standards and the New Professionalism for the heads up on what a professional web developer should be striving for nowdays! […]
February 8th, 2006 at 12:49 am
Buy standards compliant Web sites
The topic is far to be new, but it reaches the surface of Web business at regular times. The Web community often struggles between a desire of creating a professional work and the necessity of making a living of one’s…
February 10th, 2006 at 8:04 am
[…] A failed redesign is a Web page created from scratch, or substantially updated, during the era of Web standards that nonetheless ignores or misuses those standards. A failed redesign pretends that valid code and accessibility guidelines do not exist; it pretends that the 21st century is frozen in the amber of the year 1999. It indicates not merely unprofessional Web-development practices but outright incompetence. For if you are producing tag-soup code and using tables for layout in the 21st century, that’s what you are: Incompetent. […]
February 12th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
[…] What was it Molly was saying about the new Professionalism? […]
February 13th, 2006 at 11:32 pm
[…] The approach is a work of art so beautiful and sensible it literally made me weep. In light of ongoing discussion regarding a new professionalism for Web designers and developers, it’s clear that the approach that Koechley outlines is not only logical and simple, but profoundly practical. […]
February