Keith posted a “timely entry”:http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/archives05/2005/09/standards-geeks-hard-to-come-by a few days ago bemoaning the lack of designers/developers proficient in CSS-based web design.
This was a timely opportunity for me to plug the “opening in my web team for a web developer”:https://smileycat.com/miaow/archives/000159.php – this position is still open, by the way.
The post provoked a lively discussion, which largely centered on the lack of demand for such skills from both design agencies and companies.
I’m not sure what we there is to do about this sorry state of affairs except to keep plugging away about the “benefits of standards-based design”:http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/benefits/.
If you read the standard web design blogs, it’s easy to become insulated to the rest of the world when it comes to web development and forget that this is not the way that most of the world works. Sometimes I need to sit back and remind myself of this fact.
The good news for me is that I have since received several inquiries from talented designers, with whom I’ll be following up shortly. We’re still taking applications though, if you think you have the CSS chops.
Webstandard Christian, is absolute necessary. But I guess the standard community is breaking-up. My blog is telling about Webstandard too, but in german ;o)
Hi Christian
I’m a professional webdesign or webworker and I realize that my costumers don’t know something about webstandards- they would like to have more customers and more and so on. My job is to realize this and I know without webstands I can’t do this.
If a internetuser can’t use a website simply and logical be sure he uses the red button with the white x – postion top right in every browser 😉
thats the best argument for ‘webstandard’.
my website is about usability and accessibility because I’m writing about business and web design in my natural language:german
kindly regards
Monika
Monika – I’m not sure I would agree that web standards = usability. An ‘old-style’ site can be just as usable (or not) as one which adheres to web standards.
However, I do agree with your point about accessibility – it’s much easier to achieve a reasonable level of accessibility if you follow web standards.
You can definitely make the argument (as many have) that web standards makes good business sense; if it is implemented properly. You can still have a site that validates that has poorly written <title> tags, so web standards is not a guaranteed path to riches – just an easier one. 😉
What do you guys think of the new AJAX-Webcoding regarding the existing webstandards and usability?
Patric – AJAX definitely offers the potential to create usability and accessibility problems for users.
That’s why I would use it very carefully on a web site, unless it’s use was central to the working of the site – for example, if you were creating a web app.
Just because you can, say, display and hide content without refreshing the page doesn’t mean that you should. In this new Web 2.0 age, proper user testing at the right stages in your “web development process”:https://smileycat.com/miaow/archives/000222.html is even more important, in my opinion.
I quite often come up with a cool new way to do something, only for one of my colleagues to point out the potential usability problems with it.
It all comes down to the “why?” factor – if the main reason you’re using AJAX or something similar is because it’s cool, then you probably shouldn’t be doing it.
Hi Christian, I totally agree with you. But I think we should keep an eye on the new technology and how it develops. I think there is a great potential.