The big topic doing the rounds at the moment is the topic of professionalism for web designers/developers. The gist of the argument centers around a remark made by Andy, in an interview on Accessifywho said:
I believe that the time has now passed for those working with old fashioned methods to be called web professionals.
This lit something of a blue touch paper and prompted a flurry of blog posts. Molly said::
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.
And Roger said:
Web professionals who refuse to update their skills and insist on using outdated methods can no longer be called web professionals.
Strong words and words that are difficult to disagree with. Roger was worried that he would be accused of being elitist for saying them. A long time ago (in a thread I can no longer find) I espoused similar views and was called an elitist. What I failed to make my accuser understand was that its not about creating an elite, its about creating a level playing field where _everyone_ has a core set of competencies.
Jeff added to the debate today stating his belief that higher education is the answer – or at least the stumbling block.
Its a good point – there needs to be an educational response to this issue but its not enough. Lets look at the word ‘professional’ for a moment:
- Of, relating to, engaged in, or suitable for a profession: lawyers, doctors, and other professional people.
- Conforming to the standards of a profession: professional behavior.
- Engaging in a given activity as a source of livelihood or as a career: a professional writer.
- Performed by persons receiving pay: professional football.
- Having or showing great skill; expert: a professional repair job.
When we say that those who don’t use the latest techniques can’t be professionals, which definition are we using? The closest is possibly no.2 but as that is a continually evolving thing in our profession thats tricky. At least two definitions pertain solely to the fact that a professional can be considered professional solely if they make money from their chosen profession.
Not easy is it? What we mean by professional is really – someone who designs and build websites in a way we agree with. When enough people agree then we have a standard. Simple. Or it would be if it were not for the example of IE – by that logic IE is the standard we should adhere to for coding ambiguities.
The quotes I made above seem to indicate that the ‘stripping’ of the phrase ‘professional web developer’ from some FrontPage jockeys status would matter two shits to him/her. I’m guessing they couldn’t possibly care less. As long as they continue to get paid, they’ll continue to do their work as quickly and cheaply as possible. If you’ve ever bought your furniture from DFS or Ikea instead of having it handmade by a professional furniture designer I’m sure you can appreciate why the’d do that.
A year ago, I wrote two posts that touched on this issue. The gist was that the community doesn’t need more education – everyone from the lowliest FrontPage hacker to the highest standards purist knows there’s a shit load of information out there and how to find it. Its choice that makes the difference – which I think was the essence of Molly’s post.
The fact is that there is a sizable majority that are quite simply _choosing_ not to get involved. For whatever reason. We need to counter that with an accreditation scheme. Plumbers need to be certified, so do mortgage brokers and travel agents. I think web designers/develoeprs need to be too. Business people are far more likely to work with people who have a visible proof of a certain level of ability – if we made the accreditation revolve around modern web standards then we’re laughing.
Left Brain Right Brain 
“When enough people agree then we have a standard.”
Well, exactly – and the situation at the moment is that the standard is nested tables and proprietary FrontPage rubbish. The numbers of those embracing standards development may be growing by the day, but we’re still a minority, no matter how loudly we shout “but we’re doing it properly and you’re all wrong!”
There are already accreditation schemes for web developers, run by corporate behemoths like Macromedia – but they are not at the moment standards-centric. Give it a year or two I think, then we can perhaps have this discussion again; I know from experience that Flash-heavy non-standards designers are getting more work than me at the moment…
The accreditation sounds interesting, I’m looking forward to seeing someone come forward with such a scheme.
It would probably just built on the existing conferences and workshops that are running regularly.
Well, I just reworked one of my websites and I did it in HTML 4.1 with CSS, and validated it. The site uses a bit of Javascript (which I didn’t personally write) for authentication, but otherwise it’s fairly vanilla in its approach and it uses (ohmighod, no!) tables in the layout.
I made all of those decisions deliberately, and with full knowledge of what I was doing and why I was doing it.
Am I a “real” professional or not? I mean, I didn’t use XHTML, and I didn’t separate the style from the content to the Nth degree via CSS, so maybe I should just give it up and sulk off somewhere and hang out with the FrontPage jockeys…
Point being, I DID follow standards, and I did validate, and so forth, but I didn’t use “the latest techniques” because, hey, I decided not to. I know enough about web design to make decisions like that. I don’t personally believe that using “the latest new thing” makes one a better or more professional designer.
I definitely understand the frustration with the technically inept and so forth. That’s been a rant of mine, as well. But using “the latest thing” as a defining factor in who’s a real professional and who isn’t? Nope. Sorry. Don’t buy it.
What we mean by professional is really – someone who designs and build websites in a way we agree with.
You hit the nail on the head with that statement. Some designers don’t approve of this or that technique, they don’t approve of Flash, they don’t approve of tables in the design, blah blah blah it goes on and on (personally, I don’t like those “one size fits all” boring CSS-only layouts that are everywhere these days, I think they lack artistry). Who gets to decide? I’d say that it’s the W3C (those kindly folks who validated my pages for me for free).
Certification for web designers? Great idea. Probably not workable. Who’s the certifying agent? Are we going to use only technical things? Shall we test people to see if they know when to use a .gif or a .jpg and when a .png might be the best option? What about artistic concerns? Navigational and usability issues? Who’s going to test all this stuff and certify it, and how often would you have to get certified, when the field changes constantly?
No, I haven’t got any answers for you either.
To me, a web professional is someone getting paid for doing the stuff. That’s it. However, you might be a bad web professional if you don’t understand the methods, and understand the consequences of your decisions. Doing web development/design in FrontPage or a similar program, definitely would make me consider you a bad web professional (except of course, if you clean up after wards, but why then use that program?)
To me, Bonni’s approach is very professional – looking at the options available, and choosing the right one for the occasion.
I hope the Frontpage jockeys stick around as it’s much easier for me to justify CSS methods as a way of better SEO, cheaper hosting bills and easier updating through templates…