Valid HTML
First off all web professionals should have there own portfolio site. Type in the url of their site in the official HTML validator. This will check to see if the code they are using is valid.
This is a good thing
This is a sign of unprofessionalism.
Tableless layout
A good web professional does not use tables for layout but instead uses a CSS based layout. To find out if they are using CSS based layout you could look into the page source and do a search for <table>. If you find these and they are consistent over different pages of the site you know they are not fully using CSS for layout. There is no problem in using tables for "Tabular data" as this is what they where created for.
Tabular Data Example:
Images are not for text, text is for text
Any web designer with half a brain knows that text is for text and images are not! See if you can select the text on the page, if not you just found someone who belongs to the worse than amateur class.
Logos and the occasional title can be images as they can not be reproduced with normal text.
Latest work
It is also good to check out the persons latest peace of work is and check it to see if they switched to valid (X)HTML and tableless layouts for all their sites.
Make sure its in the contract, you wouldn't want the so called web professional to pull a fast one on you and give you a qualityless site.
More info on this subject
- And all that Malarkey: Accessibility the gloves come off
- 456 Berea street: A Web Professional can never stop learning
- Molly: Web standards and the new professionalism
- QuirksBlog: The New Amateurs
I tried to make this as simple as possible for those that have to do the desision making be don't necessarily know anything about HTML.
Comments
By Nathanael @ 2005-11-20 17:14:40
Hmm, a couple of good points for starters. I could imagine at an interview, the prospective employee (a web "professional") walks in, meets the interviewers and sits down.
Much to the interviewees suprise, one of the interviewers places a laptop in front of them, with some hand drawn wireframes, and gives the interviewee 30 minutes to convert the wireframes into a CSS based XHTML 1.0 Strict liquid layout :-)
I think that has potential for a more effective prospect filtering technique than traditional interviewing.
By Marc Luzietti @ 2005-11-21 15:46:01
Perhaps one should also check for spelling. ;-) "It is also good to check out the persons latest peace of work is and check it to see if they switched to valid (X)HTML and tableless layouts for all there [sic] (their) sites."
By Pete @ 2005-11-23 08:33:05
I consider myself a web professional. I code using XHTML and CSS layout.
However a recent job I did was an ecommerce site for which I used ZenCart. See it here, http://www.thornecrownshaw.co.uk
Now ZenCart uses a table layout! eek! I wasn't going to go and recode the whole system in XHTML/CSS as it would be impractical - but does that make me non-professional?
I'd hope not, it's just the right tool for that moment and was the best solution for the client needs.
Other than that, you make some very good points.
By Pete @ 2005-11-23 10:20:05
I consider myself a web professional. I code using XHTML and CSS layout.
However a recent job I did was an ecommerce site for which I used ZenCart. See it here, http://www.thornecrownshaw.co.uk
Now ZenCart uses a table layout! eek! I wasn't going to go and recode the whole system in XHTML/CSS as it would be impractical - but does that make me non-professional?
I'd hope not, it's just the right tool for that moment and was the best solution for the client needs.
Other than that, you make some very good points.
By Bryan @ 2005-11-23 14:18:34
I think that what you have produced above could be the basis of a very useful document, however, perhaps this site is the wrong place for it.
We really need to start seeing things like this on our main business generating sites where our potential clients will see them.
The other thing I would suggest is that the document doesn't really tell me why I should avoid the items you mention and why your suggestions are better. There is no proof to substantiate your argument.
I would guess that to many people it would be seen as a cheap marketing gimmick, not a genuine desire to help, which is a shame.
By Tobee @ 2005-11-26 17:54:17
Perhaps you should make your CSS valid before criticising others.
By Justin Halsall @ 2005-11-27 19:38:17
@ Marc Luzietti
Thanks! Fixed the spelling
@ Pete
I think the people that made ZenCart did a bad job with the layout, this is not your fault. But I would try to stay away of it as people do criticize you on your work (just as Tobee did by finding the CSS error)
@ Bryan
I tried to make this as open to none web people as I could that is why I didn't motivate the reasons that I gave because I was afraid of getting to technical.
I'll try to substantiate my the items I gave in human readable english so that customers can understand this a little better.
@ Tobee
Thanks Tobee, people like you remind me to always check the validator after every tweak I make.
By Marco @ 2005-11-29 13:42:52
I call myself a web professional. I have solid knowledge about backend development in PHP with SQL databases _and_ I can design a full CSS site that looks good. However, at least in this country there don't seem to be all that many (potential) customers that care about all this stuff. Then there's the .NET world which is really full of pre-generated horrible html code which very often can't be changed by developers even if they wanted to. Microsoft gives us a headache both on the browser side AND the development side. One day I had to re-skin an intranet based on Microsoft Sharepoint. I could tell you about it but you wouldn't like the story. No way on earth one could turn that stuff into a valid xhtml/css layout. Maybe newer versions got better but at the time (a year ago) it was impossible.
It's very nice how the pro's in the blogosphere call for some sort of new world order when it comes to web design professionals but in the real world one can still sell shitty websites to many, MANY clients. In fact most clients need to be educated when it comes to the importance of valid (x)html, table-less layouts, accessibility and other aspects of what most of us agree makes a site truly professionally made. There seems to be a growing awareness in governmental institutions that these issues are important but many individuals or companies that simply 'need a website' don't have a clue about all this. There's still plenty of money to make for the amateurs.
Note: Before anyone starts: My site is a typical example of one that has been tampered with too much and therefore it isn't valid anymore. It will be taken care of soon enough.
By Mathias @ 2005-12-07 14:49:46
Funny how you put the "Images are not for text, text is for text" header right under the image-wise tabular data example :P