Posted by dorayme on 11/08/07 21:26

In article <13j6h2hbhvfk2c1@corp.supernews.com>,
Ed Jensen <ejensen@visi.com> wrote:

> dorayme <doraymeRidThis@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> >> While there's some truth to that argument, at some point you need to
> >> be pragmatic. If 99% of the web developers out there are getting it
> >> wrong, maybe the tool needs to be more user friendly.
> >
> > Are you including in the 99% anyone who makes a website?
>
> Not really. I mostly visit medium/large web sites which should employ
> professional web developers. This means the CSS based layout problem
> seems to also be catching up most professional web developers.
>
In that case, your theory about the tools is strengthened and
more interesting.

Now one more question. What would you imagine about the
appropriateness and quality of the tools if IE could be taken out
of the picture? In fact, just to keep it simple and isolate the
tools business, imagine all browsers of any one type (say, visual
browsers, screen readers, being essentially the same in respect
to their standards and renderings). Would you guess that
professional web authors would *still* be getting it "wrong"?
Unless you have some idea of this, you might be confusing the
quality of tools with the difficulties of coping with browser
variation and especially IE. (There may very well be no tools
that could ever be made to cope with browser variability).

OK, now suppose you came up with a rough idea that they would
still be getting it *too wrong* even though *less wrong*. But
there is yet more work to be done before you can simply complain
about the tools.

Consider this idea of the "professional" website author. If some
of these folks are scoring jobs on any basis other than a
knowledge of the good use of the available tools and a good
understanding of important website building criteria, is it the
tools themselves that are to blame?

Perhaps you might argue that if a proper accreditation system was
implemented, there would not be enough good developers to go
around because the tools are too tricky to get to grips with and
few would graduate.

But why? I think you have conceded that some sites are well made,
so the tools do work in the right hands. People get paid very
handsomely. It is an attractive profession for young people to go
into? Perhaps the tools are not harder than many tools in many
other professions. It is not a breeze to walk into engineering
and to be able to design and troubleshoot control systems in a
manufacturing plant. Not anyone can do it just like that. Nor by
merely reading a book or two and 'having a go'. There needs to be
a serious study of it. The tools themselves are the maths, the
electronics, the mechanical or chemical theories and whatever is
appropriate.

You would get onto stronger grounds and be making more
substantial insights about the inadequacy of the tools if you
could show that they were too hard even for a sufficient number
of educated developers to be turned out.

--
dorayme

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