Posted by Andy Dingley on 11/24/05 20:12

On Thu, 24 Nov 2005 12:34:50 GMT, Travis Newbury
<travisenwbury@hotmail.com> wrote:

>I find this contrast interesting.

I don't think either of your points is really representative.

IMHE, the good readers of this newsgroup (well, c.i.w.a.h maybe) are
_far_ more knowledgeable than any manager I have ever encountered who is
commissioning these sites, or judging their quality. I know that I
personally have regularly had huge arguments with managers over _not_
doing things that were all-around a bad idea for "good" design, but were
how the manager wanted it.

Usability is commercially unnecessary. There is no good hard commercial
reason why a site has to get it right. There's no enforcement of the
supposed legal requirement, there's no need to make life easier for
those compelled to use a site (any UK .gov site) and there's no
measurement to count the trade lost by a poor site.

Training is also poor. There is no commercial training available that is
of a good quality. Anyone who does have "the clue" is almost entirely
self-taught. As a result, job recruitment (especially through agencies)
will _actively_ discourage good people and encourage those too naive to
know more than the M$oft or Macromedia party line, viewed through a
handful of the boom-year k00l-site books.

If you think CIW training is bad, then take a look at the
OU (Open University)
http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01T183_8_0

Comments from a _recent_ student of it
"we are using Netscape Composer"
"We have been taught to create the pages using tables,"
"we have been taught the 'single pixel gif trick', "

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