Web Professionalism

[Shovel]

Here's a thought provoking snippet from an interview on Accessify.com:

Today, the process of web design and development is equally as fascinating and standards play a big part in this fascination. I believe that in order to the best at any art, you must first learn the foundations. Although I designed and made web sites for many years before I became interested in standards, it has only been since working with valid XHTML and CSS that my work has felt to a greater extent 'complete'.

While I understand that for many, learning standards based development is difficult, particularly for creative people who have not been required to work with code before, I believe that the time has now passed for those working with old fashioned methods to be called web professionals. There are now so many web sites, blogs or publications devoted to helping people learn standards and accessible techniques that there are now no excuses not to work with semantic code or CSS. Those people still delivering nested table layout, spacer gifs or ignoring accessibility can no longer call themselves web professionals.

Recent experiences have shown to the world that if designers or developers deliver poor work in this regard, then they open themselves and their clients to at best public ridicule and at worst legal action. Times have changed.

Errr, "Discuss"...

 

[Maljonic]

Legal action? I always make sure any new stuff I do is up to web standards from the outset. I'm also slowly working on getting my older sites to validate too, in fact I spent quite a long time on it this weekend - even managed to get a CMS site (the transdniestria one in my sig) to validate, which is quite difficult sometimes.

I read that article linked on the other thread about getting Flash to validate and got it working on a site I haven't finished yet. Well actually the site is finished, I just need more info from the owner to fill in the content, which wont change the validation.

Edit: I'm still surprised sometimes when I find people that have still never heard of w3c, especially when they are people who make websites like a guy who's on the same Flash course as me.

 

[SheepCow]

Yes standards based development is important. But legal action? Maybe if the client asked for it to validate as a requirement and you deliver a product that doesn't ...

 

[JingleBells]

Legal action can be brought if the site discriminates against disabled people, see http://www.contenu.nu/socog.html
The Disability Discrimination Act Code of Practise states that:

From 1 October 1999, a service provider has had to take reasonable steps to:
* change a practice, policy or procedure which makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult for disabled people to make use of its services;
* provide an auxiliary aid or service if it would enable (or make it easier for) disabled people to make use of its services;
* provide a reasonable alternative method of making its services available to disabled people where a physical feature makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult for disabled people to make use of the services.

Websites providing services (i.e.: Businesses) fall under this legislation.

Note: I only know this as its part of my third yr project, I'm not _that_ sad

 

[Shovel]

That's the one. It's a threat, and as best I understand hasn't been tested in court yet (which is why there are still so many shite e-commerce websites), but it's very possible that the law will cover it.

Even if the current law doesn't there's a lot of pressure for it to be extended to explicitly cover it. Generally proposals suggest linking it to WCAG Priority 1 or 2 requirements.

There's a big flip-side to this: Accessibility isn't something that machines can judge. This is about much more than just validation (you can build a perfectly accessible site that doesn't validate). With accessibility there are some clear checkpoints you need to pass (table layout is dead - yay!) but you can provide solutions to a fuzzier accessibility problem on one part of a page in so many ways, a computer couldn't ever confirm it (as much as Bobby would like you to think it can).

As a web developer, this is a dilemma. On the one hand I want clients to have to have to take standards and accessibility into account; I don't want to turn pro and have some egit undercutting me in time and costs by knocking out a crap table-layout pishpile of a site.

On the other hand, if someone complains about a site I've made and I'm hauled in front of the client or some kind of 'accessibility tribunal' then it only requires the assessor to be a moron and suddenly a site that might be absolutely fine for accessibility is suddenly foul of the law and there's a black spot on my name, maintenance work to be done and potentially even a big fine for the client. That's not so good.

 

[MKJ]

Can't say I totally follow all this validation stuff. I can't be arsed to mess about with it to be honest. Some of my site is deplorable as far as coding is concerned. All I am concerned about is if it displays properly or not in certain browsers. I don't give a damn about validation. Ok I know this can't be the attitude to have if you are making a site for someone but if you have a great deal of work to do on a site then trying to make it all validate is just too much bleeding hassle. For one thing lots of javascripts I have used in the past have never validated. If you went by that then loads of scripts you couldn't use but they work fine. So why bother with all this validation stuff? As far as I am concerned if they alter the way the internet works and the pages of my site stop showing or show in an odd way I will take pains to do something about it but when I got s*** loads of work to carry out then I ain't. Obviously I will tidy up the code as best I can but hell I tried to validate some pages before and it was so damn time consuming.

Another thing - tables. Surely it is a trend rather than a need to dispense with them for this css stuff. Tables are great to work with and pages can be created extremely fast by using them too. I would far rather work with tables than bleeding divs etc. They display fine too in all the browsers so I can't see why people dislike them so much.

 

[SheepCow]

Another thing - tables

Use a screenreader. Admittedly the screen readers themselves are written by idiots but we may as well try and help them out

 

[Shovel]

Tables are for representing data MKJ. That's what they mean. That's why there is mark-up for Captions, Summaries and header rows in the <table> syntax. They were abused for creating layouts in the 1990's because there was no other way to create multi-column layouts. That is no-longer true.

Use a screenreader. Admittedly the screen readers themselves are written by idiots but we may as well try and help them out

Not to mention viewing the same site on a small screen device or printing the page out. CSS allows you to easily remove things like navigation from printed versions of a page, as well as expanding out the URL of hyperlinks (so they can still be referenced from the printed paper version of the page).

MKJ, if you really want to get anywhere with web development you need to properly learn about *current* development practice. The web of 1998 is dead: sites that redesign and don't use cross-browser, standards based methods are lambasted. The HTML is about meaning, not about looks.

 

[MKJ]

I don't really want to get anywhere with web designing. Want my site to work for sure so I suppose it is the same thing. Once I get the site up to a standard with regard to content I will alter things slowly but with so very little traffic at the moment there isn't any rush to do so. As for website designing a Guy asked me loads of times to make a site for him and offered a fair bit of cash but it ain't worth the bother. Him and others like him would be constantly on the phone. Bugger that he can keep his dosh . Nah just gonna mess about with my own site. I am a 'website messabouter' rather than a 'website designer' .

 

[Maljonic]

I'm not sure about tables myself, they don't stop a site validating do they? Tutors are still teaching students to use tables for layout in web design courses at colleges, even the advanced courses. I know tables are originally used for data but I can't see them going anywhere anytime soon, I can only see their usage increasing and I don't see how anyone can say that HTML is about meaning, not about looks. Websites are all about looks as far as the normal visitors are concerned, they couldn't care less how you put it together as long as they get what they want quick enough and clear enough. It must be like 90% of sites that use tables for layout, including ones like this one, so I thjink it's more likely that things will move on and tables will just become acceptable, if they aren't already, in the long run.

The main reason not to use them at the moment is because everything you do gets a bit samey when is all in straight lines, columns and rows. Having said that, pretty much everything on computers has been that way in offices, Excel etc, that seeing things in columns and rows has become pretty much the expected thing. As long as this stays the same I don't see anything changing in regards the use of tables. There are loads of people out there making websites for fun who don't want to have to think about the positioning of divs, or even wants to know what a div is - they'd much rather use programs like Dreamweaver with tables so they can see straight away what their site looks like without having to preview or upload it.

Tables are also more practicle if you make a site for someone who wants to fiddle with it themselves afterwards but doesn't have the time to learn all the complexities of HTML etc. They can see the bits they want to change, usually just text or images, and just change them without ever seeing the code in many cases.

 

[Furr]

While working for a Data and Voice company during my Gap year I told them I was going off to uni aiming to come back to the IT sector with a degree. The Boss/CEO whatever said "to be honest, in the IT industry you don't really need a degree, when i look at CV's i look at what they have done and what they know. By the time a person gets their degree the stuff they have learnt is already out of date"

Well that didn't stop me, I feel a degree helps to act as a back up in case something goes wrong

 

[Maljonic]

I bet he was jealous because he didn't have a degree... no, really though I think a degree is good, most universities will keep pretty much up to date if they can, if not with machines and programs at least with current techniques.

 

[SheepCow]

I don't see how anyone can say that HTML is about meaning, not about looks

That's all HTML is, meaning. HTML is used to semantically mark up your document. CSS is used to present the data to the user.

It must be like 90% of sites that use tables for layout, including ones like this one

vBulletin are working on changing that.

 

[Shovel]

I'm not sure about tables myself, they don't stop a site validating do they? Tutors are still teaching students to use tables for layout in web design courses at colleges, even the advanced courses.

No, you can build a perfectly HTML or XHTML valid site that uses table layout. That's because the validator can't (and couldn't) check to see if what you've used tables for is semantically correct. That's why I emphasised earlier: Accessibility and usability is about much, much more than getting a pretty little HTML-tick graphic from the W3C.

This is actually a good example. The validator has no way to tell the difference between a table containing spreadsheet data and an abused 'layout' table (faux term, as there's no such thing). As such, if I write a tool to extract tabulated data from a website and import it into Excel, any site using table layout wont work because as far as any computerised tool is concerned, it's all a data table.
In fact, such a tool exists in some versions of Internet Explorer - if you right click on a table I believe you get the option to 'Open in Microsoft Excel'.

As for tutors who still teach table layout? They fall under the same hammer as the Accessify point about professionalism. It's very simple: If you do not know how to use HTML and CSS together for content and presentation you should not be teaching web design.

This is a huge problem because if you've been taught to use a table for layout, what you've been taught is non-negotiabley wrong.
There was a period a few years ago where people made a transition from HTML tables to using HTML+CSS. For a little while some sites redesigned using minimal tables to achieve columns support in Netscape 4. A few years ago that was an acceptable half-mark.

But that transition is over and Netscape 4 is dead. People who teach any profession are supposed to be responsible for keeping their skills up to date; those who are churning out WYSIWYG tutorials the same as they did 5 years ago are ripping off their students and performing a grand disservice to the internet as a whole.

Tables are also more practicle if you make a site for someone who wants to fiddle with it themselves afterwards but doesn't have the time to learn all the complexities of HTML etc.

This I really disagree with. If you use HTML purely for content, as it is designed to be used, the code you produce far, far less complex for someone else to understand and maintain.

The reason people scream when they try to figure out how to edit an HTML document is because half the time 50% of the code is a <table>, <tr> or <td> tag - not to mention bloat from superfluous spacer images and non-breaking space entities.

Rip that cruft out and what do you have? Pure content. The code is infinitely easier to understand. <h1> is for heading, <p> is for paragraph? Easier.

By shipping the presentation out into CSS you can structure pages to have the main 'body' content come first in the source code (navigation and footers and advertisement code can appear later in the source, but CSS can position them anywhere in the browser); again it makes it that much easier to find the content you want to edit, because the content of interest has become the first piece of code and the often only piece of code that the editor has to read.

And yes, there are loads, and loads of sites and CMS systems and bulletin boards which still use tables for layout and wouldn't know accessibility if it kicked them in the testicles. That's not because using tables is acceptable, it's because there are loads of websites that either haven't been updated for a long time, or instead have been updated by someone with no love for his art.

For forums, I believe that PunBB makes a valiant attempt to use proper mark-up whilst maintaining the 'traditional' look and feel of message boards we know and love. Most could learn from it.

 

[Maljonic]

I know the HTML is simpler without tables, I was talking about people who don't have a clue about HTML or CSS and don't want to/or find it too complex to learn - these people find it easier to just look at a table in Dreamweaver and edit the text in place and upload the page. It may well be wrong and irritating to many but it's the way it is. People always do what's easiest and quickest, especially when it makes their head hurt just looking at code.

I'm saying that I agree totally with everything you're saying, but the people using tables the way they are will never go away.

 

[Shovel]

these people find it easier to just look at a table in Dreamweaver and edit the text in place and upload the page

True. But Dreamweaver is pretty savvy at handling CSS layout. Again, old versions were shit, but since switching to Opera's technology it does a much better job.

And since they're editing content, they don't even need to know that CSS exists because it's a separate layer. All they're going to see is that their text is formatted uniformly with the rest of the page.

On the fringes, what if a client can't have access to a modern WYSIWYG editor? Where is the requirement that they need to have the entire page rendered the same when they're editing the content as when it's live?

By all means use an editor to generate HTML and when it's uploaded it'll be formatted just like the rest of the site. They don't have to think about how it looks because the CSS layer handles it.

I'm saying that I agree totally with everything you're saying, but the people using tables the way they are will never go away.

I'm hopeful that in combination with ever improving CSS support in editors like Dreamweaver and the associated Contribute, any of them that are left will be replaced with Content Management Systems.


Fundamentally though, some people will only be changed with the direct intervention of web developers. Especially those who are actually clients with small bits of knowledge about the web but no interest make them aware of current technques.

A web developer that receives money for a site, and then chooses to mis-use tables for layout because they can't provide a suitable means for their client to update the site is again failing the client. Suitable means are plentiful.

 

[Gef]

Company I work for has been toying on and off with proper standards compliant sites for a while now. A lot is down to the client, the job, the audience, probably more importantly the price. The fact still remains that current browsers (read IE) dont support standards properly yet so there is a big chunk of extra development time on top of the project. Ever spent an hour trying to get rid of that 1 pixel difference between IE and Firefox? I have and it aint fun when your on a deadline.

Most clients look at two things, what it looks like on the major browsers and how much its going to cost. Accessability on text browsers and mobile phones dont even get a look in. Currently, for us anyway, the benefits dont outweigh the costs, we will look at a project and ask the client if they would like it to be built with accessability in mind, then add on an extra 30% to the design time if they do.

Another big reason we have backed off is we use a lot of XSL templates and a content management system which wasnt really designed with 'pure' CSS layouts in mind. So even if we do build a standards compliant site, the client will just screw it up by copying and pasting from Word anyway. Maybe i'm just bitter

I think once the next generation of browsers is out with proper support for things like max-height, min-height etc then we will take the big leap and redevelop our CMS (at a big cost to the company). Even after all this time I still think its too early to adopt standards to the level that most of the 'hardcore' web community seems to preach, for us anyhow, it just doesnt make financial sense.

Standards as a concept needs to be sold, not to developers but to the general web site buying public. Its a sad state of affairs, but when it comes down to it all the client sees is the money, and no tangible return.

 

[Maljonic]

I can understand a lot of that. I'm currently updating my own sites to make them standards complient. Maljonic's Dreams will take me about two months I think just to change all the pages because I didn't use temlates or anything when I first put it together three years ago, I have to go through 500+ pages removing all the font tags, tables and any other junk I put in there. It's worth it though; the site will load faster because the files sizes are nearly halved; it means I'll be able to get nearly twice the content on my webspace which was nearly full; because it's all CSS and templates now I can easily update the colour schemes and layouts in the future; also it means the site is strict XHTML compliant now and I don't need to rush it due to any future web standards enforcment, assuming such a thing will ever happen.

The best part for me is really getting to grips with CSS like I never have before and using it to its full potential, well not quite but I'm getting there...

Still, that's all very well for my own sites because it only costs me my spare time; but imagine if I had to charge a client for two month's worth of work, they might have a heart attack! It's just not feasable unless it's a big company, which I've never dealt with before, or a totally new site where I get do whatever I like, which I have been doing recently with my latest job.

I also do private tutoring in basic website design and got a request to be taught how to use tables for laying out a site with Dreamweaver the other week, which may rankle a bit but I can hardly tell them to bugger off or even risk them going somewhere else if I tell them they should learn how to use layers and CSS instead.

 

[Shovel]

There is a big chunk of extra development time on top of the project. Ever spent an hour trying to get rid of that 1 pixel difference between IE and Firefox? I have and it aint fun when your on a deadline.

Obviously this depends on exactly what flavour of adjustments you're making, but the web is _not_ a pixel-perfect medium and never has been. A long period of single-browser dominance might give the wrong impression, but browsers are within their rights to display things differently.

Obviously different parts of the page are more or less important as regards pixel adjustments (My personal site is currently derived from a default theme which uses 3 different images to create the border and shadow, they obviously do need to line up).

The thing is though, I can't say I have ever spent anything like an hour fixing such a layout in IE because there are so many CSS hacks that filter rules only for IE that you can fix IE errors directly without impacting the other browsers at all.

It helps to develop for Mozilla/Opera/Safari/Standards "first" and then hack for IE once the design works in those browsers rather than the other way around (because IE has these filtering hacks available, so fixing it is quick and direct). I can see how fixing a browser that isn't IE would be time consuming though; but that's the same regardless of whether you use CSS layout or table hacks.

Accessability on text browsers and mobile phones dont even get a look in.

That's fair enough as they're pretty much lifestyle choices. But accessibility for the disabled? That's the killer. Good example is Google's Gmail: It's terrible, inaccessible mark-up full of tables and iframes. So far, they've had to produce and maintain two additional versions of Gmail: one of older browsers and another for mobile access. If they'd built it with standards to start with they would've got backwards compatibility and mobile support for free.

Another big reason we have backed off is we use a lot of XSL templates and a content management system which wasnt really designed with 'pure' CSS layouts in mind.

Aha, yes. Being tied to a CMS is a kick in the balls for updating to standards and yeah, I'm not saying that those stuck with an incompatible CMS should go over the odds to make it work with CSS instead; that obviously doesn't make any financial sense.

Standards as a concept needs to be sold, not to developers but to the general web site buying public.

I disagree. I don't think it matters at all to the website buying public how their it works on the inside. They're just consumers. No-one cares about the mark-up inside their Word documents do they?
It's the developer's responsibility to build the site properly.

Still, that's all very well for my own sites because it only costs me my spare time

Absolutely, and I don't think anyone is saying we should all go back to old clients and say "hey I build your website wrong I'm going to do it again at your cost". Maintaining an existing table-hack site is a very different thing to building someone a new site. It's the latter where excuses for not using standards are running thin.

got a request to be taught how to use tables for laying out a site with Dreamweaver the other week

If they're asking for it then by all means show them, but I think you've got a responsibility to make sure they know why tables have been rejected and that what you teach is redunant.

 

[Maljonic]

I'm not sure I'd say to them that the teaching of tables for layout is redundant exactly, it would make me sound like an idiot and a liar when everywhere they look sites are layed out using tables, often the sites that they aspire to. For instance someone might think this site is great, which it is, and they can see it uses tables along with lots of very popular sites. Monkey see monkey do et cetera.

I don't ignore it though, I always mention the use of layers and style sheets being the more accepted way to do things and the way of the future, but I'm not going to pretend to them that using tables isn't happening, or even boldy say that they are wrong (the clients).

Anyway, is there a way to see how a site looks on a phone without actually using a phone to look at it?

 

[Maljonic]

I wanted to add this but I can't edit my post now.

These websites use tables for layout:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/

http://www.oed.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/

http://www.cnn.com/

http://www.apple.com/

and plenty more of the top 100 visited sites. I guess people will see this and think, if they are doing it why shouldn't I?

I can't just say, "yes that's right, the BBC are doing it all wrong; you need to do it like I say."

 

[SheepCow]

Anyway, is there a way to see how a site looks on a phone without actually using a phone to look at it?

Opera can do this

 

[Maljonic]

Thanks, how do you get it to do that?

 

[Shovel]

I believe the Web Developer Extension for Firefox can do it as well (or failing that, I think someone made a seperate extension to do it).

Mobile browsers are one of the reasons that standards are so important because as each year passes, any number of new web browsers and browser versions are unleashed on the world. When it was just "IE or Netscape" you could bodge it to work in both but today there are 4 different major browser rendering engines, and maybe dozens of mobile browsers.

As for the sites you mention. Yes, you can say that the BBC are doing it wrong. Those are old sites. They're tied in to old CMS systems so modernising can't happen "just like that". The BBC happens to be full of extremely standards aware developers, but they have so much content a standards compliant site will have to wait until after they redevelop the CMS. As far as I'm aware, standards "big names" Eric Meyer and Jeffery Zeldman have been working with Apple at various points regarding improvement their site.

Just because big companies do something doesn't make right. There're plenty of examples of big sites that do use standards so use them instead.

A couple of other things: I'd suggesting avoiding the term "layers", that's a Dreamweaver feature, not a web development technique. You risk confusing them if/when they move away from Dreamweaver in the future. "CSS Layout" would be more correct.

And clients are regularly wrong about technology, that's surely part of the reason they're coming to you for education or site development.

 

[Maljonic]

Oh I know they're wrong, I'm just saying that I can't tell them so. As for saying the BBC are wrong, that's just an example. I mean that everywhere you look, all the most popular sites, are still using tables for layout, so it's little wonder that many people think it's the way to do things and that it's the method they want to learn how to use.

I can't just not show them because they want to know, because they see it all the time. All I can do is show them how to use tables in this way then, if they'll let me, show them a better way of achieving the same thing. The fact that it takes up half the space using divs (not layers) and CSS is a good bargaining point if someone is pushed for space I think, means their hosting will be cheaper.

 

[Shovel]

Thanks, how do you get it to do that?

View → Small Screen

 

[Maljonic]

Thanks that's great. Is that how sites look on most phones then, I never actually tried going on the internet with a phone before?

 

[Shovel]

It's variable - That's a reasonable approximation of how Opera Mobile will render it (and Opera Mini will work on the same principal) but Opera is clever: It rearranges tables to make it fit on screen.

However, browsers like the the one on current generation Sony Ericsson phones don't adjust layout in the same way so using table layout, or defining fixed widths that extend beyond a few hundred pixels will force side scrolling.

 

[Gef]

Obviously different parts of the page are more or less important as regards pixel adjustments (My personal site is currently derived from a default theme which uses 3 different images to create the border and shadow, they obviously do need to line up).

Which they actually don't even line up in Firefox...

Kinda proves a point quite nicely that if there are bugs in a pretty basic single column layout you can imagine the pain trying to make a more complex design work properly. I agree its almost impossible to get a site looking exact on all browsers, but when something doesnt line up or the gaps are uneven its the first thing a client will flag up.

I disagree. I don't think it matters at all to the website buying public how their it works on the inside. They're just consumers. No-one cares about the mark-up inside their Word documents do they?
It's the developer's responsibility to build the site properly.

When its going to cost them more money and they dont really understand why, it suddenly matters a whole lot more. A good example, we have recently started developing a site for an airline conference organiser and training simulator retailer. When offered the option do build everything using CSS layouts for accessability purposes, their response was a swift "Well we dont have any visually impared pilots so no need for that" .. and that was that.

 

[Shovel]

Which they actually don't even line up in Firefox...

Ah, I was messing with it before Christmas and didn't fix it when I was done. That's a proof of my carelessness maintaining my own website, rather than CSS based design.

Thanks for reminding me to get it fixed, though.