5 posts tagged “web”
As soon as I learned about validating HTML, I became a bit of a validation freak. That day, I re-wrote my site to validate, stopped using inline HTML, started using stylesheets, and cheered as commercial websites started moving over too.
I've been looking through job descriptions for web developers and designers. It's striking how many of them are written by people that don't know what message they're sending in their job descriptions. I'll do my best to explain.
When you say:
An amazing new start-up seeks a highly talented web master to create our new website. Required skills include extensive knowledge of Excel, Visio, and HTML. Photoshop experience a plus.
It would be like saying this to a NASCAR racer:
We're looking for great drivers for our innovative new motorsports circuit! Please have extensive experience driving a schoolbus. Ability to drive a stickshift a plus.
Or saying this to recruit a CEO:
Our amazing company is looking for fantastic CEO leadership. We'd prefer someone who's run a meeting before. Oh, and could you please have an MBA? That would help your chances.
Or this to a dairy cow:
We've got the best farm in the state and we're looking for the best cow in the state to join us. Can you moo? Also, ability to make milk a plus.
Here are the key sentences and what a talented developer or designer thinks upon reading them:
An amazing new start-up...
Crap, they don't have any money and the sales guys are already defining the product.
...seeks a highly talented web master..
No one uses the term "web master" anymore. This guy hasn't worked with web developers since the turn of the century.
...to create our new website.
Run away. They're piloting their little web 2.0 boat of dreams out into pretty choppy waters. If they don't have a website by 2007, and they're using craig's list to hire their core developer for their core product, they have zero industry contacts. Probably because they were a real estate agent up until 2 months ago and are looking for fast money on this here internet thing.
Required skills include extensive knowledge of Excel, Visio, and HTML.
Way to prioritize. Just because you, as a founder or sales guy, loves Excel, it doesn't mean your developer needs to be proficient in it any more than you should know TextMate. But he does know Excel, Visio, and Word, and maybe better than you. And yes, he knows HTML. It's unsettling that the most important language for the web is number three in your required skills list.
Photoshop experience a plus.
Same problem as before - de-emphasizing the skills needed and emphasizing ones that are outdated.
So, a hot tip: if you're a hiring manager and you want to get a high quality developer or designer, ask a high quality developer or designer to write the work request for you. If there's too much buzzword saturation, reliance on apps that have nothing to do with development, or ignorance of the apps/languages/frameworks/ideas that really get devs excited, you won't get many good leads.
I've always been impressed by Panic.com, but their new software is awesome.
It's essentially a web IDE. My current workflow uses BBEdit and Transmit, and Coda aims to replace both with a single app. It also has a built-in terminal, reference guide, cool CSS builder, and other goodies.
Also, I hate TextMate. It auto-completes incorrectly, second-guesses what I really want to do, indents incorrectly, and there are tons of little features that it simply can't do. I know it's the Application You're Supposed To Love, but my position has only firmed up in the last year or two: TextMate isn't for me.
It appears that Coda is. I put it through its paces and where TextMate is Wrong, Coda makes a point to be Right.
I've never really liked ThinkVitamin. The design is nothing special, and the big banners announcing content made me think it was a site for SEO "experts"/spammers.
But their "advisory board" is very impressive.
Dan Cederholm
Thomas Fuchs
Cal Henderson
Molly E. Holzschlag
Shaun Inman
Jeffrey Kalmikoff
Eric Meyer
Mike Rundle
Dave Shea
Jeff Veen
Ryan Carson
That's some amazing representation. Scriptaculous, Threadless, Flickr, Google, SimpleBits, Meyerweb, Mint, CSS Zen Garden, 9 Rules. Basically a list of the high caliber people I follow on the web, and many whom I've followed for ages. (Hi Veen)
Then I went through each advisor's profile page, and OMG they're actually writing content! Really good, in-depth, thorough content. I like some of the articles more than recent A List Apart articles.
So I'm impressed. I still think the site's palette is heavy, generic, and pretty darn ugly. But content rules, and ThinkVitamin's content rules.
Designers are never supposed to be satisfied, but the state of web design is pretty good right now.
In between the dotcom bust and today, those of us who really loved the web come to many similar conclusions. Standards are important. Coding for multiple browsers is stupid. There's more to browsers than Windows/IE. Separating style from content is great. Syndication is the wave of the future. Don't break bookmarks or the back button. Linking is the currency of the web. Blogs don't have to only be people writing about their cats. Be simple. Clean. Easy. Fun. Informal. Sharable. Profitable. If you make something amazing, you will be rewarded by the community.
And, gasp, people listened. I hear MBAs who only browse the web for Google and their Hotmail account saying "I want a good clean design." These are the same people that I met with 4 years ago who said "I want it to force the user to full screen, force a 3 meg introduction movie down their throat, and I don't want people to steal anything. I want to blow people's minds."
And I'm not under any illusion that the MBA CEOs really understand good design, or why they're asking if the site works in Firefox, or thinking about page load time, or SEO benfits, but at least they're finally thinking the way I think. I'm at the Pearl Jam show wanting to hear new material and they just want to hear Alive and Jeremy. Whatever. At least we're all at the same show. This is new and important.
And sure, there's bad design in the same numbers there's always been, but the definition of bad has changed. So we moved from page counters, bloated tiled background images, stupid animated gifs, daughter window control panels, and +3 font lime green text welcoming you to the page to overly boxy CSS design with 80 "DIGG THIS TECHNORATI THIS REDDIT THIS NEWSVINE THIS" banners across the bottom of every post and more Google ads than actual content. But frankly, that's a step forward. At least they're using doctypes.
I'm satisfied with where the mainstream is. But that's concerning me. It's time to move on so I'm not blind-sided by the next shift. I want to know the next thing to keep my eye on. It has nothing to do with glassy buttons and drop shadows, I'm sure of that.
