Web Professionalism buzz and Dreamweaver
It seems Molly’s open letter to Disney Store UK started a real buzz around the web standards community about it means to be a web professional. There is certainly a good list of posts and a trail of comments on the topic so rather than try and summarize, here are three to start (you can find the others through these):
- Web Standards and The New Professionalism
- The New Amateurs
- A web professional can never stop learning
There are some good points brought up in those articles, particularly with regards to reaching out to the up and coming web folks with regards to web standards. I tend to agree with the thought that being a web professional means making an effort on your sites to move towards standards and accessible design. It doesn’t mean that your site has to be 100% standards compliant and accessible.
What I am wondering, do people even think there is such a thing as a web professional or do they think Dreamweaver will do it for them? The reason I ask is that I see many admin assistant jobs posted that require Dreamweaver experience and its not like an admin assistant doesn’t have enough to worry about in a day, why do they need to concern themselves with web development?
If its Contribute they need to learn, then that makes sense as it is designed for the amateur to maintain content. But Dreamweaver? Macromedia has made an excellent attempt at making Dreamweaver usable to the amateur but it can still be overwhelming for a new person to learn. If you are serious about the web Dreamweaver is the tool to get you into it, don’t get me wrong, but are tools like Dreamweaver hurting the perceived professionalism of web people?
The thinking of non-web folks appears to be a tool like Dreamweaver is all you need to publish a professional web site. It works doesn’t it? What is lacking though is the experience and the expertise to finish your site and do it properly. It’s a tool. If you buy a compound mitre saw are you a carpenter? Sure you can make cabinets but compare yours with a carpenters, which would you prefer to have in your kitchen while entertaining guests or trying to sell your house?
…and no this isn’t a gripe about anything in-particular. I think that people around here generally get that web work requires a certain level of expertise.