Re: Using htlm editors to produce clean code?

In this imperfect world, I teach HTML to overworked secretaries, 
executive officers, work experience students (schoolkids who spend a week 
in an office so their teachers can catch up on trying to teach them, 
while they learn about 'real workplaces') and other well-known groups of 
computer experts.

There are a couple of areas where they have difficulty: linking pages 
together - understanding what is a relative and absolute URI relies on a 
bit of knowledge about the systems they use every day which many of them 
don't have. And Style sheets - a vast majority of the professional 
secretaries I teach do not know what a style sheet is or how to use one 
in MSWord, the standard for most of these people.

This knowledge is about getting people trained enough to do their job 
properly. It is not rocket science - it is understanding how to use the 
everyday tools of trade. The analogy I draw is not knowing that Car tyres 
need air in them or they do not work properly. (A friend of mine found 
that her car was much easier to drive when she learned that little fact 
and acted on it). The unfortunate reality of this world is that people 
are buying products they do not understand, often from people who nly 
half-understand themselves, and expecting other peopoe to live with their 
decisions. So if the salesman said 'this requires no training', or the 
agency says 'our staff are fully trained', then they are assumed not to 
rquire any training. It's not a web issue, it is about sales techniques 
and business techniques, and there has to come a opint when the anser is 
'your practise is so fundamentally flawed that we cannot help you until 
you fix it'

Charles McCathieNevile

Received on Saturday, 16 May 1998 23:59:04 UTC