RE: Simplicity of Authoring and Accessibility Tools

At 8:32 PM -0800 1/18/01, Charles F. Munat wrote:
>I also agree that professional sites should be built by professional
>developers. I think a step in the right direction would be a certification
>process for HTML. There are already certifications for XML, why not an
>HTML/CSS certification?

Whose certification, and how?  This isn't a bad idea; the question
would just be how you establish such a thing.  It's -not- an easy
task; believe me, I've looked at it.  This is the type of idea that
often gets tossed about in discussions, but in practice nobody really
takes it on because it honestly would require _lots_ of investment
of time, expertise, and capital.

The biggest expense frankly would be marketing -- convincing people
that despite the fact that there have been people doing web work for
almost 10 years, they don't actually know anything unless they have
one of Kynn's Certified Web Mechanic certificates.  Such a marketing
campaign would be very costly, especially as we are establishing it
after the fact.  The W3C definitely does -not- have the resources
to pull it off, so who?

Microsoft, I guess, could do this.  Don't they do that already,
anyway?

I personally don't have any "certifications" in XML, nor does anyone
I know who works in the field, and yet I manage to get by okay
anyway.

>Yes, I know that some colleges offer "Basic Web Site
>Design" certification, but they invariably teach obsolete code. We need an
>official certification based on a thorough knowledge of valid XHTML
>(including Basic and the modules) and CSS1 and 2 (and soon, 3?). We could
>even throw in RDF, P3P, and the DOM. Then the next step up would be to
>XML/Etc. or to SMIL/SVG/Etc.

XHTML, including modularization?  Why would you want to teach anyone
such obsolete technologies anyway?  A true curriculum designed for
the 21st century would not be using 20th century concepts such as
"XHTML modules" when you really should start with XML, which is easier
to understand and use anyway.

--Kynn
-- 
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>
http://www.kynn.com/

Received on Friday, 19 January 2001 01:22:32 UTC