These are the things I know

We spent 40 minutes of a 60 minute meeting last week considering whether or not “using” or “managing” was the right word for a site’s secondary navigation. Normally this could be a fun exercise involving Mr. Roget’s most famous product, handwaving, and a lot of colored markers but in this case it mostly consisted of Management talking and the rest of us staring into space. Management, after all, calls these meetings primarily to hear themselves talk and really don’t want our opinions or input.

Our weekly content project meeting followed this and was made extra, extra special this week by DeputyDirector insisting that the visual design of a web site “didn’t necessarily” have anything to do with the site’s CSS.

While I understand that it is possible to institute standards for a web site that mandate things like minimum and maximum size or font for certain elements (e.g. body text should be no smaller than the equivalent of 10 pt and all headings should be in a serif font such as Georgia or Times New Roman) you are placing constraints on a site’s visual design when you do this.

These constraints placed on a site’s visual design do not mean that the design is not expressed in the style sheet. They simply mean you are starting with an existing set of styles already in place when you create new sites.

The people in my group largely focus on content. Some of them have a bit of experience with front-end web development technologies (i.e. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) but for most of them their understanding only goes as far as knowing that when they request that “developers” add new content to an existing site they need to match the new content to the site’s structure with respect to headings, lists, and the like. Most of them, however, know enough to know that Management doesn’t like to be challenged. The net effect of this is that we all sit around while pronouncements that are if not obviously untrue are so dodgy they border on mealymouthed become the basis if decisions we are required to implement and use as a basis for our daily functioning. I’m also finding that such pronouncements and the lack of challenge to them are affecting my confidence in my subject matter knowledge and skills. As such, I’ve decided to lay out what I know to be true so that I can consult it as the months wear on and, hopefully, maintain my ability to be hired somewhere outside this hot mess of a web group.

1. HTML controls the structure of documents on the web.
   Describing the structure of a document – what is a heading, what is a paragraph, what is a list – is the unique and specific job of HTML. XHMTL is just HTML written to particular, slightly stricter standards than the HTML 4.01 specification requires. Even if a piece of software is written in another language when its output is displayed on the web 9.9 times out of 10 it is displayed in HTML. 

   I have been hand coding HTML since version 2.3 was the specification and know the how to create well-formed, semantic HTML documents. I also know that the term “inline link” has various meanings none of which include using the id attribute to link from the top of the page to a specific section of a document.

2. CSS controls the presentation of documents on the web.
   Cascading Style Sheets allow the front-end coder to separate a document’s structure from its presentation. They express the visual design of a site.

   For media=”screen” expressing the visual design is the only purpose of a cascading style sheet.

3. Usability and Accessibility are related but they are not the same thing.
   Accessibility is about making the web available to people with disabilities. Usability is about making the web easy to use. 

   It is possible to have an accessible web site that it totally unusable. It is also possible to have an intuitive, well designed, easily learned site that is totally inaccessible.

   The fact that both of these conditions can exist precludes usability and accessibility from being the same thing.

4. Standards are generally a good thing to have but not for the sake of having them.
   It’s important to have standards. They are the foundation of any good work. In order to be good standards, however, they have to flex at least a little based on need and situation.

   If your metrics show your audience is primarily accessing your site using a mobile device you optimize for mobile. A site optimized for mobile may not allow for your precious social media geegaw with the icons that jump up on mouseover.

   There is no point in applying standards simply to apply them. Ralph Waldo Emerson would agree with me on this.

5. If you don’t treat people with respect don’t be surprised when they return the favor.
   While it possible to motivate people using fear, true leaders understand that motivating people by gaining their respect and trust is often an easier, more effective tactic. They way to gain people’s respect is to make them believe they are valuable. Once they trust you and like you they’ll bend over backwards to implement your vision. 

   If you motivate through fear the only reward you offer your staff is their pay checks and what you instead create is an operant conditioning system in which the reward phase is completely disconnected from actual behavior. The nearly 100% turn-over rate in two years within your full-time staff should be a clue that whatever you’re doing isn’t working.

OK, so maybe that last one isn’t really something concrete that I know but is more of something that I’ve observed with regularity during my working life. Regardless, these are all things I need to keep in mind as I attempt to retain my sanity, my dignity, and my skills.