IN A RECENT article on his website, Web Standards Killed the HTML Star, designer Jeff Croft laments the passing of the “HTML and CSS ‘guru’” as a viable long-term professional position and urges his fellow web design generalists to “diversify or die.”

The reason the Web Standards Movement mattered was that the browsers sucked. The stated goal of the Movement was to get browser makers on board with web standards such that all of our jobs as developers would be easier.

What we may not have realized is that once the browsers don’t suck, being an HTML and CSS “guru” isn’t really a very marketable skillset. 80% of what made us useful was the way we knew all the quirks and intracries of the browsers. Guess what? Those are all gone. And if they’re not, they will be in the very near future. Then what?

From my perspective, the web standards struggle consisted of two phases of persuasion: first we convinced browser makers that it was in their interest to support current HTML, CSS, and JavaScript specifications completely and accurately; then we evangelized the accessibility, findability, and portability benefits of lean semantic markup and progressive enhancement to our colleagues who made websites.

Evangelizing true compliance, not mastering workarounds for compliance failures, was always the point. Evangelizing was key. Browsers weren’t going to stay standards compliant if nobody made use of that compliance; likewise, W3C specifications weren’t going to advance unless designers seized hold of technologies like CSS to push type and layout on the web as far as they could go—and then complain that they didn’t go far enough.

It took a village of passionate browser engineers, designers, front-end developers, and generalists to bring us to the web we have today. Does the movement’s success mean that many of those who led it will become jobless, like Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution?

Jeff Croft is correct when he says “the goal of the Web Standards Movement was for it to not have to exist.” But we should take this a step further. The goal of the web standards movement was to remove needless complexity and absurdity from the process of creating websites so we could focus our attention where it should be: on design, content, and experience. Evangelizing standards to browser makers and our fellow designers was not a career path, and was never intended to be—any more than aiding a wounded buddy turns a soldier into a physician.

Interestingly, once web standards made the web safe for design, content, and experience, the web’s capabilities—and, thus, the work required to create certain kinds of websites—started becoming more and more complex. To help cut down on that complexity, some front-end developers began sharing chunks of code (from Eric Meyer’s CSS Reset to Mark Otto’s Bootstrap) which paradoxically set in motion another level of complexity: as Jeff Croft points out, familiarity with these and dozens of other tools is now expected of job applicants who could once get hired on nothing more than a solid understanding of HTML and CSS plus a little JavaScript.

HTML “gurudom” was never a career path for anyone, aside, maybe, from a couple of talented authors. Same thing with CSS wizardry. Doing black magic with CSS3 can get you a slot on a web design conference stage, but it’s not a career path or proper goal for most web designers.

Fascinatingly, to me, anyway, while many of us prefer to concentrate on design, content, and experience, it continues to be necessary to remind our work comrades (or inform younguns) about web standards, accessibility, and progressive enhancement. When a site like Facebook stops functioning when a script forgets to load, that is a failure of education and understanding, and all of us have a stake in reaching out to our fellow developers to make sure that, in addition to the new fancy tricks they’ve mastered, they also learn the basics of web standards, without which our whole shared system implodes.

This doesn’t mean “go be an HTML guru.” It does mean cherish the lessons of the recent past, and share them with those who missed them (or missed the point). Wisdom is not a job, but it is always an asset.

Never fear, web design generalists: many companies and organizations require your services and always will—from universities still seeking “webmasters,” to startups seeking seasoned folks with multiple areas of understanding to direct and coordinate the activities of younger specialists. But if jack-of-all web work is feeling stale, now may be the time to up your game as a graphic designer, or experience designer, or front end developer. “Diversify or die” is overstating things when the world needs generalists, too. But “follow the path you love” will always be good advice.

Filed under: Standards, State of the Web

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STOP ME if you’ve heard this one: Guy goes into a venture capital firm, borrows money. Uses money to turn neat idea into product. Gives away product (or sells well below cost) to build a following and thus a demand.

Customers love product, imbue it with their life energy and creativity. Community grows, but not cashflow, because money was something to be figured out later. More investors throw more money at the product, on the theory that what it needs is fancier offices or fifty designers united behind no vision in particular.

Surprisingly (at least to the participants), several rounds of throwing cash and bodies at what was once a neat idea fail to generate ludicrous return on investment. Capitalists demand that product idea be changed.

Change of idea fails to generate ludicrous return on investment. Customers, no longer sure what product is about (or even that it has a future) become less passionate.

Usage falters, then rapidly hits event horizon.

Guy starts shopping no longer loved or interesting product at fire sale price.

Eventually big internet company sucks product and product team into itself, where both disappear forever.

Filed under: Design, industry, Startups, State of the Web

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I RECENTLY SHARED a positive view of what’s happening at Adobe. I’m still a huge fan of the company’s image editing software, and I remain optimistic about their new direction. But I’m unhappy about the two-device limitation Adobe Cloud places on software.

While the company is more liberal than it used to be (e.g. a license to use Adobe software on the Mac is also a license to use it in Windows, and vice-versa), the Cloud’s refusal to let me use software I’ve purchased from Adobe on more than two devices feels like a relic of the past. It’s a restriction that might have made sense for print designers working in corporations in the 1990s, but it is out of touch with the reality of remote and freelance workers designing digital sites and applications for a multi-device world.

I have an office iMac, a home iMac, a home laptop, and an office laptop. I use all of them for my work. My set-up is not unique. Everyone I know who works in this industry has something similar going on.

Apple gets this reality but Adobe does not. For instance, my copy of Lightroom 4, which I bought via the App Store, works everywhere. Not so Lightroom 5, which I purchased (rented? licensed?) as part of my annual Cloud subscription. As a paying Adobe Cloud customer and a photography and Lightroom fanatic, I should be chomping at the bit to upgrade to Lightroom 5. But I see no point in doing so if I’m only going to be able to use Lightroom on two machines.

You might ask why this is is a problem. Here are three times I use Lightroom: to edit business, family, and vacation photos on my laptop while traveling; to edit business photos on the computer in my design studio; and to edit family and travel photos on the computer in my home. Adobe Cloud will let me use Lightroom 5 in two of these situations, but not all three. That makes it useless to me. Lightroom 4, which I bought in the App Store, has no such restrictions. I can use it on as many machines as I own. (To be fair, Apple can easily afford to be liberal with software licensing, because it makes its money on the hardware I buy. Adobe does not. I get that, but understanding doesn’t solve my problem.)

Likewise, I need to use Photoshop when I’m traveling on business (laptop), when I’m working in my design studio, and when I’m burning the midnight oil at home. Adobe will only let me use the product in two of these contexts. Stymied, I use an older, non-cloud version of Photoshop on one or more machines—and when I do that, I run into compatibility problems.

Although I love Photoshop and have used it professionally for nearly two decades, I can’t help noticing that Pixelmator does pretty much everything I need Photoshop to do, costs a fraction of the price (US $29.99), and can be downloaded onto an unlimited number of computers I own.

Why should Adobe care? Because the current restriction is not sustainable for them. The frustrations the restriction creates for me every day actively encourage me to stick with Lightroom 4 and abandon Photoshop for a much more affordable competitor. In short, the one thing that’s uncool about the Cloud is actively unselling all the Cloud’s benefits. And that can hardly be in Adobe’s long-term interest.

What can Adobe do about it? Well, the company could offer a “pro” or “gold” version of Cloud service that removes the two-device restriction. If the difference in price is reasonable, I’d happily sign up. Even better, from a public relations as well as a love-your-neighbor point of view, would be if Adobe simply removed the restriction at no additional cost. Or set the restriction higher, allowing you to register Cloud software on up to five devices you own.

Whatever they do, they should do it soon. We want to keep working with Adobe software, but Adobe needs to work with us, too.

Filed under: Adobe, Multi-Device, software

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LAST NIGHT at dinner, my friend Tantek Çelik (and if you don’t know who he is, learn the history of your craft) lamented that there was no longer any innovation in blogging—and hadn’t been for years. I replied by asking if anyone was still blogging.

Me, I regret the day I started calling what I do here “blogging.” When I launched this website in 1995, I thought of what I was doing as “writing and publishing,” which is the case. But in the early 2000s, after Rebecca Blood’s book came out, I succumbed to peer pressure. Not from Rebecca: Rebecca is awesome, and still going strong. The peer pressure came from the zeitgeist.

Nobody in the mainstream had noticed a decade of independent content producers, but they woke up when someone started calling it “blogging.” By the way, what an appalling word that is. Blogging. Yecch. I held my nose at the time. But I also held my tongue. If calling your activity blogging was the price of recognition and attention, so be it, my younger self said to itself.

Did Twitter and Facebook kill blogging? Was it withdrawal of the mainstream spotlight? Did people stop independently writing and publishing on the web because it was too much work for too little attention and gain? Or did they discover that, after all, they mostly had nothing to say?

Blogging may have been a fad, a semi-comic emblem of a time, like CB Radio and disco dancing, but independent writing and publishing is not. Sharing ideas and passions on the only free medium the world has known is not a fad or joke.

We were struggling, whether we knew it or not, to found a more fluid society. A place where everyone, not just appointed apologists for the status quo, could be heard. That dream need not die. It matters more now than ever.

Yes, recycling other people’s recycling of other people’s recycling of cat gifs is fun and easy on Tumblr. Yes, rubbing out a good bon mot on Twitter can satisfy one’s ego and rekindle a wistful remembrance of meaning. Yes, these things are still fine to do. But they are not all we can do on this web. This is our web. Let us not surrender it so easily to new corporate masters.

Keep blogging in the free world.

Filed under: Platforms, Publications, Publishing, Web Design, Web Design History, writing

This post has earned 128 responses so far.

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Filed under: An Event Apart, Design

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MIKE MONTEIRO is a man on a mission. He wants to improve design by fixing the core of it, which is the relationship between designer and client. Too many of us fear our clients—the people whose money keeps our lights on, and who hire us to solve business problems they can’t solve for themselves. And too many clients are even more frustrated and puzzled by their designers than the designers are by the clients.

It’s the designer’s job to fix this, which is why Mike first wrote Design Is A Job, and spent two years taking the message into conference halls and meeting rooms from New Zealand to New York.

I wish every designer could read this book. I can’t tell you how many friends of mine—many of whom I consider far better designers than I am—struggle every day with terrible anxieties over how a client will react to their work. And the problem isn’t limited to web and interaction designers. Anybody who designs anything burns cycles in fear and acrimony. I too waste hours worrying about the client’s reaction—but a dip into Mike’s first book relaxes me like a warm milk bath, and reminds me that collaboration and persuasion are the essence of my craft and well within my power to execute.

If the designer’s side of things were the only part of the problem Mike had addressed, it would be enough. But there is more:

• Next Mike will help clients understand what they should expect from a designer and learn how to hire one they can work with. How he will do that is still a secret—although folks attending An Event Apart San Francisco this week will get a clue.
• Design education is the third leg of the chair, and once he has spread his message to clients, Mike intends to fix that or die trying. As Mike sees it (and I agree) too many design programs turn out students who can defend their work in an academic critique session among their peers, but have no idea how to talk to clients and no comprehension of their problems. We are creating a generation of skilled and talented but only semi-employable designers—designers who, unless they have the luck to learn what their expensive education didn’t teach them, will have miserably frustrating careers and turn out sub-par work that doesn’t solve their clients’ problems.

We web and interaction designers are always seeking to understand our user, and to solve the user’s problems with empathy and compassion. Perhaps we should start with the user who hires us.

Filed under: A Book Apart, Advocacy, An Event Apart, business, Career, client services, clients, conferences, Design, Designers, Education, engagement, people

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IN Episode № 105 of The Big Web Show on Mule Radio, I talk with Michael Simmons, co-creator of the Fantastical app (#1 Apple Store app), about iOS 7, designing Fantastical, reinventing calendar software, staying inspired on a long-term project, how to do a huge launch with no budget, Apple’s long-term design strategy, and more.

Michael is a passionate, experienced, and opinionated designer. As a huge fan and daily user of Fantastical, and as a designer, I loved our conversation; hope you do, too.

Listen to Episode № 105 of The Big Web Show.

Fantastical 2 Giveaway

Michael’s company Flexibits is giving away four copies of Fantastical 2 for iPhone to the first four Big Web Show listeners who use one of these promo codes in their store:

• THEYNKRT7XKR
• NET4Y4RYM4EN
• LP4YJJ4XF9NR
• JWXLP6W73RXX

Enjoy The Big Web Show

• Check all episodes on Mule Radio.
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Filed under: Big Web Show, The Big Web Show

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ALL IT TAKES is a toque and a dream.

Join your fellow web designers and developers around the world on Saturday, 30 November 2013, as we march in virtual solidarity in support of web standards.

The countdown to this worldwide celebration begins today, with the opening of the Blue Beanie Day 2013 photo pool on good old Flickr.com. Read more at the new official home of Blue Beanie Day online, bluebeanieday.tumblr.com.

Filed under: Blue Beanie Day, The Essentials, Web Design, Web Design History, Web Standards

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DESIGNER/DEVELOPER Val Head and I discuss her new book A Pocket Guide to CSS Animations (Five Simple Steps, 2013); the Web Design Day conference; working as a hired gun; JavaScript and CSS animation; the great city of Pittsburgh; what it takes to run a workshop; and more. Enjoy Episode № 104 of The Big Web Show on Mule Radio.

There’s Always More

• Check all episodes on Mule Radio.
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Filed under: Big Web Show, Career, CSS, Design, people, The Big Web Show

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IT’S NOT NEWS that all eight An Event Apart conferences in 2014 are open for registration. But this is new: we’ve now published complete schedules and speaker lineups for the first three shows of the year.

Learn from some of the smartest people in our industry. Go deep on topics like emerging responsive image standards, advanced web typography, designing in the gap between devices, putting your UI in motion with CSS, working with CSS preprocessors, increasing the likelihood that your digital design projects will succeed, and even the best ways to share the ideas you’ve learned at An Event Apart when you get back to your office.

Read more.

Filed under: An Event Apart, conferences, Design, Web Design

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