While I’m probably someone who would be considered elitist as a moderately unknown standardista I hope I try to remain balanced. If I don’t feel free to come over and harangue me. I don’t want an exclusive Web where anyone can’t get online easily and with soup. That’s different. But I’d like to see commercial sites go up a notch and adopt some of these better practices.

I actually took some umbrage to Oxton’s line there as well, coincidentally lol. No I don’t want that Web for sure. Although I agree I’d like to see better practices for web dev firms out there currently producing junk code. I guess.

Theoretically, skill or quality actually plays no role in determining whether someone is an amateur or a professional.

There are good and bad in both camps.
Sad but true.

Oh well.

“What does this mean, there is no <comment>-tag? How do you do comments in html…

And RTFM is all I answer to those.

There are arguments above that people in different trades would still be considered professionals even if they aren’t using the latest, cutting-edge techniques and tools. Zeldman began preaching about standards in 1997, and A List Apart launched its CSS-based layout in February, 2001. These are hardly new or “latest and greatest” concepts.

A true professional monitors the latest trends in his or her field, evaluates how they may fit, and hopefully experiments firsthand. Almost five years later, this experimentation and honeymoon phase should be over in the professional arena. Using standards isn’t a bandwagon; it’s the wagon we should all be driving in unison.

Its been two years now since the web have these new and better techniques to do thing why stay in the past? As for semantically coding HTML, there are no excuse but laziness not to learn it properly.

I used to teach design students on web design and first requirement is understand what you are doing in Dreamweaver and get a HTML and CSS book. This is not PhotoShop or InDesign, simply because Dreamweaver have not reached the point of perfecting WYSIWYG HTML/CSS. Maybe that will happen in the future but not now.

Tables and spacer gifs were a necessary evil once, otherwise they wouldn’t have been adopted.

What’s your point here? They were a necessary evil once. Chopping off a leg in the case of infection was a necessary evil once in the field of medicine. Are you saying compared to, say, penicillin that’s still a viable option?

Also, I probably should have brought this up earlier, but knowing HTML on it’s own isn’t enough - even nowadays. You also need to know CSS to design a semantic, standards based design. CSS is harder to learn than HTML.

That’s a given. How about server-side scripting, client-side scripting, visual and graphic design skills, and a background in effective UI? Oh, not to mention the little things clients tend to expect, too, like SEO techniques, marketing options, and hosting and technical support. Even more the reason why someone who calls themselves a “web professional” should be smart enough to understand the basics of semantic markup.

I’m sorry, but any “professional” who sticks to design techniques that slow down a site, increase maintenance time, and degrade accessibility because their techniques “worked” ten years ago… well, call them anything you want but I wouldn’t hire them or see why anyone would.

Also, I probably should have brought this up earlier, but knowing HTML on it’s own isn’t enough - even nowadays. You also need to know CSS to design a semantic, standards based design. CSS is harder to learn than HTML.

Regardless of how easy or hard HTML, CSS, semantics or web standards are to learn, I still don’t think that those who practice web standards are entitled to say that those who don’t practice it are not web professionals. Not yet.