Arrogance

A few months ago I sent an e-mail to some former employees about career development. I pulled a piece from that e-mail that I think fits this topic. Note: Some words and names have been changed to protect the innocent.

In the words of M- “Dude Don’t be a Jerk”. You know what? This really should be #1. No one likes an arrogant jackass. We all know at least one super talented person who for all intents and purposes kill a lot of opportunities because they can’t see the dangerous of their own arrogance and ego. No one give a crap about what you know until they know you will be considerate and humble. You deal with people and people like to work with people who are cool and great to work with. Be confident but really…dude don’t be a jerk.

People don’t listen to you when you are a jerk – even when you have something good to say.

Preaching to the choir or the parable of the lost sheep

It really bugs me when people say they evangelize standards when they don’t bother to talk to people outside their circle of friends who also call themselves standards evangelists. It’s a shame that some people don’t know that an evangelist has to go and teach to those who don’t know, not get pats on the back from people who already know and follow what you are teaching.

People don’t like to be sold but they like to buy

Nearly every sales person, project manager, designer and developer I know misses this one. People don’t care about what you’re selling - only what they are buying. This statement basically means that you have to be able to provide useful, educational information that places their “buying� motives at the forefront. With that being said, Stop preaching standards for standards sake. The real benefits of standards have absolutely nothing to do with not using tables or perfect validation. Not trying to give a sales lesson here but tableless layout and perfection validation sound like features not benefits. The difference between getting someone to use standards and not is sometimes the difference between creating the environment where they are willing to buy what you have to sell.

Not enough focus on the non-professional

It’s no secret that I think the quality of training for college students planning a career in web design or development needs to improve. I also think that some of the energy that we expend teaching professionals about standards needs to be dedicated to teaching the next generation of web professionals who are still in school.

• Barbara Aquino - OK, Island Chick time to put those mad skills to work on your own site. Designer…Production Artist (Tara na bebot!)
• Chris Stelmak - You have the Monkeyboy mat as inspiration….Time to get cracking cracky…
• Kirby Kana - Hey, one of the most talented designers I know. Shall we reboot?
• Ron Madriz - Time to show off your skillz..Mad Riz.
• Andy Nguyen - Your current site is pretty cool…but I know you want to reboot…don’t you?
• Bert Grantges - Congrats on getting married. I am sure Molly won’t mind you cracking out the CSS skills. The return of Bat Boy!
• James Craig - AKA The only guy who should write a CSS book who hasn’t - Alright Cookie Crook, you are the CSS Kaizen (Thank Faruk for that one), show em’ how its done. I also agree with you blogging again. How long has it been a decade or so?
• Jesse Perez - Last but not least…you didn’t think you were going to get away did you?
• Grayson DeRitis - Hello McFly ? Are you there?

Microsoft also suggests that Mac users begin using more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple’s Safari , as if most of them hadn’t already proactively made this decision.

The great thing about syndicated content is that it allows you to cut down on the time it takes you to review your favorite sites or news sources. You do this by using a program called a news feed reader to automatically check your favorite feeds and keep you up to date about what is going on each site. Some news readers even have the ability to pull all of the content across so that you don’t have to visit the web site to get the content.

Sound interesting? Well you can try this out for yourself by installing or subscribing to one of the many news readers available. Here is a list of popular newsreaders and aggregators from the Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

• Increased Focus on Flash Video
• Design View Zoom Tool
• Live RSS
• Feed Manipulation Support
• CSS Enhancement
• Accessibility WCAG Priority 2 Checkpoints improvements
• Support for Multiple CSS Media Types
• Improved CSS Rendering
• Dynamic Guides
• Coding Toolbar - along with code collapse

Macromedia has even updated Fireworks to support CSS export in their Fireworks HTML. A big plus for those of you who use Fireworks to manipulate your Web graphics.