HTML, CSS, and Javascript Proficiency Levels: Part 1: HTML
- Transfer
Your attention is invited to a rather large excerpt from the article “Levels of HTML knowledge” written by Roger Johanssen on May 30, 2006.
Note translator : I originally published this post as humorous excerpts from three articles written by three different authors and titled in a similar way: “HTML Levels”, “CSS Levels” and “Javascript Levels”. Which, of course, was a rather stupid undertaking. Awareness of the error came after 5 minutes and two minuses to fasting and karma. Corrected. A translation of CSS Levels is expected tomorrow.
People at this level never encountered HTML, except by mistake, for example, when they accidentally opened the HTML version of an email in text mode. These people do not work in the web industry, and they never will, so they have neither a reason nor a desire to rise above the zero level.
Typical saying:
These people have been using the Internet for quite some time and are aware of what is happening behind the scenes of the website they are currently viewing. When they try to publish something on the network themselves, they are helpless without any WYSIWYG editor. It could be Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Frontpage, or an editor built into the CMS that they were told to use.
The people who support the content of the website are often at that level of skill, and some even argue that there is no need to strive to go up a notch. Many visual-oriented designers are firmly stuck at this level of their own free will, often defending their choice with the following: “Nobody in the print world edits PostScript code manually, so why should the network be different?” Unfortunately, many project managers also rarely climb above the first level.
At this level there are people who know enough about HTML to change, add or remove a couple of tags from the document (at this level everything is called tags) that they know. But they never have a particularly strong desire to delve into HTML.
Second-level developers also consist of programmers who prefer the security of Visual Studio or any other IDE that they use. They think that HTML is too easy for them, and that their development environment is advanced enough to understand everything by itself. Many second-level programmers are the target audience of CMS developers.
Many old-school web developers who have been working in the industry since the late 90s can be found at this level. Until the end of the last century, these people wrote HTML manually, so they know everything about nested tables and single-pixel GIFs. Since then, WYSIWYG editors (such as GoLive and Dreamweaver) have improved to such an extent that third-level developers see no reason to know more about HTML. Right now, most of their HTML-related work is done in the design mode of their editor, so they would rather spend their time studying a specific application rather than delving into what goes on behind the scenes.
At this level, people begin to consciously use doctype's. At the first stage, it is almost always transitional doctype, more often - XHTML 1.0 Transitional. All the same, XHTML is a later specification than HTML, so it's probably better, right? People at this level are also big fans of XHTML 1.1, naively believing that the older version implies some improvements.
Hearing from someone that you cannot use tables for layout, many fourth-level programmers use divs to recreate table-like structure types. So former chefs of tag soups become divo-fans who produce tons of presentation markup day and night with plain class names (red, blue, bigRedText, etc.) and inline CSS (style attribute).
Most web developers who have reached level four are ready to continue their education. They understand that the methods promoted by the authors of blogs and books about web standards have an advantage. But they still did not understand why these methods are better.
Most developers who work according to the canons of web standards can be found here. These people, as a rule, first think about structure and semantics and only then about representation. At this level, strict doctype types are usually used to encourage separation of semantic and presentation markup. Whether it will be HTML version 4.01 or XHTML version 1.0 is not so important for many, although some fifth-level developers question the use of XHTML. At the fifth level, people tend to breed endless discussions about the nuances of markup. They can kill several hours to come up with a name for the class or to reorganize HTML and CSS files.
If you have reached this level, I think that you already have some reason for pride. For most people, there is no good reason to climb higher.
These people are the sages of our industry. They spend a lot of time on what will be useful only in the future, and not right now. The average developer will not be able to take advantage of the results of a significant part of their work for at least another five years.
At the sixth level, you want more than just making a living by creating sites. Instead, you can devote a lot of effort to writing future specifications or interpreting existing browser developers.
Read the continuation about CSS in the next part .
Note translator : I originally published this post as humorous excerpts from three articles written by three different authors and titled in a similar way: “HTML Levels”, “CSS Levels” and “Javascript Levels”. Which, of course, was a rather stupid undertaking. Awareness of the error came after 5 minutes and two minuses to fasting and karma. Corrected. A translation of CSS Levels is expected tomorrow.
Level 0
Xe – te – me – chago?
People at this level never encountered HTML, except by mistake, for example, when they accidentally opened the HTML version of an email in text mode. These people do not work in the web industry, and they never will, so they have neither a reason nor a desire to rise above the zero level.
Typical saying:
Level 1
HTML? Are these things to make text bold or italic?
These people have been using the Internet for quite some time and are aware of what is happening behind the scenes of the website they are currently viewing. When they try to publish something on the network themselves, they are helpless without any WYSIWYG editor. It could be Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Frontpage, or an editor built into the CMS that they were told to use.
The people who support the content of the website are often at that level of skill, and some even argue that there is no need to strive to go up a notch. Many visual-oriented designers are firmly stuck at this level of their own free will, often defending their choice with the following: “Nobody in the print world edits PostScript code manually, so why should the network be different?” Unfortunately, many project managers also rarely climb above the first level.
Level 2
The pages that I make in Macromedia Dreamweaver work fine in Internet Explorer. Why would I even look at this HTML?
At this level there are people who know enough about HTML to change, add or remove a couple of tags from the document (at this level everything is called tags) that they know. But they never have a particularly strong desire to delve into HTML.
Second-level developers also consist of programmers who prefer the security of Visual Studio or any other IDE that they use. They think that HTML is too easy for them, and that their development environment is advanced enough to understand everything by itself. Many second-level programmers are the target audience of CMS developers.
Level 3
Yes Yes. I heard about these new tags: ul, li and all that. But I do well with my favorites table, img, br.
Many old-school web developers who have been working in the industry since the late 90s can be found at this level. Until the end of the last century, these people wrote HTML manually, so they know everything about nested tables and single-pixel GIFs. Since then, WYSIWYG editors (such as GoLive and Dreamweaver) have improved to such an extent that third-level developers see no reason to know more about HTML. Right now, most of their HTML-related work is done in the design mode of their editor, so they would rather spend their time studying a specific application rather than delving into what goes on behind the scenes.
Level 4
Hey, how can you make a data plate with only divs and spans without using table ?!
At this level, people begin to consciously use doctype's. At the first stage, it is almost always transitional doctype, more often - XHTML 1.0 Transitional. All the same, XHTML is a later specification than HTML, so it's probably better, right? People at this level are also big fans of XHTML 1.1, naively believing that the older version implies some improvements.
Hearing from someone that you cannot use tables for layout, many fourth-level programmers use divs to recreate table-like structure types. So former chefs of tag soups become divo-fans who produce tons of presentation markup day and night with plain class names (red, blue, bigRedText, etc.) and inline CSS (style attribute).
Most web developers who have reached level four are ready to continue their education. They understand that the methods promoted by the authors of blogs and books about web standards have an advantage. But they still did not understand why these methods are better.
Level 5
Interestingly, using what type of list would be semantically more correct in this passage of the document?
Most developers who work according to the canons of web standards can be found here. These people, as a rule, first think about structure and semantics and only then about representation. At this level, strict doctype types are usually used to encourage separation of semantic and presentation markup. Whether it will be HTML version 4.01 or XHTML version 1.0 is not so important for many, although some fifth-level developers question the use of XHTML. At the fifth level, people tend to breed endless discussions about the nuances of markup. They can kill several hours to come up with a name for the class or to reorganize HTML and CSS files.
If you have reached this level, I think that you already have some reason for pride. For most people, there is no good reason to climb higher.
Level 6
I find the specifications of HTML 4.01 and XHTML 2.0 semantically limited. Therefore, I am currently working on my own markup language.
These people are the sages of our industry. They spend a lot of time on what will be useful only in the future, and not right now. The average developer will not be able to take advantage of the results of a significant part of their work for at least another five years.
At the sixth level, you want more than just making a living by creating sites. Instead, you can devote a lot of effort to writing future specifications or interpreting existing browser developers.
Read the continuation about CSS in the next part .