Does any company or organisation provide exams with the purpose of
certification / qualification in web authoring technologies such as
HTML, CSS, Javascript? Ten years ago I took a series of (computer
based) Microsoft Certified Professional exams which were quite good
fun, eventually achieving MCSE status. Since I am spending time
learning writing web pages it might be nice to do an exam in it.
I am looking for skills testing in general rather than any company's
web authoring tool proficiency in particular.
If the tool is any good, it conforms to GUI standards (You know; New, Save,
Open, Close, Print, Preview, Upload, etc. go on the File Menu, while Undo,
Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Paste Special, etc. go on the Edit Menu) and you
won't need lessons. Remember this if you find yourself continually looking
up how to do things in the Help files when you are trialling a tool.
Forget IT certification. Publish a well ordered, well-ranked site on a
relevant topic or collection of topics. Show a several different layouts and
compositions by site area or by way of example, and make sure that every
single page on the site is validated for both HTML and CSS with
www.w3c.org, then validated for accessibility. Badge the site with test
links to the online validation tools and this is better than anything a
certification can say about the skills you can bring to a project.
<RANT>
In my day certification meant that the Men in White were coming to collect
you, to take you away to a nice clean soft room, with your own personal
canvas jacket, and all the right medications. These days, they just give you
a piece of paper and shoot you the next time you are seen picking up a piece
of cutlery in public! BANG! BANG!, "Drop the teaspoon or I'll shoot!"
:^)
Seriously, the problem with wrote learning systems such as certification
programs is that they teach you to do things in a certain way. While this is
good in the context of teamwork, it inhibits lateral thinking and
discourages participants from asking the most important engineering
question, "Is there a better way?" Take a look at the vast majority of web
sites built around the world. Where there is fixed branding, you most often
find frames. Where there are menus, you most often find slow obsolete Java
Scripts and Applets. Where there is consistent layout you more often find
the pages structured by tables with styles written individually to every
page on the site! The "experts" more often use applications that produce
incorrect HTML, and they use the wrong techniques. Such drips under pressure
seem not to think far enough outside the box to question the utter garbage
they were taught at university about the rose-tainted world of the Internet,
where it is purported that there is no crime to discourage trust and all
user agents (eg. browsers) conform to a single SGML standard. Ughh, that's
not even funny! :^P
</RANT>
Like I said, do some interesting and stylish things with the view to both
function and aesthetics, especially when your site is listed on the
browser's "Restricted Sites" list, and let your work speak for you to
everyone. It is after all, on display to the entire world and especially to
your customers...
