What an amazing backlash against “proper” web development practices we’re experiencing. Even champions of web standards like Zeldman are showing the bird to proper coding and just not giving a crap.
I like it.
I’ve been driving standards compliance, accessibility and usability in my company since i was hired. It’s important to me. I don’t see any reason for a site I’ve built to not be completely usable by any cross-section of the population, be they blind, colorblind or purple.
Seeing Zeldman throw in the towel makes me laugh. Of course he doesn’t care. It’s not selling his book, it’s not making him money any more. It’s not buoying his ‘net cache. Look! Is that a bandwagon rushing by? Better jump on it quick Jeff.
Trust me, it’s not difficult to lose passion in this industry. I look at the big community site I’m building, and see it’s current incarnation losing participating members at a terrifying rate. I’ve put hundreds of hours into the new version of the site, and they’re all bailing. Yes, they’re bailing because it’s taking me so long to get the site up. I can only work so fast, what with having to pay the bills and everything at the same time.
But that’s beside the point. Okay, Zeldman has passed the torch. Other design blog “luminaries” are doing the same. I guess they’re bored. I sure am. Standards compliance and XHTML are boring subjects. But they’re also my bread and butter, and the company I work for pays me to be an expert in the field. And I’ve been doing this a lot longer than most people Certainly years before Jeff’s little orange book came out. I saw the bandwagon come, and I saw it go. No matter, like busses and tax seasons, there’ll be another by any minute.
No Zeldman? No problem. Go do your little thing apart from everyone else Jeff. We’ll be over here, doing the real work of the web, as we always have. I read the book. It was a lot of fluff and a very little substance.
Sort of like this site, actually.
You are my web champion. Now get out there and knock ‘em dead!