Professionalism and Best Practice in Web Design and Development

For the last 12 months of so, I've been thinking quite a bit about the issues of what professionalism means in the web development world, and best practices in web design.

It seems a little surprising to me that neither of these has really received a lot of attention. Molly Holzschlag has recently been writing on the issue of professionalism and web professionals (she's actually goign to be adressing this issue at the Web Directions Breakfast in Sydney in a couple of months), and Roger Johansson at 456 Berea Street among others [1] has spent some time on the issue of best practices, but neither subject has really received the attention that any number of web development and design subjects, from image replacement techniques to search engine optimization, have got over the years.

Certainly, this area isn't as sexy as "sliding doors" or SIFR or other technique based subjects. They are complex issues, open to interpretation, and don't have an immediate pay off, the same way learning a new trick does. But I think it's long past the time we should be addressing issues like "what does it mean to be a professional web designer or developer?" and "what does constitute best practice in web design and development?"

Now we do hear a lot of talk about validation, doctypes, correct use of CSS, semantic and structural markup, accessibility and so on. These discussions are all very very valuable. And together, these areas, and others, go together to build up the overall field of "best practice".
Now where does professionalism come in all this? I'd suggest that a useful definition of professionalism (which is not as easy as you might think to define) would include something along the lines of

A professional web designer and developer understands best practices in their field, among them the use of valid HTML and CSS, the appropriate use of CSS and HTML (separating presentation from structured content, using the appropriate semantic HTML elements where available), and the development of accessible web content.
A professional designer and developer uses these techniques knowledgeably and intelligently to develop solutions which meet their client's, employer's or own needs, and which meet the needs of the users of the sites they develop.

Recently I spoke at an event organised by Adobe in both Sydney and Auckland, addressing the issue of what constitutes best practice in web design and development, which built on my survey late last year of 83 web sites by major Australian companies, as well as significant Australian government web sites.

I'll write again shortly with a detailed proposal for a set of best practices, and ways of measuring adherence to these, but I'd be very interested in people's thoughts as to what constitutes areas of best practice in web design and development, how these might be assessed or measured, and how these tie in with the idea of professionalism among web designers and developers.

For some light reading on the subject :-), the slides for my recent presentation are available as a PDF and there are slides, a podcast, and a detailed article, along with data on how well major Australian sites adhered (or otherwise) to these areas of practice.

1. Here are some other sites which directly address the issue of best practice in web design which may be worth taking a look at

• Apple on web page best practices
• U.S. Government best practices for the web - more broad than just development, includes suggested design patterns, language use and more

Do you have any suggestions for this list? What does it mean to be a professional in our field? What constitues best practice in our industry?

Tags professionalism best practice web design web development