Propaganda Party: The Pop Stalin Design Manifesto

I try to be as magnanimous as possible when it comes to other designers and web design professionals being aware that we aren’t all on the same level. I know I still have a lot to learn but also know I’m ahead of the class compared to some. However, sometimes I come across things that raise my ire—this is one of those things.

If you are going to hold yourself out as a professional designer and dispense advice, you should be following that same advice on your own site. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned but walking the walk and talking the talk are two very different things—especially in a professional environment and community that doesn’t always get the respect it deserves from people outside the profession.

As I’d imagine most web professionals do, I check out the “competition.” I do this by surfing the abundant CSS galleries and award sites as well as keeping an eye on what people bookmark on del.icio.us. When I see something that a lot of people bookmark, I tend to check it out. I’m a big fan of lists because they’re easy to scan and digest. So I was excited to visit “10 CSS Tips from a Professional CSS Architect at 72 dpi In the Shade.”

The first sentence of the authors’ post was “I have been working with web standards based design for many years now and I see many rookie mistakes.” I continued reading on and found some decent tips so I wanted to leave a comment and couldn’t. I thought maybe it was a Firefox glitch so I tried it in Safari, no go—the submit button just didn’t work for me on a Mac (didn’t try it on Windows). Out of curiousity I decided to validate the site with my handy, dandy “Web Developer Toolbar” extension for Firefox—62 errors and warnings. In other words, the site failed validation therefore is not standards compliant. I’ll admit, the majority were created by using a tag I’ve never seen before—<large>. I Googled it thinking maybe it was a new tag and came up with nada.

I’m a firm believer in walking the walk and the site just doesn’t do it. A bit of obvious advice to the author—maybe he needs to use a few of his own tips himself and make sure his site is indeed standards compliant. Who knows, maybe the author wasn’t responsible for designing the site but it still leaves me wondering if his advice should be given with such a grand display of “professionalism” or use a simple disclaimer saying that he didn’t design the site. But hey, I’ve been accused of taking web standards too seriously and making mountains out of molehills.