Certifications - Are they still valuable?

Posted February 17, 2005 at 10:10 PM | Tagged as: Computing, Work | Comments Off

Today I received marking materials on the IEEE’s Certified Software Development Professional Program. Unlike the various certifications I pursued fresh out of college, this one requires applicants to have 9,000 hours of experience and a bachelor’s degree (in addition to passing an exam).

As I was sitting here thinking about whether or not I should pursue something like this, seeing as how I’m soon to be back in the job market, I wondered what value there is in pursuing certifications any more. I would hope that my years of experience and continuous self-development would prove that I am better prepared for a job than what some piece of paper says. At the same time, I’m coming from a primarily design-oriented web development job and looking for a more technically-oriented job. That certification could give prospective employers a boost of confidence… then again, if I can’t engender that confidence myself, do I really want to work for such a company?

Ultimately, I think that I just enjoy the pain and suffering that goes along with studying for and taking exams that prove I know something. After all, none of my previous certifications had any application to my jobs, nor did they get me any more money when I was job hunting!

So… should I take the test or not?

Where Are All the Women?

Posted February 16, 2005 at 3:58 PM | Tagged as: Women!, Work | Comments Off

Carly’s departure from HP has really stirred up a hornet’s nest of discussion about women in computing. Now Wired News is picking up the thread, which is good. But is anybody listening?

Seeing as how I’m a female senior manager leaving a tech company, I really wonder about this. I don’t have any job offers yet (no cracks about my resume not being up on this site yet, please), and my current employer has made no effort to keep me around. So I have to wonder if the news about women in top management is really getting through to top management.

It Eats the Page!

Posted February 8, 2005 at 3:01 PM | Tagged as: Funnies, Work | Comments Off

Kate brought this to my attention, and I haven’t been able to stop laughing (or shaking my head) since.

A coworker — a content programmer in the online media industry! — used the phrase “it eats the page” to refer to a hyperlink that, when clicked, opened the URI within the same browser window. In other words, the link didn’t spawn a new window. In other words, it followed the default behavior of the web. Duh! And this person was alarmed that said hyperlink was broken. (!!!)

Sigh…

Make a Custom Alert and Break Everyone’s Code

Posted February 7, 2005 at 3:09 PM | Tagged as: Web Stuff, Work | Comments Off

I had Porter create a visually similar alert not too long ago, but I really like Steve’s custom alert because it overrides the window.alert method. It may not be perfect, but it’s a great solution in an environment like the one where I work — where content editors and software engineers that don’t know better try to program their own alerts. Heheheh… I’ll stop you now, my pretty!

Publishing Tools for Non-Programmers

Posted March 23, 2004 at 10:13 AM | Tagged as: Computing, Web Stuff, Work | 5 Comments

For my first important blog entry, I have a question. How much freedom should a content publishing tool give a non-Web developer?

Here’s the situation: A new content publishing tool has been developed at my work place. A writer logs in to the tool, selects the type of content they want to publish, and is then presented with a number of form fields. There may be, for example, form fields for a headline, a byline, and a story. Simple, yes? OK.

Let’s assume a writer enters plain text in all fields. When the content is submitted to the CMS and produced as a Web page, all of the necessary markup is inserted (header tags around the headline, paragraph tags around the story, etc.). Excellent!

However, what should happen if the writer enters some HTML in any of the form fields?

Currently, this tool ignores it. Doesn’t care. It doesn’t even check for markup, so naturally anything, good or bad, could be entered. The argument presented by the tool developers is that the writers need to learn more about Web publishing and need to be more responsible for their content — both the stories and the markup.

Now, I’m all for people learning correct markup. And I’m all for people being responsible for their work. However no one is perfect, and mistakes in markup are bound to happen. Right? So what potential solutions are there to this?

• Simple checks for matching tags could be done very easily with JavaScript (the publishing tool has a Web front end) or on the back-end (though it seems like a waste of a server trip).
• Even more ideally, those input fields that potentially allow for markup could be accompanied by a lovely WordPress-like interface.
• The server could just strip all markup, since writers aren’t supposed to be entering any, anyway.

But without any checks in place, markup like this is bound to go live:

<font color=red>My Headline</font>

In fact, it already has… as have some tables (for no apparent reason). When I see irresponsible use of markup in a fairly constrained environment like this, after writers have been given training on the tool, have been told not to write markup, and have been shown the potential results of their misuse and mistakes, that shouts to me, “Don’t let them do that!” Without setting up a process where a bunch of people have to check all of the writers’ work, I see no other way for ensuring the quality of the markup (or the complete lack of it) without something being built into the publishing tool.

Your comments are most welcome on this topic. What additional arguments can you present for or against checks in a publishing tool? What options for markup validation do other publishing/CMS systems offer? And how much freedom should a non-Web developer have with markup?