webchat — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 13:36:03 +0000

I agree with jesse1,

New tools have been developed since the start of computers and nomatter how good the tools, people who aren't designers still don't make good products. Good designers always stay well ahead of the field.

jesse1 — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 11:13:39 +0000

I'm not too worried at all.

Great products always help, and no matter how good the paintbrush, you still need to be a good artist

There will absolutely without a doubt always be a place for professionals.

I'd say 90% of the population doesn't have 1/10th the patience required to work with technology and websites and make them work.

Megan — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 13:17:59 +0000

Dreamweaver does not output horrid code. In fact, it outputs quite good code if you have some clue as to what you're doing. Don't blame the tool, blame the user Demonhale basically said that alaready

I don't agree that tools are getting easier to use. There have been WYSIWYG editors since I started doing this. They aren't much different now than they were then. Dreamweaver is roughly the same now as it was when I started using it about 4 years ago. Not much has changed IMO.

THere are things like google pages and wordpress that make it easy for people to make a basic, decent looking website. But it is still a basic, decent looking website. That's a far cry from a custom, business-oriented solution.

I think there are problems for those who have rooted themselves too strongly in standards-based code. Now that more professionals are working with standards they're losing a competitive advantage. I think a lot of people who do web design don't have a good idea of what it even takes to do this. It' snot just about code. In fact, code is just a small part of it. See this diagram I posted on my blog:

You can rearrange those slices depending on the type of site you're developing, but the point still stands. For a business site you'd have a bigger slice for marketing, for example. Code isn't everything. No amaterur can have a strong understanding of all of those components or even some of those components, even if some tool allows them to make something that looks nice and works somewhat well.

If anything, this can be seen as a call to action to solify our role as professionals and understand how we really add value.

Roo — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 01:39:15 +0000

The problem with "easy to use tools", and by that I assume you mean WYSIWYG, is that most of them produce horrid code. Some of them output junk that isn't code at all. Plus when someone depends on them they do not get an understanding of what things are, how they work, and why, hence they do not know how to troubleshoot when they get word that 'your site doesn't work in *** browser.

A lot of my work has come from needing to re-build a site from the ground up becuase a previous designer had no clue.

demonhale — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 01:00:17 +0000

The tools will come, any tool for that matter. What makes designers however are not the tools, but the way the designer use those tools. The creativity, critical thinking, artistic flair and imagination can never be developed by any tool... In this light here are some of my quotes:

"It's not the Gun, it's the Gunner..."