Quite some time ago, we did some work on certification for fronteers. Then it went dark, as all the volunteers, including myself, had too much other stuff to do. That is, until last autumn. During the last fronteers conference some members signed up as volunteers. As I have some time on my hands now we have decided to get things started again.

The idea is that we have is to do a two way exam. The first part will be a written exam on knowledge of HTML and CSS. In the second part the candidate will have to do some 'live coding', he/she will be given a graphic design and they have to draw a possible solution on a white board. Explaining the choices made to two members of the certification committee (or other judges) as he/she goes along.

If the candidate successfully passes both tests, he/she will receive two 'stars' on the certification for HTML and one for CSS. In the future we could expand the exams to include stars for JavaScript, performance, mobile, 'webrichtlijnen', accessibility and more. The first two stars are mandatory, as I think that any front end developer needs to have a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS.

The stars are something a developer could put on their cv, site. Companies that employ them could use it to show the skills they have on board. The exams should be repeated every one or two years, as the field continues to change. Stuff that is relevant now could be plain obsolete in two years...

Our big problem is now that we don't know if front end developers are interested in this certification.

Some big companies are as well as dutch government agencies have expressed definite interest in this. For them it is a good way (they think) to find the right people to hire. Developers on the other hand are not that interested and I must say that I see their point. Other fields that have certification, like Java, made it clear to me that the best developers are not necessarily the certificated ones. Many front end developers are self taught and are not keen to study for something they have been doing for years, just for the sake of some certificate that may or may not be important.

So here is my question to all of you developers out there, are you interested in certification. I even wanna know if you are not dutch or no members of fronteers, also clients may react. The easiest way to react is to tweet using the #hashtag #frontcert. All tweets containing this will be gathered below this article...

UPDATE
This article has created quite a buzz on the internet, something I had hoped for, but a lot bigger then I expected. A lot of people reacted strongly against certification, some with good points and all. The main consensus is that (experienced) developers are against, for a variety of reasons. This is what I expected and we (the whole committee) will take your opinions into account. I will write a follow up on this post shortly, to answer some questions and explain what wasn't clear in this post. I will also tell what we talked about in the committee the last week, as we are already thinking what to do with your reactions.

In the meanwhile, take a look at the reactions on the fronteers forum and read the article by Martin Kool, who is strongly opposed. If you know of any other post about it, please let me know so that I can link to them.

And to you all, thanks for your opinions. Without those we (the committee) wouldn't know we had to do.

I just came across a small article by Nicholas C. Zakas (@slicknet), who I saw give a great presentation at last fronteers conference by the way, in which he states:

"While the percentage of visitors with JavaScript disabled seems like a low number, keep in mind that small percentages of big numbers are also big numbers."

(Via YDN Blog.)

Please remember that the same thing goes for visitors who are:

• Using IE6
• a screen reader.
• a mobile phone
• a non iphone phone, like symbian
• ...

This year I will be attending some conferences, here is my list of the ones I will be going to.

@media 2009

In a few months I will be attending my 6th (sixth) @media conference. This time I booked a room in the hotel which is the closest to the venue, the Premier Inn London County Hall. No more wandering around london in the rain, as I did after a few pints at the first @media ajax november 2008. No more standing in cramped underground trains as I did at my last company sponsered visit in spring 2008.

I am looking forward to seeing all of the speakers, especially the ones I haven't seen like Simon Collison and Jason Santa Maria. I'm curious on the one track arrangement, as I always had a love hate relation with the two track thing. Two of my favorite speakers would always be on the same time in a different room. I am not sure that I like the whole no-lunch thing, but I understand that the guys from vivabit had to do something to keep is affordable in these times.

Still the cost of a conference to me is not the ticket alone, I have to fly over and get a hotel for a couple of nights. So the cost of the ticket is only 40% of the whole, less so if you reckon that I won't be billing clients for three days. But the real value is off-course in the speakers and speaking to lots of fellow web developers from all over europe and to that I am really looking forward to.

Fronteers

The other conference I am going to attend is Fronteers 2009. Not that I have much of a choice as I have been drafted by PPK to help organizing the whole thing. One of the advantages is that I already know which speakers we have lined up. All I can say at this point is that you really, really have to attend this one..

Full frontal

The third one I may attend is Full frontal as the speakers line up sure looks impressive for a day which costs only 100 pounds. I am not sure about this as it comes awfully close after fronteers and I may have some work to do sometime. On the other hand this could be my replacement for my yearly javascript conference fix that @media Ajax provided...

So if you are attending any of these, have fun and I will see you there.

I am very happy to say that the answers keep coming in from the fronteers test I put online some time ago. Thank you all!

I will take some time this weekend to sift and judge through all off them and will put up a new version later this week!

If anyone has any new questions or ideas, please let me know.

PS
De commissie heeft plaats voor enkele enthousiaste leden, dus....

As I am working on the questions for the written part of the 'fronteers certification', I had (and still have) a lot of difficulty in deciding the level of questions that would be appropriate. To easy is not good, but to hard would also be bad. So how does one figure out the correct level is on questions. One thing is certain, not by himself that is.

That is why we had a test exam a couple of weeks ago, we learned a lot from that. As that how you ask a question is as important as the question itself. If you have a question that can be interpreted a little bit different, people will. Test subject were every bit like clients in that respect, I can tell you that much. Thank god that we have one teacher in our midst, he will help a lot in that respect...

So for your amusement, I will present a couple of questions to you, some that made it to the exam, some that didn't. If you want to take those as a quick test I would recommend that you would take them without google assistance, as that would be the case in the real world...

CSS 2.1

1. Welke kleur wordt de paragraaf (p) met deze CSS.

   What color does the paragraph (p) become with this CSS.

   p { color : red; }
   body p { color: green; }
   .foo p { color: black; }

   red green black

2. Welk element wordt rood, met deze HTML,

   Which element(s) becomes red with this HTML,

   p ~ div + h2[title] { color: red; }

   En deze html

   <p>paragraaf</p>
   <div>division</div>
   <h2 id="a">heading A</h2>
   <div>
   	<h2 id="b">heading B</h2>
   </div>
   <h2 id="c" title="title">header C</h2>

   heading A heading C heading B

3. Hoe breed is deze div in totaal, met deze CSS?

   How wide is this div, with this CSS?

   div { width : 100px; padding: 10px; border: 1px; }

   100px 111px 122px

XHTML 1.0 strict

1. Welke tag geeft een geordende lijst?

   Which tag creates an ordered list?

   <ul> <ol>

2. Is de onderstaande code valide XHTML 1.0 strict ?

   Is this code valid XHTML 1.0 strict?

   <img src="foo.gif" title="title / description" >

   ja nee

3. Waar staat de dt tag voor?

   Where does the dt tag stand for?

   document type definition term

HTML 4.0 strict

1. Is de body tag verplicht?

   Is the body tag required ?

   ja nee

2. Is de afsluitende /p tag verplicht?

   Is the closing /p tag required ?

   ja nee

3. Is deze html valide HTML 4.0 strict?

   Is this HTML valid HTML 4.0 strict?

   <TR width=100 >

   ja nee

All of these questions are right out of the specifications of the W3C as those are easily testable and not open to discussion.

What do you think, are these questions too easy, too hard or something else. Please let me know, I will try and put a full exam online in working order before Fronteers 2008 but as things are going now, I probably won't have the time. This because I will leave for london and @media ajax only two days after fronteers and still have some clients to keep happy...