Both online and offline I am being made aware of a concern and issue around the lack of women on the web. What it is really is not the lack of women, but more the lack of the visability of women. Molly recently posted:
“Douglas Bowman, upon hearing someone ask me who the "other 24 most influential women on the Web" were, quipped that I was, in fact, all 25 of the most influential women on the Web. Funny, perhaps, but damned sad that only I could name a handful, and most could not name two.”
For me, although I recognise and infact find the same answer myself if I think about it; this is a really sad state of affairs. Molly is indeed a great example, but surely there is more than just one? I can possibly get up to 3 and then I get stuck - hardly a good thing. Another post by Rachel Andrew focuses on “Geeks who happen to also be women”. Recently, I have come to the realisation that what I thought was maybe only a small issue is actually pretty wide spread. That being the profile and visability of women in the web.

Whether you are freelance, full time or even just learning; a support network is essential for anyone in web. I am not talking cables and data back up here, even the phone number for apple care. What I am talking about is those people who save you when you are about to commit design suicide, or when that pixel perfect CSS right float seems so far away. A support network in this sense can be friends, colleagues and online communities.

Building on from the earlier post webrevolution, I felt I needed to post the areas where currently the web world is failing people starting up in web design. It has become a real bug of mine regarding the quality of many tutorial based websites regarding web design. I do not deny that there are some great resources out there, however still there is a huge majority that come up high in search engines that really are not practicing good standards and practice in web design. A great many of these are also seriously hypocritical in the sense they preach such greatness as accessibility when make it impossible for the user to get anywhere apart from a web brick wall.

In the beginning there was the internet. Quickly this became a means of transferring information to people and a teaching tool. The word spread like a viral badger campaign and soon lots of text based websites were available. The number of these resources became so big that companies sprung up just to handle searches on this wealth of information. All was good and slowly people added more content like putting an image on their now called web page. Information was shared for free and everyone was allowed to grow together as each webby helped another. Over time and through a rather dodgy rotating gif black and red period, websites evolved to something pretty and pleasing to the eye in some cases. Designers pricked up their ears to this new medium which now was not just for the geeky unix bods.

For a long time when training people about web design I have constantly been approached with one main query. The query is around the look of web standards websites and inparticular the organisational ones campaigning for web standards and accessibility. To be honest, it has become both a little embarressment and also a point of contention. Most of the people I end up teaching are designers first and as such approach things from a visual point of view. These people do not initially perceive what can be done with standards and that by adopting them there is no loss of design. The main reason really was the design and visual quality of the before mentioned websites.

The recent buzz about the mystical "Web 2.0" (whether you agree it exists or not) and other web dazzle effects such as AJAX; really makes me question whether web design is loosing the essence. With anything you really can’t put on the flashy things whilst ignoring the simple basics. The way I see it with regards to the web, these include web standards and usability (which sort of follows suit). Whilst I am happy that boundaries are being pushed, I am concerned that a lot of people are focusing on the glittery leotards rather than on the building blocks.