Skills Needed by the Modern Day Web Developer

  1. XHTML: markup language for structuring the content. Understanding semantic markup is required.
  2. Accessibility: need an understanding of how to design the XHTML document in a way that the content is accessible to users with disabilities.
  3. CSS: used to style the content. Need to understand the importance of keeping content and presentation separate.
  4. JavaScript/DOM/Ajax: the key tools for providing enhanced interactivity. Need to understand the importance of keeping content and behavior separate.
  5. Findability and SEO: need an understanding of keywords and keyword placement, so that the content is optimized for indexing by searchbots.
  6. Progressive Enhancement and Graceful Degradation: the browser is an unpredictable environment; not all users have equal capabilities; must know how to design the content in a way that it automatically ramps up, or ramps down the capabilities per the user's environment.
  7. PHP (or some other server-side language): programming language that is capable of interacting with a database and other web sites or web services.
  8. MySQL (or some other database): need to know how to persistently store the data.
  9. Load balancing: during peak usage, the load needs to be distributed among multiple servers to minimize wait time.
  10. Security: sensitive data, such as credit card data, must be protected. Must understand HTTPS (secure HTTP).
  11. HTTP 1.1: an understanding of the Web's transfer protocol, HTTP, is important.
  12. Microformats: enhance the semantics of the content using standard microformats.
  13. Photoshop (or GIMP): the ability to use an image editor to create quality images is important. It is important to understand images, transparency, animations, bit-depths, png vs. jpg vs gif vs icons, etc.
  14. HCI (Human Computer Interface): it is important to know how the eye works, how people think, keeping options limited to 5-7 choices, color combinations that suggest different emotions, how to best organize data, how to minimize user effort and interface needs.
  15. Web Services: understanding REST, and possibly SOAP based data access requests is important.