Great stuff, widget development has been especially popular of late.

Nice article!

Great list. Relevant topic with everything coming to a head in the states. I think number 7, “Facebook/MySpace applications” could have been broadened to just “API development”?

You missed Html Email design. You think designing for a handful of browsers is tough try designing for the numerous different email clients and you can’t forget about the webmail clients that have all the same browser issues.

Surprisingly few people understand how complex designing a good html email is. I’ll venture to bet less than 10% of the designers out there understand how to get an email to render correctly in both Outlook 2007 and Gmail.

Awesome article.

Great article, the only problem now is where do I start…as a designer I am always looking to broaden my horizons, but sometimes figuring out where to start is the hardest thing…maybe that can be a future article, “Roadmap for Future Web Developers!”

Great article. i like it. Thanks.

Great stuff. Even better to know that I’m concentrating on number 1 on the list

So bring on FlashTuts so we can all put #10 into action

1, 2, 3 aare the ones I’m trying to get my mind wrapped around….

I can’t argue with the list, but I think it’s interesting to note that it’s source is a freelance job board. Having a look at permanent job boards, there seems to be a large demand for skills such as ASP.NET too.

I think the most important skill a web developer can have is the ability to deal with clients who have no idea about web design. If you can’t explain yourself to a layperson then you won’t be able to sell your services.

I don’t know how to develop IPhone apps, and I hate frameworks (i love to start from scratch). Rest of the list makes me thing .. God, I can do some really nice stuff

I was going to disagree with almost everythign on the list, but I think it might just be a UK vs US thing. Looking at what jobs people are currently advertising in the UK it’s still the old classics: ASP.NET, C#/VB.Net, PHP etc.

This list strikes me as very Web 2.0 bubbley. I’ve probably got about experience of about 8 of those on the list but I won’t be pushing any, except for the ecommerce integration if I start looking for another job.

great and useful article! thanks

Whoah dude, you’re a few months late with this post.

Very useful article, keep up the good work

I agree with Shane, I’d say 8/10 of the above are mainly for freelancers.

lol @ the iPhone carling app! So pointless!

Good stuff.
Personally, as frameworks are so widely used now, i think its important to have a knowlege of them all… or just a strong MVC basis so you can transfer your skills to another project.

jquery is another thing that we will be seeing ALOT more off. Jquery within Widgets / API development, personally i want CakePHP to be rewritten to utilise jquery.

Great Article!

I liked the list, especially the fact that the “F Word” (namely Flash) makes an appearance right at the end of the list. It’s nice that we’re finally seeing some of the spotlight being stolen from Flash and being pointed towards other, more appropriate technologies.

In my experience I’d put Actionscript/Flash at the 3rd/4th position.

This is the cream information. We are really very impressed and like to follow your instruction. Looking forward for more knowledgeable tuts!!

OMG…… this article is sooooooooo useful…… thanks a ton

How exactly did you quantify the demand for these skills?

For the most part, Nice list Glen (as always!)

Great article! Love the lists… always the lists.. Keep them coming!

Thanks!

@Shane: I have a total lack of knowledge about the use and need of ASP. Would you care to explain some benefits with using ASP.net instead of other frameworks like Django, CakePHP, and Rails? Ofc. none of these use ASP – but I’m thinking; Why ASP? What is so great? What isn’t so great.

Thanks in advance.

Interesting article. I have actually done some of those things mentioned above myself. In fact, I’m interested at looking into iPhone development but I couldn’t afford a Mac at the moment

Speaking from experience – Framework knowledge is hot right now. If you are an expert PHP coder AND you also know CakePHP or ExpressionEngine, you’ve just bumped yourself up a few notches from other candidates. This shows that you are (a) progressive and not a “status-quo” kind of guy/gal and (b) you look for efficient, effective ways of outputting the end-product. If you’re looking for a PHP developer job, at the very minimum – be able to explain what OOP ism and if you note some OOP improvements in PHP 5 – you will get 10/10 off the bat. And extra kudos if you’ve had experience working with open-source publishing platforms like Drupal and WordPress.

I’m trying to get my head around widget development right now, and choose a good PHP framework. Good article.

From my experience as a freelance developer – the most common job I get is to create custom CMS’s (Not themes, building them)

Articles like this one always make me want to up my game.

Also, Google Android for the new Google phone. I’m not on Apple’s platform, so it’s not really cost-effective for me to compete with the Mac developers out there. But I’m looking forward to trying Andriod

Nice list… flash/actionscript should be a little higher on the list imo

Hey! How bout interface design? Give us designers some love over here!

I’ve been looking to get around to frameworks and widgets — thanks for getting the blood flowing.

Nice writing!

I agreed with most of your points but what about mathematics of actual competition statics ??

@Christian Dalsvaag – I wasn’t singing the praises of ASP.NET necessarily, just highlighting that it is used in lots of companies for enterprise level applications. Love it or hate it, the fact is that ASP.NET developers skilled in ASP.NET AJAX, SQL Server and so on are in demand.

It is an alternative to other frameworks, and I’m not going to start shouting about its benefits. I’m merely pointing out that it is in demand. As much as I love open source frameworks etc., ASP.NET/Microsoft development features very highly in employers’ requirements.

The list is about web skills in demand – I believe that ASP.NET deserves to be on the list, that’s all.

For more information on ASP.NET, check out http://asp.net.

thanks for this informative list, it’s good to have pointers about where the industry is moving towards

I am getting more and more into WordPress and Drupal and PHP, also dabbled in FB app and widget dev

but the PSD to xhtml thing looks kinda popular at the moment, I see ads for it on every webdev related site I visit, including this one

Great list and I think Flash is exactly where it should be.

CMS Implementation and themes all the way baby!!

My specialty is Joomla and for the last 2 years I’ve had more work coming at me that I can handle.

I find it amazing that I myself, a .NET developer, use Wordpress to Blog about .NET. Simply because its so easy to set up and get running. So much for ASP.NET development.

Great list!

thanks for the list, I always knew I was unqualified to become a web developer, now you have shown just how far behind I am, which is why I chose to become a web site owner, rather than developer. Although I cant wait to start making money so I can fire myself and hire real talent!…lol!

Thanks for the post. This helps layout the fundamentals that I need to know. I still hate how much time it take to use Flash/AS when I could create an XHTML/PHP site 5 times as fast.

Great list. I can’t wait for more CakePHP tutorials

“I’ll venture to bet less than 10% of the designers out there understand how to get an email to render correctly in both Outlook 2007 and Gmail.”

Build html email with tables or follow this chart… http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/

Unless they completely open source themselves, Flash and ASP will be dead in 10 years. If you already have skills in those areas, or an employer who demands them, fill your boots, otherwise I would advise people to not waste their limited time on such close-minded old-school ideas/tech That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it!

Having said that, I think Flash/Action Script will survive, but it will be called something else and will be ported to whatever language you chose to develop in, much like Flex.

Great post – Good topic and info.

10 Most Sought-after Skills in Web Development? Where are the stats to prove this? This piece is just based on a guy who watches a freelance job board. Give me a break!

Vote for Obama! You freelancers are gonna get a nice juicy tax hike for being independent entities when my buddy Obama steps in. Then you’ll need to add tax evasion as one of the 10 skills needed by Freelance web developers.

rxw

Great article, however the opportunity for web development within mobile web applications transcends beyond just the iPhone. There are sought-after skills for BlackBerry, Google’s Android, and other mobile phones as well.

Looks like I rank pretty high with a 8-9 out of 10. I am very familiar with mobile detection, but am still a little fuzzy on the iPhone. I am uncertain of frameworks, while I’m heard of them I never use them.

Everything else… cake

Great List, Now I know I have a lot to catch up!

@Jonny – ASP.NET…closed minded ideas?? Are you sure you know what you’re talking about?

ASP embraced object oriented programming long before languages like PHP. It may not be your particular cup of tea, but nevertheless, it’s an extremely powerful framework – hardly dated.

Don’t say silly things.

Confused here… @Jonny, are you talking about ASP or ASP.NET?

No I don’t think ASP.NET is hot. Ruby on Rails, Python and Django, Zend Framework and PHP is much hotter. ASP.NET has a lot of limitation and expensive. Website built in ASP.NET is big in page size, use a lot of CPU and memory, hard to maintain because of drag-and-drop way of development. It is not a good framework to build scalable websites with a tight budget.

@Nguyen – Well I guess the developers behind “New Egg”, “Dell”, “Myspace”, “Monster.com”, and the “London Stock Exchange” are just idiots.

I’m not sure what you mean by “drag-and-drop way of development”. Are you referring to the WYSIWYG environment in Visual Studio? That’s entirely optional. I do 95% of my developing in the code behind.

Also, can you explain to me how creating a website with ASP.NET is any more expensive than with PHP? Just because it isn’t open source doesn’t mean that it’s expensive. Actually, you can download Visual Web Developer and SQL Server Express for free. Both are fantastic pieces of software.

–

Don’t get me wrong; I love PHP. Truth be told, the majority of the coding that I do nowadays is in PHP – but not because I think it is any better or worse than ASP.NET.

–

Ultimately, choose a framework that you’re comfortable with. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses. But, it’s simply ignorant to bash a particular framework or language for the sake of bashing.

JavaScript. Not necessarily any of the the frameworks/libraries, but core JavaScript. You absolutely MUST know this, it’s no longer a “nice to have”, it’s absolutely required.

You don’t have to do drag-and-drop development with ASP.NET. You can stick to the way Visual Studio invites you to do things or you can take other paths.

There is more to web development then just front end work here and that includes the framework discussion. I’m a backend web developer for mid size company and they need their backend information brought to the front. What about the server side development? Like C#, Java, PHP you name it. Yea the article is good but don’t forget about the programmers that deal with the middleware development.

The word ‘niggling’ is racist. Get rid of it.

Finding Flex developers is very hard.

Free Digital Signage Software at http://www.MediaSignage.com

Actually just one more thing to add. Development is development regardless. I’ve programmed in so many languages that I can easily adapt to the next up and coming thing. That is what is important…adapting to the next need. Never say one language is better then the other because it is just stupid to say. I have enough people saying PHP is better then C# or Java or Ruby is better the whatever. So what! In time they too will be replaced by something bigger and better. The most important thing to take from this list is to always watch the web industry and take your cues from that.

Wow. You just listed all the most fun jobs in the field. But they are not the most in demand. Where did you get your information from? It seems like you’re just pulling it out of your a$$.

Nice article! Tagged on my Delicious =)

This is just my .02. I’m usually wrong:

I agree with Colin Robertson above that this list is a bit off: this includes US developers. The most sought-after skills (according to the major job boards–dice, monster) are still the classics: ASP.net/C#/VB.Net, PHP and Java.

I guess the disconnect is really that this article focuses on non-corporate business and, specifically, start-up blogs. Outside the blogging world the majority of this list is useless. It could be that I am expecting that this list is also referring to Web Application Development since that is where the 2.0 movement has brought us.

To those of you who are looking to start a career as a web application designer, my advice is to hit monster.com, dice.com, joelonsoftware’s job board, etc and look where the majority of the requested skills are (and compare them to the type of developer you want to be). You will have the best luck finding a job with ASP.Net C#, JAVA and PHP. The above list is neat, but does not contain sought-after skills in the real world. You will be expected to know proper XHTML as a c#, java or php developer. You will be expected to know how to integrate with different e-commerce api’s. The “top frameworks” listed above are not really the top frameworks for real world business.

@Shane – Just to inform you, I wasn’t accusing you for singing praises, but I was just curious about the demand for ASP.net, and also why the demand is there. Like what does ASP.net offer tnat other frameworks don’t? Well it uses MSSQL instead of other non-commercial, or commercial databases like MySQL, PGSQL etc.

I would love to know more about this topic, but I haven’t got the time to pick up readings, far to busy actually developing sites. I would love if someone could throw me some basic information though?

Thanks in advance! Excuse my English, if it’s off – Norwegian.

I’d be interested in knowing what the average compensation for each of types of jobs are. I know it’s easy to pick up a small freelance gig to skin Wordpress for $500-$1000, but in the end your hourly rate is pretty junky.

Flash/Flex and higher-end web dev on the other hand,you can get $75+/hr.

I’d be more inclined to rank skills by what you can get with them, just because theres lots of demand doesn’t mean it’s worth my time learning it. McDonalds always has demand for burger flippers, doesn’t make it worth my time to learn how to flip a burger.

An interesting list to say the least. But I don’t think iPhone Applications should be so specific. I see Mobile Applications to be more sought after. I imagine clients would like applications for the iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, RIM, etc equally so as to reach as many consumers/users as possible.

PSD to XHTML services … ehh. I think this is just wrong. More and more people are moving to Fireworks which is a pure Web design application. Also, the best web designers are the ones who know both trades, they can design for the web and have a good understanding of HTML and CSS.

There is a massive need for designers with who also know technology.

People that still think Flash is used to create animations don’t know what they’re talking about.

@Budda Magoo:

No it isn’t, dude. Check for yourself. Not a racist thing about it.

.Net has MVC framework now.Web Client Service Factory is another framework for .net developers. Add silverlight to asp.net and wcf (web services) skills and that would be enough to land you a decent job.

Unrealistic and idealistic. As a web developer I would like to have clients / firm that make use of this tech, most of it NEVER comes up except for personal sites. This is more like a list of what we’d like to be working on.

MVC should not be linked to a framework, it should have its own item. Personally I prefer no-framework MVC for small to medium sites (most websites).

Blah this list is a waste of time, good luck finding a job where you get to to do half this stuff.

nice dude…pretty deep knowledge

http://www.livbit.com

@Jeffrey well said about frameworks, and ASP.NET.

Although I mainly do ASP.NET during the day, I have become involved with Wordpress, jQuery, CodeIgniter, Expression Engine and Ruby on Rails, to name a few.

What I’ve learned, above all, is that I’ve learned more since I’ve opened my eyes to other technologies and frameworks. To simply right off a technology before having a look is rather short-sighted.

As I said before, I thought ASP.NET was a sought-after web development skill, certainly here in the UK. Jeffrey’s right – ASP.NET is used on a lot of large scale, industrial applications and sites. It is here to stay. This list was never supposed to be about what were the ‘best’ technologies, simply which ones were most in demand.

I don’t know – somebody mentions ASP.NET and suddenly there’s a big debate about what’s better. Who was that?

My advice to people is that you’ll never be a master in all technologies. Specialising in two or three is a good idea, but find out about others. You’ll be surprised about how much you can learn and apply to your everyday coding practices.

It’s all supposed to be fun after all!

@Christian – sorry missed your comment about my previous comment.

ASP.NET is a Microsoft technology for developing dynamic web applications. Currently standing at version 3.5, sites are built using C# or VB.NET. ASP.NET includes AJAX support and many other cool features, and support for MVC is coming soon (available now in beta).

I use C# to develop ASP.NET sites. C# is an ECMA-standard object-oriented programming language that is similar to C++ and Java.

A good introduction is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asp.net.

I’ve used ASP.NET because I come from a Microsoft background – I started programming non web-apps using Visual C++ and moved to the web and ASP.NET. To be honest, if I was picking up web programming these days, I might not even look at ASP.NET, such is the wealth of alternative languages and frameworks out there.

About “CMS Customizations and plugin development”, personally I prefer doing hacks to WordPress or any other OSS app I’m using rather than doing valid plugins. Doing things the “proper” way takes a lot more time, because you have to dive into their docs and plugin “architecture”. Although, if you really make a lot of them, it might pay off to learn their how to do it properly.

PSD to XHTML is a pretty basic skill, I’d say many people have it already or should.

This is a great list. I’m just starting to get into this whole world of web development and designing and I love doing it. It is great to know some of the things that are necessary for the future and not just the now. I’ve been learning CSS like crazy and in the last month or so I think I have it close to perfected. My next task is learning these CMS systems. I just finished my first Wordpress theme this past weekend…took about 8 hours but it was a learning experience and I think next time it’ll be a lot easier.

Good stuff, keep it coming!

You lost me after #1. This article may sound great for an outsider looking in, and that’s about it.

great article,but i need more informatio(widget devolopment)

great article. Frameworks ftw!
dunno about facebook/myspace applications though.

I don’t have any of those skills…

awesome article…. the CMS theme developement (i think) will be the most useful in the future.

@Shane: If I came from a windows background I would probably go for ASP.net too. You use VB for programming applications in Windows (and C#?) – I’m been on Mac and Linux most of my life, so I wouldn’t know.

Personally I have a background in Python, Ruby and PHP – and I’ve seen a couple of articles on ASP.net now, it seems so different. It actually seems a bit over complex, but I guess this is what allows it to be complex.

Didn’t really like the GUI like programming of Visual Studio, but I don’t like drag-able items that turn into code in general ;p

I guess we just have to accept that commercial frameworks are taking a stand, too.

Great for ASP that it is finally embracing the MVC architecture, cause I my opinion this is the best way of organizing code, content and database interaction.

@Discussions in general; That’s what I have grown to like about this page, there’s just so much discussion.

@ Jive:
You have to remember that it isn’t always about “having” the skill to turn a PSD into XHTML/CSS. If you have a complex layout, this will require a bit of CSS – but the problem is really; cross browser compliant XHTML/CSS. I don’t know about you, but for me this can take some amount of time. I mean, when the browsers (Mostly IE 6, 7) won’t cooperate. For me it’s more about TIME. I’ve done web development for a couple of companies (this including XHTML/CSS) but I really prefer just developing a custom CMS and cooperating with the design to incorporate it into the design.

My point is, doing cross browser compliant and valid XHTML/CSS can be a time demanding job – and for people running their own companies (w/o XHTML/CSS programmers) don’t really have time for it. So PSD->HTML services are GREAT for this. I’ve actually considered using this in future projects to save time.

@Christian Like Jeffrey, I don’t use the drag and drop at all. It simplifies things to some extent, but I like to know what’s going on, and would argue that the drag and drop method of code-generation is over-simplified.

I don’t consider it over complex, actually quite the opposite most of the time, but I guess it’s what you’re used to.

nice info….

don’t know some of this stuff

but this article is very useful to me in learning more in web development

OMG…. I think i’ve nailed 8 of those areas this year!

…i’m even building a facebook app for my friend

Awesome!

Thanks for sharing/compiling…looks like I’ll be busy for the next ten years or so.

Nice, but on actual permanent job boards, I see a ton of places needing ASP .NET developers. I think this is a HUGE portion of whats in demand today, so it should be on this list.

Awesome. I felt this coming.
>Widgets
>CMS
>Apps
Those are the top 3 I had in my head.
It’s great how you have a feel of where things are headed and we’re all feeling the same thing.

Great info, Thanks

This is really information and really helps in my decision to learn a new Framework.

One thing that I cant get my head round to is NetTuts never mentions Zend Framework does that mean its not worth learning?

Frameworks, CMS themes and PSD slicing for meeeee

I seen a lot of Flash hate on this forum. I think Its kinda funny how people can have so much hate for a technology. Any how flash will be a around for a long time. There is a lot that flash can do when it comes to interactivity that CSS and JS cant.

wow…seriously cool tut!

Thanks!
Emmett
http://www.soundtrack.ie
http://www.filmandgamecomposers.com

CakePHP ??? CakePHP is not a good framework. Zend Framework is the real deal… it’s fast, sleek and very extensible. With CakePHP it’s like living in an old era (php4 era) and you know better things (php5) are out there and much better (php6) are jet to come.

I used to be all over the place at one point. I was doing Flash/Actionscript, Lightwave 3D, Joomla, .Net ….In the end I was such a divided house.

I have abadoned my “know all” approach for a saner view. I am now mainly .Net (C#/ASP.net) and it works for me.

Also I agree that most of these skills are suited for freelancers. In South Africa, C#/.Net and Java pay a lot and that is where the action is right now.

Totally Agree with the last one

I am finding that, more and more, clients are searching for a developer that understands and can work with SEO and internet marketing concepts. In this day and age, raw developers, however cool to us geeky types, are fairly common and fairly cheap, especially with the rise of overseas markets. However, one thing that, seemingly, can’t be outsources is the marketing aspects of software development and so I am tending to find myself, more and more, delving into the social side of software development.

And it only makes sense. I, as I am sure many of you do, feel comfortable that I could develop anything placed before me, given adequate time and resources. But the success of web development, as is true with any development, is dependent on the success of the marketing behind it.

hah if just knowing the existence of the technique was all…

Amazing article!

I vote #1 to be the most real actually. Long road languages like PHP and .NET are losing space for Rails and Python, because developing for web with their according web framework forces a perfect MVC design.

Zend Framework is here trying to solve this on PHP side, but Rails and Django still easier to work with.

About #8, I think soon that will be changed to “iPhone and Android applications”.

It’s good to know Drupal Development is third place.. But is widget development really second?

yeah, i agree with shaun

Great article!

So where can I learn about widget development?

I still find it amazing that so many people will knock asp.net without ever have trying it. I have been developing web apps for over 10 years and have found that asp.net is an excellent framework. Granted older versions had some issues but just take a look at linq (.net 3.5) and tell me that it’s not an excellent way to build large scale applications in a fraction of the time compared to others.

Also on the topic of page size, again please try building an app in the more recent version of .net before you go saying it’s rubbish. Developed in the correct manner a .net application will be standards compliant and light.

It’s always nice to hear that there is always work out there, especially in those times…
thx for the great post, i put a link to it on my blog

Great post!! i agree with most of your post, but for flash, i really don recommend to use it, flash is good but it will also become time consuming for those who have low bandwidth speed

Great post. As a web design firm, I look for many of these qualities to compliment my Photoshop layouts and ideas. Also, as someone who hires this type of work, it is so important to showcase your work well. I’m sure I’ve overlooked many highly-qualified programmers because they just emailed me a long list of links or just a long paragraph listing all of their qualifications. Presentation of your skills is still so important!

I agree this post.
At least 5/10 pickuped skills, allways useing in my pages.

CakePHP is good Freamework!!

Very well overview!!!
Well done

A great article, but it may not possible to be expert in all these 10 skills. I think even 1 cms, 1 framework and basic knowledge of design are enough to become a good developer.

Ya this list is ok..but I wonder where “desktop apps” (such as Adobe Air) are sitting in this list?

You could probably join a whole bunch of these together – Flash, JS etc.

This post rocks… nice post buddy… love it…

Possible a dumb question.

Has NETTUTS done a tutorial series for Javascript and PHP, for dummies?

I’m completely clueless about Javascript. I know what it looks like but the lightbulb doesn’t turn on for me.

Good article i think a framework is almost essential for a large website as it allows more than one person to easily work on it.

Wow, incredibly helpful and insightful article. As a Wordpress guy who knows a thing or two about design, it’s good news. For those interested in freelance opportunities in these fields, can I offer related developer trends from a site I’m working with? oDesk.com/trends

Some of these skills make sense, but some just sound trendy. In particular Facebook/iPhone apps.

It’s easy to figure out what’s in demand. Just think of the most difficult, undesirable jobs you can imagine and – PRESTO! You’ve go yourself a winning list.

UML diagramming should be added as that skill set is necessary for most programming languages.

7 out of 10 ain’t bad eh? i think you should scrap facebook/myspace apps and replace it with knowledge of how to mashup services…

Our web design studio has most of this list covered. I would say this list will stay the same for at least another month.

I’m a web developer who started when the e-commerce craze came about in the 90’s; coding in classic ASP with both JScript and VBScript as the scripting language. In creating e-commerce websites for major corporations, I had to know ASP, JavaScript, HTML, XML, SQL, Access, and poses backend, middleware, and frontend architecture knowledge.

All this before OO design and Java (EJB) really started getting popular.

Guess what? I still use the above techologies to this day. I work full-time for the government and also have a side business that constantly demands these “old school” technologies. Why? Because when it comes to e-commerce, for me, these techologies are stable and, believe it or not, very scalable. The way I see it, the technology is only as scalable as the developer is and I have always strived to code that way.

Of course, now I also know and integrate DHTML, XHTML, CSS, Photoshop, Flash, Fireworks, and widgets (never really got into .NET though).

I don’t think ASP is better or worse than PHP, or .NET, or any other language. It’s what works best for you and the niche you make in this coding world and I’ll bet in 10 years from now, I’ll still be doing the basics.

Very interesting! Why Frameworks first tho?

We offer Ecommerce website development package with an affordable price based on the top Ecommerce platforms standard.We Provide Customize Ecommerce solution, Web development, affordable SEO services , PPC, awesome Web Design and Web Hosting.

You can feel free to Request a quote for free.

I really appreciate this post. As a graphic designer, I am finding that more and more clients are asking for designers who can not only design but have a solid understanding of web development. Although they are two different disciplines, it is grow or die in this economy. There are so many paths I could take now to start learning those skills, but I was not sure where to start. Now I know. Your article showcased the 10 most sought after skills. I’m going to start with #3. Custom CMS Themes. Thanks!

I’d also like to mention Typo3 templates. Typo3 is a CMS that’s gaining popularity in the US. Woo!

hi my friends i m a new person of this blog so plz help me out for the next new creation ok thanz all body

hey buddy watch it my new website ,this is my assignment so what do u think about of that

Ha. Thanks. I needed a laugh. Let’s see…

Framework knowledge: doesn’t matter to the customer. They want a website, they don’t care how it’s done.

Widget development: for the five people who use widgets?

Custom CMS themes: designer’s pool, not developer’s. Get your titles straight.

CMS customizations: not a problem if you don’t use a CMS, is it?

PSD-to-XHTML: yeah right. You like tables? You like sloppy code? Code you didn’t even write? Customize it. I dare you. Then come to me when you’ve beaten your head into a bloody pulp on the wall. I know good code.

JS plugin creation: jQuery?

Facebook/MySpace: Ha. Waste of time.

eCommerce integration: again, only an issue *when there’s something to integrate.*

Flash: wow. One out of ten. Impressive.

For those who don’t like lists and prefer my reasoning (which might be two of you): I am a developer. I’m well versed in HTML, JS, jQuery, and the .Net technologies needed to power my sites. I don’t use any of the aforementioned tricks, because frankly, your CMS has 5,000 features, 20 of which my customer is ever going to use. The administration system that I just custom-built for him from the ground up? 100% proper code (from a PSD), very streamlined, very fast, and has exactly the 20 features he needs. I showed it to a friend and his first question was, “Why’d you bother with the loading indicator?” That’s how fast it is.

tl;dr: You can have your frameworks and everything else that’s ruining the development market. I’m a purist coder. I use the basic forms of the technologies to accomplish everything I need, and if I can’t do it with jQuery, HTML and .Net, then I don’t need to do it. Needless to say, I haven’t hit that wall yet.

Yes, i am agree with you.
In this recession time everybody work hard.

Great article.
Web development IS a professionalism.
You should check many consideration before choosing your provider…

These seem to be mainly Web 2.0/startup/small operations skills. (no offense intended to people who work in these areas, as a lot of money has been made) But if you really want to be a sought after developer, look at ASP.NET/Java/C#. C# in particular is incredibly sought after right now. Think about it, a language that is both usable in web development and windows development.

I’m a professional developer so obviously I’m going to recommend the technologies I use.. but I can also see how the technology can scale and can be usable in multiple situations, which development managers love because he can go to management with a money saving idea which actually is a good development practice!

To all the nay-sayers saying this is just US or freelance-centric. I’m working in Spain and the skills that show up on the job board most are: frameworks(especially Zend), Jquery, cms customization, custom cms, flash/as, ecommerce, and of course php and java. So this article is fairly spot on except iphone isn’t as common here so it would be better to think in terms of general mobile applications. Other stuff such as fb apps certainly doesn’t hurt, many companies embrace different ways of promotion. PSD to xhtml is fine but it doesn’t pay very well.

Well im hiring web developers at the moment and although skills are great, you need someone with a good personality too! I dont wanna spend all day working with someone if they are a douche bag.