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Cutting corners

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by blckspder

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Recently I have been approached by several people looking for a new web designer. All were customers of different web design firms and all seemed to have encountered the same problem, poor customer service and each company took short cuts when building and implementing their websites.

Now taking some short cuts can be harmless, but in one case the designer designed the website in Adobe Photoshop and then used the slice tool and had Adobe generate the html. The designer didnt even bother to look over the html to make sure it was correct and up to date. The site ended up having problems in some browsers. Not to mention all the deprecated tags and attributes they used in some pages.

So I guess I am wondering why is it so hard for some companies to just code to the current standards? I do it all the time and I don't find it to be that difficult. I mean they dont have to be perfect but they could at least make an attempt.

8 replies

by tony hopkinson

They use auto code generation and the GUI.

As soon as it works on their set up, they are star web developer's who can get people to pay them loads of money for their 'skills'.

Makes me f'ing scream too.

First test of a web developer, give them a vanilla text editor and a reference. See if they can create a decent start at a compliant 10 page site. If they can't, they aren't.

by blckspder

do these people get jobs?! I look at the job banks and everything requires a bachelors or more? I try to keep up and meet the standards, I get regular news letters from the W3C and always use their validation and I even provide a small text link for page validation... I just dont understand how these people can call themselves web designers.

I probably shouldn't do it. But lately it has been bothering me so much I have been trying to bring more awareness to customers. Maybe I should start some type of coalition lol

by tony hopkinson

Besides I didn't say they were uneducated, just unskilled. :D

You go into a place with four or five examples of sites that you can show a prospective employer, why shouldn't they believe you are skilled?

To be fair most of them do work, until you start pushing them. If you never do and you don't need to cope with regular layout changes, quick and dirty seems to be more than acceptable.

I don't mind, I earnt a lot of corn, clearing up after this sort of crap.

It also gave me repeat business, when I pointed out it would have taken me a 25% longer to the initial design, but that's still at least half of what it cost to sort out a pile of crap after a couple of iterations.

Course how a non technical person tells the difference between me and you, (web design is not my forte) or either of us and a FrontPage guru is the real problem.

by jaqui

To promote the use of W3C Standards for Website Design?
I'm in.
[ as long as we can push the W.A.I. as well ]

by shellbot

a couple years ago i interviewed for a job, part of the duties was a bit of web stuff.

They = Team Leader & Manager (IT/Development)

So they asked me what editor i used.
I replied Notepad & Interdev.

"No, what package to do you use?"
replied well, normally notepad, Interdev if i have a lot of graphics positioning or style sheets to generate.

"So you don't use Front Page?"
No, used dreamweaver a couple times though.

"How do you do you insert the Javascript then"
Umm..in notepad or in Interdev

"Not really sure you're as qualified as we'd like you to be."
replied, no maybe i'm not

i almost exploded trying to keep the laughing in. thinking back, i should have maybe given them a few pointers..

Its called making a quick buck and they make us hardworking ones look bad!

by jaqui

"Not really sure if you're as qualifiedas we'd like you to be"

ya should have said:

"Obviously not, since I seem to have more qualifications and skills than you want, sorry for wasting my time applying for a job where sub standard tools are required"

and gotten up and left.
you obviously weren't going to get the job, so beat the fact they were being stupid into their heads before leaving :D

by shellbot

i should have, but i was truly too busy trying to keep from actually laughing outloud at the poor things.

I wonder where they are now? :)

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