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I hate the term "Website Designer". Aparently this is what I do for a living but I wouldn't see myself as one!
I've been creating sites since before the dawn of WYSIWYG and Dreamweaver spending ages coding by hand in Notepad and debugging in IE3. I originally started out at 17 as a Designer engineer creating drawings for the construction of recyclying machinery in AutoCad. After about a year of this, I got bored, I wanted to continue with what I did best... Graphic Design.
I eventually landed a job as a Graphic Designer at 18 for a small firm in Oxfordshire. The job was great, I spent all day creating Corporate Identities, brochoures, computer graphics and at one point I was invilved the the creation of Sony's WebTV interface but again I found the medium boring.
Whilst all of this was going on, I discovered the internet. I had previously come across HTML in it's more complicated form SGML in the creation of text and could see the future of online media. the other thing that attracted me was the ability to constantly push the limits of the technology, something you can only do so far with paper! Eventually i became the companys only website designer looking after the 4 sites that they hosted. There previous work was abismal, badly designed and badly put together. A company who prided themselves on 15years or graphic design had no idea how to use this new medium and how to egt the tecnology to work for you.
After 2 years, I landed a job with the Worlds largest academic publisher as a website designer. When I joined, they had just discovered MSFrontPage and where building average sites using it. but this point I had mastered HTML and discovered Dreamweaver2 and convinced them to change.
Anyway, the point of this post...
I hate those poeple out there who claim to be "website designers", the type that do it for friends at home in their bedroom and call themselves "website designers" just because thay can slap a couple of pages together in a WYSIWYG tool and get it to look "cool" in IE5... This isn't website design... Creating a website is more than just this, much more...
Making a site look cool is only the start. Anyone can do this, this was the mistake many of my fellow graphic designers made in the transition, they focused too much on making it look cool with pixel perfect images and layouts and then complained because it looked awefull on Mr. X's lynx browser...
The internet was design to allow people to access information from anypoint in the world on any device capable of reading HTML, something it has managed quite successfully but something a lot of people have forgotten.
There is an underlying technology, one which needs to be understood and nurtured. So many of you slate HTML for being too basic, but how many of you have gone farther than this and pushed it to see what you can do? To many of you fall into the trap of jumping on the "Latests Trends" bandwagon?
How many of you understand the differences between browser types and platforms and why they exist?
How many of you think about coulor depth, scaling and scaleability?
How may of you know what CSS elements work where and why?
and how many of you understand degridation?
How many of you test your sites?
The most comon questions I get these days surround things like...
Why does my table structure fall apart in NS6 and not IE5?
Why doesn't my CSS work all of the time?
What the differences between IE3 and IE6?
Your sites should be viewable on ALL browsers whether it be the latest version of IE or the 1994 Mozilla engine. This was the aim of the internet and buy understanding the tecnology behind it all, you can account for all of these differences... That is true Website Design.
When you next create a site, ask youself questions...
who is the intended audience?
Is it accessable by all?
Is it useable?
What's the point?
What will it support?
What support do you offer?
Anyone can create a site these days and a majority of those people are responsible for the 85million pages of twaddle that exist out the on the WWW. These day's I refuse to accept anyone who claims to be a website designer just because they can use Dreamweaver... I can use Quark, but this doesn't make me an author! Agencies won't employ you just because you know how to create a page in Dreamweaver, they're looking for much more these days, one of those being an understanding of the technology, the history and the future...
I changed my job title after a year, I nolonger want to be seen as a Website designer but more of an Website technology and Graphic Designer... It maybe cool to say to your friends "I'm a website designer" but when you get into your 20's, you watch people cringe and grimmace at that term, it's almost embarracing!!
Learn, Understand, Experience and Learn again...
I've been creating sites since before the dawn of WYSIWYG and Dreamweaver spending ages coding by hand in Notepad and debugging in IE3. I originally started out at 17 as a Designer engineer creating drawings for the construction of recyclying machinery in AutoCad. After about a year of this, I got bored, I wanted to continue with what I did best... Graphic Design.
I eventually landed a job as a Graphic Designer at 18 for a small firm in Oxfordshire. The job was great, I spent all day creating Corporate Identities, brochoures, computer graphics and at one point I was invilved the the creation of Sony's WebTV interface but again I found the medium boring.
Whilst all of this was going on, I discovered the internet. I had previously come across HTML in it's more complicated form SGML in the creation of text and could see the future of online media. the other thing that attracted me was the ability to constantly push the limits of the technology, something you can only do so far with paper! Eventually i became the companys only website designer looking after the 4 sites that they hosted. There previous work was abismal, badly designed and badly put together. A company who prided themselves on 15years or graphic design had no idea how to use this new medium and how to egt the tecnology to work for you.
After 2 years, I landed a job with the Worlds largest academic publisher as a website designer. When I joined, they had just discovered MSFrontPage and where building average sites using it. but this point I had mastered HTML and discovered Dreamweaver2 and convinced them to change.
Anyway, the point of this post...
I hate those poeple out there who claim to be "website designers", the type that do it for friends at home in their bedroom and call themselves "website designers" just because thay can slap a couple of pages together in a WYSIWYG tool and get it to look "cool" in IE5... This isn't website design... Creating a website is more than just this, much more...
Making a site look cool is only the start. Anyone can do this, this was the mistake many of my fellow graphic designers made in the transition, they focused too much on making it look cool with pixel perfect images and layouts and then complained because it looked awefull on Mr. X's lynx browser...
The internet was design to allow people to access information from anypoint in the world on any device capable of reading HTML, something it has managed quite successfully but something a lot of people have forgotten.
There is an underlying technology, one which needs to be understood and nurtured. So many of you slate HTML for being too basic, but how many of you have gone farther than this and pushed it to see what you can do? To many of you fall into the trap of jumping on the "Latests Trends" bandwagon?
How many of you understand the differences between browser types and platforms and why they exist?
How many of you think about coulor depth, scaling and scaleability?
How may of you know what CSS elements work where and why?
and how many of you understand degridation?
How many of you test your sites?
The most comon questions I get these days surround things like...
Why does my table structure fall apart in NS6 and not IE5?
Why doesn't my CSS work all of the time?
What the differences between IE3 and IE6?
Your sites should be viewable on ALL browsers whether it be the latest version of IE or the 1994 Mozilla engine. This was the aim of the internet and buy understanding the tecnology behind it all, you can account for all of these differences... That is true Website Design.
When you next create a site, ask youself questions...
who is the intended audience?
Is it accessable by all?
Is it useable?
What's the point?
What will it support?
What support do you offer?
Anyone can create a site these days and a majority of those people are responsible for the 85million pages of twaddle that exist out the on the WWW. These day's I refuse to accept anyone who claims to be a website designer just because they can use Dreamweaver... I can use Quark, but this doesn't make me an author! Agencies won't employ you just because you know how to create a page in Dreamweaver, they're looking for much more these days, one of those being an understanding of the technology, the history and the future...
I changed my job title after a year, I nolonger want to be seen as a Website designer but more of an Website technology and Graphic Designer... It maybe cool to say to your friends "I'm a website designer" but when you get into your 20's, you watch people cringe and grimmace at that term, it's almost embarracing!!
Learn, Understand, Experience and Learn again...
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Dav1d wrote:
> not advertising like I would guess most of the companys you do websites for do.
Actually, we don't advertise that much either. Most of our budget goes onto search engin submission and META Data.
As I said. I work for the worlds largest Academic Publisher, we don't need to advertise... were already the best!!
> not advertising like I would guess most of the companys you do websites for do.
Actually, we don't advertise that much either. Most of our budget goes onto search engin submission and META Data.
As I said. I work for the worlds largest Academic Publisher, we don't need to advertise... were already the best!!
*Officially Confused*
:-D
:-D
Dav1d wrote:
> How do they get 1 million or so hits a month? What are you
> tactics or are they top secret?! :-D
Branding and content, Useability, accessability and WOM!
It's an online scientific, academic and medical journal content store offerring full text access online of journal and abstracts using XML to output the data in any format form PDA to PDF. Once the redesign is launched I'll send you the URL..
This is my baby for this year... and the biggest .com I've ever worked on. And it works in all browsers from v3 - v6 on all platforms from Linux to Mac...
> How do they get 1 million or so hits a month? What are you
> tactics or are they top secret?! :-D
Branding and content, Useability, accessability and WOM!
It's an online scientific, academic and medical journal content store offerring full text access online of journal and abstracts using XML to output the data in any format form PDA to PDF. Once the redesign is launched I'll send you the URL..
This is my baby for this year... and the biggest .com I've ever worked on. And it works in all browsers from v3 - v6 on all platforms from Linux to Mac...
I can see know what youre talking baout so I wont argue with you! :-D
I did a website for a company offering parking at Gatwick Airport. It gets around 1'000 hits a month and rising. This is purely through search engines and link exchanges, not advertising like I would guess most of the companys you do websites for do.
How do they get 1 million or so hits a month? What are you tactics or are they top secret?! :-D
I did a website for a company offering parking at Gatwick Airport. It gets around 1'000 hits a month and rising. This is purely through search engines and link exchanges, not advertising like I would guess most of the companys you do websites for do.
How do they get 1 million or so hits a month? What are you tactics or are they top secret?! :-D
Dav1d wrote:
> I dont think Browser compatibily is all that important anyway. Aslong as it
> works in IE, seeing that 95% of people use it - So the counter on my website
> says.
That's the counter of "your" website... how many hits do you get? most are probably people who you know with recent PC's and IE5. When it comes to the "Real" world of the internet the stats vary... One site I have just redeveloped gets over 1 million hits a month with a 42% NS based 56% IE based. Another one gets over 800,000 hits a month and is mainly IE4. As I said, it's down to your audience and the market you are aiming for. If you know your HTML and DTD's it's work in anything.
BTW... Did you know that 30% of stuff that works in IE5 doesn't work in NS6 as NS6 is compliant to W3 standards unlike IE5 that lets you get away with anything!!
> I dont think Browser compatibily is all that important anyway. Aslong as it
> works in IE, seeing that 95% of people use it - So the counter on my website
> says.
That's the counter of "your" website... how many hits do you get? most are probably people who you know with recent PC's and IE5. When it comes to the "Real" world of the internet the stats vary... One site I have just redeveloped gets over 1 million hits a month with a 42% NS based 56% IE based. Another one gets over 800,000 hits a month and is mainly IE4. As I said, it's down to your audience and the market you are aiming for. If you know your HTML and DTD's it's work in anything.
BTW... Did you know that 30% of stuff that works in IE5 doesn't work in NS6 as NS6 is compliant to W3 standards unlike IE5 that lets you get away with anything!!
Tyla wrote:
> Please Mr SR...!!
Mr. Snuggly actually........
Hes the one that chooses the GAD winners, dont get on the bad side of him! :-D
> Please Mr SR...!!
Mr. Snuggly actually........
Hes the one that chooses the GAD winners, dont get on the bad side of him! :-D
Dav1d wrote:
> Nice structured topic by the way......
*cough* Gameaday Worthy *cough*
We
> need someone in this forum to win a GAD! :-D
Cheers... make a change for me to be structred, especially after fughting with ActionScript all day!!
That'd be nice... A free game to exit my frustrations of the world of Flash5 and it poxy, complicated ActionScript:-)
Please Mr SR...!!
> Nice structured topic by the way......
*cough* Gameaday Worthy *cough*
We
> need someone in this forum to win a GAD! :-D
Cheers... make a change for me to be structred, especially after fughting with ActionScript all day!!
That'd be nice... A free game to exit my frustrations of the world of Flash5 and it poxy, complicated ActionScript:-)
Please Mr SR...!!
I dont think Browser compatibily is all that important anyway. Aslong as it works in IE, seeing that 95% of people use it - So the counter on my website says.
monkey_man wrote:
> But then who sets the rules? You? Me?
There aren't what you would call "rules" but there are standards and comliancy documents (www.w3.org) and the rest is common sense...
> If it's just someone's homepage then I think that it's perfectly acceptable that it will only work in a particular browser.
That's fine for Mr.X's "My Homepage" but when producing work for retaail or PR you have to ensure the maximum ammount of availability, stability and accessability
> Maybe they should have a society for competent web designers, like they do with Doctors. Also, it's down to the people that go to get sites done. If they took time to go through someone's portfolio and check it in different browsers then they'd probably find tons of things that don't work.
Actually.. a decent agency already knows what works and what doesn't, that's what they get paid for. I'm sure a firm like Domino or Satchi don't produce sites that only work in one browser!!
> But then who sets the rules? You? Me?
There aren't what you would call "rules" but there are standards and comliancy documents (www.w3.org) and the rest is common sense...
> If it's just someone's homepage then I think that it's perfectly acceptable that it will only work in a particular browser.
That's fine for Mr.X's "My Homepage" but when producing work for retaail or PR you have to ensure the maximum ammount of availability, stability and accessability
> Maybe they should have a society for competent web designers, like they do with Doctors. Also, it's down to the people that go to get sites done. If they took time to go through someone's portfolio and check it in different browsers then they'd probably find tons of things that don't work.
Actually.. a decent agency already knows what works and what doesn't, that's what they get paid for. I'm sure a firm like Domino or Satchi don't produce sites that only work in one browser!!
Nice structured topic by the way......
*cough* Gameaday Worthy *cough*
We need someone in this forum to win a GAD! :-D
*cough* Gameaday Worthy *cough*
We need someone in this forum to win a GAD! :-D
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