I hate cowboys

Why do people think anybody can produce websites? People come on forums showing awful sites breaking every single design rule in the book, blue background on red text, JavaScript all over the place, stupid background images, marquee text etc, no alt tags, no css etc.

I don't mind people having a play and making personal sites but some of the sites I have seen lately are serious sites and they are so awful they look like they were made by a spotty teenager in 1996.

I would never attempt to replace a rotten window so why do people try and make websites. People don't seem to know whats involved in a modern website/.

Knowledge of new accessibility laws
Knowledge of server side programming and SQL
CSS
W3C standards etc

I've spent literly two days just making sure the site I have done so far meets all the W3C standards etc.

Sorry for this rant, I just get annoyed by people trying to my job and doing it really badly.

 

err...because PC mags tell them they can in five easy steps, and because there are programs around that promise to do the same thing. Perhaps they just like playing around with computers as a hobby and have some free web space so it doesn't cost much to do

You're in a service industry my boy and afflicted by that oldest of British diseases; namely that most Brits don't value service.

Look at how many folk complain about HiFi dealer margins because they can't see the value of the service provided. Does the situation look familiar to you???

Best advice is to nod politely and offer words of encouragement to the DIY'er along the lines of “Hey, that's a great idea. You can work out your ideas and if you need some help I'll be here.†Then just leave them to it. Time is too precious to waste, but we've had this conversation before about upgrading PCs I seem to recall.

Regards

Hex

 

That was slightly different was a girl who I was close who annoyed me, this is more general. I guess its like builders must get annoyed with DIYers trying to save a fortune only to mess it up. I am guess I am annoyed at the software and the magazines as much as anything.

I suppose personal sites don't do any harm. I know mine needs a lot of work doing to it, but I have a bigger project I am working on at the moment.

 

The bigger project being the Manchester Music site you're working on?

 

not at all,after all 1,you get to charge em double,once to remove the dodgy work and then again to redo the job properly and 2 you make them look like pratts by making it look simple :JOEL:

 

Assuming you can find a builder with more skills than an average DIYer... (my dad was a builder, and I spent my yoof driving the family JCB round the back garden, and "renovating" victorian window frames).

 

AT, I know this will sound like I'm being picky, and I apologise for that in advance, but you can hardly complain about amateur web sites not reaching your professional standards when the grammar and spelling you use leaves a lot to be desired.

This from your Manchester Music Scene thread...

In the late 1970's the music scene was dominated by Disco and Punk punctuation missing here there was little in between. After meeting at a Sex Pistols Gig, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris (joined slightly later) decided to formed form a band. They advertised for a lead singer for the band and by pure stoke of look luck Morris's old school mate Ian Curtis applied. They called the band Warsaw....

Their first album Unknown Pleasures was released. It was a raw affair which captured the imagination, it was bleaker than punk but some how somehow much less aggressive.

...and from your web site...

musuem museum

buidling building

propertymanagement property management

When bought from respected record shops the records rarely let you down - a lot of them even sound like they are brand new.



Please don't think I'm having a go. You're probably very good at all the technical stuff to do with building web sites, and I'm sure that the Joy Division text is just a rough draft, but if your prospective clients see rather basic mistakes in grammar and spelling then it reflects poorly on you and your work.

It's a competitive world out there, and you only get one chance to make a first impression.

Good luck with your future work

Hex

 

Guilty! Look what I did! (all are still ongoing developments):

www.oneninesixtwo.com (an artist / design friend)

www.atticstudio.co.uk (I'm not too happy with the text look on this one, but it is exactly what was asked for). I took all the photos here too.

Wahey, I nearly managed that one here, but went with orange:

www.surgeryaudioarchitecture.com (ignore the banner at the top – that's the hosting company and I hate it!)

www.pinkfishmedia.net is by far my favourite so far out of my various attempts, but I still hate aspects of the vBulletin forum part of it – I've just started working on totally new minimalist buttons for when I take pfm to vBulletin v3… it could take a while!

Tony.

 

Hex is right AT, I sometimes have to review candidates applications for jobs, what's the first thing I get rid of them for.... spelling, punctuation, mistakes and not having read the job spec.

 

Bottom line I'm a have a go Harry, but I know where my limits are. I'll have a go at anything, and being an ex-machining engineer my standards are higher than most over payed, under skilled bodge masters that are so called “professionalsâ€Â. Anything I can do myself I will, because I'm not into pissing money down a drain and giving it to a load of loud mouth yobs that come round to do certain jobs :grrr:

My limits are as follows, plumbing, I know nothing about this at all, and even a minor cock up results in a flood, best to get the pros in here. Wallpapering, again I think only pro's can do this accurately and tidily, as I said with my standards being so high I know I couldn't do a good enough job not to annoy me every time I looked at it. Also big jobs with big regulations such as building (foundations, windows etc) are best left to those who are in the know, but minor brickie work isn't a problem. I'll also keep away from Gas (Corgi and all that). Luckily I know a lot of trust worthy chaps in these departments.

My girlfriends Dad used to be a Royal Engineer in the army, and like me he has similar standards. He had a “pro†in recently to do some tiling in the kitchen (at the request of his wife who thought he wouldn't have time to do it as he works long shifts), the guy messed it up so badly her Dad told him to take them all back off and helped him get the tiles perfectly straight….!!

Not having a go, just saying that a lot of “experts†I've encountered have been a waste of space, and not particularly nice people :newbie:

 

If we're talking about tradesmen then I'm with RDD on this. So many are just rogues. I had a particularly bad experience with two firms of heating engineers.

To cut a long story short I ended up £450 lighter with a heating system that still broke down and being advised by the 'pro's' that the only way to solve the problem was to replace the boiler and cylinder pipework at a cost of £2000

I fixed the problem myself. Total cost £15 plus a morning of my time. :MILD: Biggup goes to the folks at NewsNet group uk.d-i-y for their help :respect:

 

It is a rough draft and I need to correct the spelling mistakes, thanks for pointing out the errors in the other site though.

Tony I've seen load of worst sites than you beleive me, it dosn't comply to every rule, but it works and it dosn't look gastly like a lot of sites I have seen. At least its subtle. The sites I was having a go at are over the top, with Javascript everywhere, frames, you name it it has it.

I do DIY at times myself, but like others have said I know my limits. I would never attempt to install a window because I know there is much more involved than meets the eye.

Apart form my HIFI shelf and a bit of subtle wiring work (I would never attempt to rewire the house, but I have added a circuit which I made sure was done to IEE standards) is probably putting in some skirten boards!

I shall also admit being an absolute cowboy I didn't have a mitre saw so I had to mitre them with a jigsaw set at 45 degrees!

 

I think letting a 'web designer' or similar anywhere near a database is likely to end in disaster.

Web development nowadays is like Visual Basic back in the 90s, looks easy, never works quite right, unmaintainable.

Paul

 

I don't really class myself as a web designer though. I am more of a web developer since about 95% of all heavily used sites are database driven now.

The thing about web development is its not that hard in terms of knocking somthing out, to make it comply with all the standards is hard and requires lots of research. I spent a whole day yesterday researching these just so I could give some of my pages that all important W3C HMTL and CSS validation logos.

 

I thought the point of the web was that it accessable to everybody and wasn't owned by the techies or anybody else for that matter. Sure there are some badly designed web sites - so what.

 

Hi

Yep I come across this every day in my job, I maintain the website here and have to monitor what people do, before we had a content management system in place, people used to put up pages any old fashon and it looked a real mess, not the sort of thing a County Council should be doing at all.

One of my jobs is to test the site for accessibility (being disabled myself) and make the necessary changes, an impossible job before the CMS was brought in.

People just don't think that their company website is providing a service, and from October it will become law that these site should be accessilble to disabled people, which will mean if a companies site to prevent access for a disabled person to use, they can be taken to court. I RNIB have already helped some blind users take companies to court for this I can't remember the companies off hand, so its is very very important to test websites in as many browsers as possible, keep javascipt to a minumem (never use it for menus unless there is an alternative) and use CSS.

Its ok using facilities like Booby to check your site, but nothing replaces a Human hand the helm, see if you can naviage your site WITHOUT a mouse, something eveyrone forgets, take it away, can you get around your site, if the answer is no, then its not accessible.

There you go just 2p's worth!

 

Yep I too work in accessibility the sites I have done so far are mainly Manchester University sub sites but the company I work for is are website ccessibility consultants.

Its a good job because a lot of people are still so ignorant about the standards, my own site which I made in December breaks a lot of these rules.

People don't realise how long it takes to check websites, making sure all the accesskeys work and confirm to EU standards, making sure it works in all browsers etc.

My student union is going to be in big trouble in October and they refuse to listen to the students telling them how shite their site is

www.ussu.salford.ac.uk

As for JavaScript I try and do all my coding serverside in PHP or ASP and make do stuff like rollover images in CSS. I dispise JavaScript becuase it causes more problems than it solves.

 

A lot of people will be breaking the law in October without realising it. If was blind or disabled and could not access a site, I could sue them. For this reason there are some very strict rules which you need to follow. The internet has moved on from a geeky medium used by a few geeks and university students. Its now a mainstream broadcast medium. If a news paper did their print in blue on red text, in size 8pt you could probably sue them becuase you can't read it, the same applies to websites.

 

There's nothing special about October 2004 wrt web sites.

And to be affected by the DDA you have to be a 'service provider'. So Amazon would be affected, but my personal expression on a web site, or a business that promotes itself with a web site, isn't. If it were then billboards and brochures would be illegal since the blind have no access to the information on them.

And, AFAIK, there's no legal requirement on a newspaper publisher to provide large print or Braille editions. Or more pertinently for a newspaper seller to provide large print or Braille editions.

Paul

 

Surely almost any business is a service prodiver though? My site I am launching will be an information service provider for example.

I thought publishers had to do everything they can to ensure they have different media forms for blind people etc such as spoken word.