Do you guys do it all or are you specialists?
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Location: Pennsyltucky, USA
Posted: Wed, 2008-03-12 02:05
Hi friends.
I'm wondering if any of you guys are all around designers or if you are strictly coders?
Personally, I'm a horrible artist and while I can turn out a fairly decent layout I get much better results by leaving the design/artwork up to an expert in that field. Of course I usually have to tweak their design to make it useful on the web but the majority of the layout ideas come from someone other than me.
Most of my work is on backend programming using databases to drive the sites.
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As many of you know, I've
Posted: Wed, 2008-03-12 04:45
As many of you know, I've been a glue-gun-for-hire, fixing someone's code rather than building a site.
Now that I'm doing sites from the ground up, I find the graphic part to be limited. The architecture of the site and the pages will have been determined by the needs and functions of the page. Layout is primarily determined by information architecture.
By the time my design consultant gets serious, her job is constrained to typography, color and branding, with emphasis on affordance. This is where I am at my worst. I can spot bad design, but I can't create good design.
Another weakness in my skill-set is database schemata. For the non-trivial, I bring in an expert to design the database schema, queries and sometimes the PHP.
In sum, I do the info gathering, the site and page structures, most of the mid-tier and DB stuff, the markup, javascript and css and the install and training. I bring in a consultant for graphics and for the hard stuff on the back end.
cheers,
gary
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I'm pretty much echo Gary, I
Posted: Wed, 2008-03-12 07:52
I'm pretty much echo Gary, I would consider myself a specialist in the sense that my skills rest with the overall site architecture/frontend while I can take on fairly decent scripting tasks I would favour outsourcing major stuff to someone far more capable as I would where a good graphics eye was required.
So I firmly rest with CSS/markup which is a conjoined discipline that is still sadly lacking in most people/organisations, and which I realise defeats a lot of coders who attempt to master this area, why?
Strangely and to slightly hijack your topic T I appear to have a very good ability to take those damned graphic artists .psd files purporting to be "The web Site" and actually realising them very accurately into standards valid semantic markup, and as we all know that is often a struggle; strangely? that's because I am fed up to the back teeth with the asinine approach to web development where the graphics get to dictate the site look rather than the content. Gary mentions the far saner approach above where the site architecture and markup structure is fleshed out first then and only then is the graphics person allowed anywhere near the site and is constrained and has to enhance the site rather than this stupid notion that a web site is a showcase for a graphics persons talents
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Designer/Developer
Posted: Wed, 2008-03-12 09:47
Hmmm, I'm pretty much a do everything man. The company that employs me currently used to outsource their website to a third party but after things went a little wrong with that, they decided to get in their own Web Developer.
The site I'm currently building is the biggest project I've ever worked on being an entire E-Commerce system with all but the card payment option (it's only for trusted customers so we just invoice them rather then charge them straight off).
I designed the Database myself, documented the outline spec so I know where I'm going with it, designed how I wanted it to look and how it will work, and of course am currently developing and coding the site itself.
Fortunately, the two major employers I have had have been quite clear with their branding colors so I've used them but the layout and icons I have been responsible for.
As this is my first experience with ASP.NET and it's a big project with deadlines, I have committed the sin of letting the validating HTML side of things slip but I have been testing against the major browsers as I go, and hope that when I really understand what's going on with the code etc, I can start fixing. To be honest, I'm sure I know what your reaction to this will be which is probably why I've been less inclined to visit this forum recently. I feel like a bit of a hypocrit...
But Burlster.com (although STILL not up) will be valid all over, both in HTML and CSS and on top of that, I have been completely responsible for the graphics and appearence of that one as well as everything else. Obviously, after all, it is a personal site!
In answer to your question, I like the idea of considering myself a designer as well as a developer... but whether that's fair or not I don't know... I shall ask your opinions when I finally upload the Burlster site.
J
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More of a designer than a
Posted: Wed, 2008-03-12 10:13
More of a designer than a developer.
I both design and then make the site in terms of photoshop and then css/html, layouts, usability, and accessibility which I'm really getting into at the moment. Also do some basic video editing and streaming at my current place.
I am playing with .NET at the moment but really need a good project to get my teeth stuck in to as I want to improve my backend development skills but I'm definitely more of a frontend sort of guy
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Thanks for the chat,
Posted: Wed, 2008-03-12 13:03
Thanks for the chat, friends. I've got to say that I look up to a lot of the people here and was becoming concerned that my limited skill set may be holding me back (or even that I've chosen the wrong line of work). I want to say thanks to all of you for your priceless advice over the years. I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am without you all.
Hugo, I've also become proficient at taking a .psd and making it into something usable but I also ask for liberty in changing things that just won't work in the real world (such as if a menu is going to have more than 5 items I suggest vertical instead of horizontal...hmm, I've never won that one yet
) and the place I work at now has the customers choose a template or submit a layout before I start coding, which I argue is backwards but it's just no use.
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burlster wrote:... As this
Posted: Wed, 2008-03-12 13:08
Two things about ASP.NET:
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Cheers
Posted: Wed, 2008-03-12 14:39
Thank you for the advise Triumph! It's appreciated
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burlster wrote:Thank you for
Posted: Wed, 2008-03-12 16:36
Did you already know those things?
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Yes and No
Posted: Thu, 2008-03-13 10:06
Never heard of xhtmlconformance to be honest...
But yeah, I knew from PHP to only send the parsed HTML
Reading about xhtmlconformance on msdn2 now. Thanks again!
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Jack of many trades, master
Posted: Fri, 2008-03-14 15:41
Jack of many trades, master of none here.
I started out as an illustrator, moved on to graphic design (primarily for large format printing), and dabbled into video. Now, I make web websites and the occasional Flash app. But I always wanted to become a professional goalkeeper, if not a rock star. Hehehe.
Anyway. Yeah. Since I started freelancing, I've been a do-everything-yourself guy. And I love it. Although, I could use a lot more sleep.
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I do my own graphics and
Posted: Sat, 2008-03-15 11:40
I do my own graphics and then code. Been thinking about getting someone else to do the graphic side of things lately though.
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I tend to do whatever i'm
Posted: Tue, 2008-04-29 09:03
I tend to do whatever i'm asked to do. Coding, graphics, copy-writing, tech-support. I live in hope of the day when i feel confident enough in my position to specialise without worrying i'm going to be missing out on valuable work...
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Go on, I'll chip in. I'm
Posted: Tue, 2008-04-29 19:08
Go on, I'll chip in. I'm hopeless with the artistic side of things but I'm proficient enough to be able to take a design someone has made (someone with a lot more style and flair than me!) and create a fully functioning website that looks like it. That, and making people's code better.
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I think you should
Posted: Thu, 2008-05-08 11:08
I think you should specialize (front-end, back-end or design), but you should know what the others are talking about!
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Triumph wrote:... it will
Posted: Wed, 2008-05-28 02:10
I've found a way around this.
Now your page will validate directly in the w3 validator.