Designer Ethics

September 25, 2003 | View Comments (6) | Category: Our Thoughts

Summary: Why I design standards based websites even when my client does not ask for it.

Inspired by this entry and the comments that follow it at asterisk

As a designer beginning his own company it is important for me to have clients that believe in the service that I am offering and that service being designing web sites. Not only am I offering them a service, but I am also giving them a product, which is their own website. I wish that every client I have now will find my work good enough that they will refer me to others. This is obviously the best form of advertising and the best way to get business.

Now in my area there are a lot of designers (as I am sure there are in your area) who offer web design services. However, their services differ from mine. They create websites and offer many other services like database design and networking. I create websites and offer a limited amount of services. See, creating quality websites today requires great skill because there are many different things that you need to know. This is especially true if you wish to design CSS based websites. I want clients that can see that the service that I am offering them is quality. Sure the guy down the street can build their site for $500, but will that same guy put as much care and love into creating the site as I will? Will he be creating a site that when it comes time to update does not require hours or days to do so he can charge them a high fee? Will he create a site that follows the standards set by a governing body?

I need to pay bills just as much as the next guy. If someone offers me $500 and I let them know that if they want everything that I can offer them it will cost more and they still only offer me $500, then they will only get $500 worth of my skill and work. However, if I approach a client with a proposal that states they are getting my best quality work for $1600, then I obligate myself to offering them my best work and that includes building a standards compliant site.

I am a designer who offers quality. I create sites in CSS because I know down the road when it comes time to update the site I can do it quickly for my client at a reasonable fee. My client does not care if the site was created in CSS or tables. That was my decision. My client does not care if his site validates or that it follows some standards set by a governing body. However, I care because I wish to offer the finest service and product that my client paid for and that is one of the reasons I try to stick with standards.

Believe me I know how much of a pain it can be trying to get pages to validate. Actually I don't, because whenever a page does not validate I can usually find the error quickly and change it. It seems the only hassle to getting pages to validate is going to the W3C site and typing in the url. I use a Firebird extension to take care of that for me so checking pages is almost no hassle at all. Even though this site validates it is not imperative to me that it does unlike my clients' sites because at the moment this site does not pay the bills. However, the people who do pay the bills for me, deserve a quality standards based site if they expect to get all their money's worth.

I am not preaching to anyone or forcing my beliefs of web design upon you. I just wanted everyone to see the ethical code that I have placed upon myself, which helps to explain why I design the way I do and why I like standards.

Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/10

Comments

#1

Before everyone starts jumping on my back about the CSS not validating, it's because I use the * combinator which is for CSS3 and that is not offered in the validator as of yet.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#2

Nice article! I have the little external link icons on my blog, as well, but I used a lighty different method in the href attribute selector to get it:

/* Micro icons on links */

a[href^="mailto:"] {
background: transparent url('/images/widgets/aemail.gif') 100% 0% no-repeat;
padding-right: 10px;
}

a[href^="http:"] {
background: transparent url('/images/widgets/aoutside.gif') 100% 0% no-repeat;
padding-right: 10px;
white-space: nowrap;
}

a[href^="http://jeffcroft.com"], a[href^="http://www.jeffcroft.com"] {
background: inherit;
padding-right: 0px;
}


It works well for me. It says that if an href starts with "mailto:", then it should get my e-mail icon. If it starts with "http:", then it should get the external link icon. But, if if start with "http://jeffcroft.com" or "http://www.jeffcroft.com," it should inherit it's background (meaning it will have no image).

Not saying this is a better method, just a slighty different alternative. :)

Jeff

Jeff Croft (http://jeffcroft.com)

#3

Right there in your first comment you just touched on one of the reasons why I wrote my original post. Your site doesn't (didn't) validate, but you knew why and you were willing to live with it, and that's fine.

In my mind there is nothing wrong with that at all. The fact that you were worried someone would "jump on your back" speaks to my point that Web standards are often taken way too far by some folks.

Keith (http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/)

#4

Jeff: Too cool man. thanks for the code. Also I think you posted in the wrong entry. I will forgive you this time.

Keith: Well when I was writing this I knew there were going to be folks that stated that my site doesn't validate. I was just trying to kill that argument before it happens. I agree though that most people who preach standards do it so much that they seem like religious zealots and half the time they do not have a decent argument for it. I was giving my reasons for supporting them.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#5

Now that I check the site with the CSS 3 profile option it does validate so no need for the first comment :)

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#6

Just thought I'd mention... site looks good in Safari on my mac, and your little outgoing link images show up fine.

JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)

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