Web Solutions

Your Web Site Designers

Are they really professional?

It's easy for Web site designers to pass themselves off as professionals with otherwise on-the-ball business people who haven't had the time to get to serious grips with the technology, or who—like most car drivers—want to use computers without bothering themselves with what goes on under the bonnet.

If you are one of those business people, this bottom-line set of questions is for you to ask them.

1. Do they only ever show you pages on one operating system (Windows or Mac) or in one browser (probably Internet Explorer) or at one screen resolution (probably 1024x768 or even 800x600) or are they using FrontPage?

Dump them. They're amateurs passing themselves off as professionals, who haven't yet emerged from the twentieth century.

2. Do they show you your pages on different computers, at different screen resolutions and are they using Dreamweaver, or Adobe GoLive?

Keep an open mind. They may be professionals, or they may still be cowboys.

3. Whatever tools they use to prototype, etc., will you end up with pages substantially hand-coded in HTML or XHTML, using CSS for formatting and layout, which work on different operating systems, at different screen resolutions and on text-only browsers?

Stick with them. Pay them good money. They're the real thing.

The chances are that none of this will mean much to you. But what you will have is a good nose for bullshit. Just ask them—or print out my questions and advice as they stand. Then use your own judgement.

If their answers really satisfy you, then ignore my advice. Even if there are no good designers designing for 800x600, there are competent amateurs-turned-pro who are still using FrontPage. But they have to tell you why. And the questions are simple, are a serious challenge, and are definitely worth asking.

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