Re: [WSG] talking points for standards

[Jay Gilmore]

Do you really want those customers who want to maintain their pages in Frontage only to load up your design with unoptimized images, tables and tag sludge? You put this site in your portfolio and a prospect goes to visit your butchered site. These clients are also the worst for taking up too much time. I am focused on small business but I am not desperate for work. I don't do crap jobs for crap clients. If I have a challenging client it is someone who has engaged my services on my terms. I don't push standards, I build ever better sites. When I do something of note for my client I let them know. I don't know if you will ever be able promote standards to small business. You will have better luck with larger companies. I think I may take some of the suggestions in this article and formulate a case for standards adoption for publication on my site. All the best, Jay Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bert Doorn wrote: G'day Dollars and cents is the language that will convince most, if not all, sceptics. The problem I face in that regard is that a lot of sales enquiries I get are from people who want to maintain their own site, for next to nothing. They don't want to spend money on a content management system (which is overkill anyway, if the updates are few and far between).  Many think they can maintain a site with Frontpage, which, after all, is relatively cheap.  I can't help them, unless I throw standards compliance out the door. As far as (server) bandwidth is concerned, it only matters for big sites with a lot of traffic, or sites with a host that provides a ridiculously low quota. When it comes to search engines, can anyone prove that lean code is better? Has anyone done research on this claim? Google is full of tagsoup sites that are highly ranked. I searched for "web design" in Google (pages from Australia only).  The top 3 (non sponsored) sites used tables for layout, none of them validated and only one had a doctype. They all used some CSS but only in addition to the tagsoup. So where are the benefits? Regards