In most instances, its not a case of trying to convince someone to
change their ways, nor is it a case of trying to "sell" web standards.
The real fact is that each and everyone of my clients knows that HTML
exists, and that it has something to do with a webpage.
My role when talking with them is to try and explain what I believe to
be the best approach (utilizing standards), and coming up with visual
examples that hit home at their level. Not that they're stupid, but we
can't expect a business owner in a different industry to have knowledge
equal to the depth of our own in our own field.
Example: A local real estate agency wanted me to, in their words "update
the look of the site". Do they realize that the original design was
made in design view in Dreamweaver, comeplete with a multitude of nested
tables, the horrendous javascripts it produces for rollovers and popup
windows? No. Does it mean anything to them? No.
But, as I approach the redesign, I feel its necessary to educate them on
what I plan to do, mainly dumping all the nested tables, MM scripts and
performing a nice code cleanup. You can't SEE this as a non-web person.
It takes a well thoughout pitch to make them understand the point of this.
It's our responsibility to do it the best we can so they DON'T have to
think about it. Most educated people never heard the word "semantics"!
Joseph R. B. Taylor
Sites by Joe, LLC
http://sitesbyjoe.com
(609)335-3076
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
adam LEAPER wrote:
what this email meant for me or what?
im confused to why I am getting so many emails?
On 2/3/06, Ben Bishop <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 2/3/06, Jay Gilmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I want to go beyond the argument of separation of information and
presentation markup.
What sort of resistance are you facing here? I.e. why are you arguing in
the first place?
That portion is an easy sell. I am really talking about form and usage of
semantics, logical content markup
I don't understand what kind of clients you have that are pushing for
non-semantic and illogical markup.
Are you looking for ammunition to try to convince a business they really
need a new website because their current one isn't standards based? Are you
looking for an explanation of why you are different to all the other web
developers out there?
Ultimately, do you really need to "sell" web standards to the client?
I'm all for educating businesses. I'm all for educating developers. If you
really want to get out there and make a difference, organise Web Standards
Group meetings in your home city. Give presentations to user groups. Give
talks to interest groups. Show everyone your passion.
-Ben
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