Comments on: Internet Explorer 6? Never Heard of It

By: Steven

Steven — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:24:24 +0000

I’ve been hiring freelance developers to supplement my projects. Seems to help, but drains the budget awfully quick.

By: James

James — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:41:52 +0000

My few years in the small to medium-sized design studios really did bring your points to light. The “lay-person” really doesn’t understand what time, effort, talent and knowledge it takes to develop a website. They view a website as something childish and therefore something to not take seriously. They think, “Oooh, give me this and that, oh and that, too” , without knowing what all goes into creating such features. They think you should be able to do it all, fast and cheaply. I don’t know what the answer is for these smaller firms other than to be honest about what they can deliver. Honestly, I haven’t thought about it too much myself.

I can say that it does seem with the exponential growth of different back ends, API’s, programming languages (and their complexity), as a web designer you need other people who know that stuff in order to deliver a quality product. Web designers are just that: designers, not developers. Going solo these days is increasing difficult unless you have fairly “undemanding” clients.

To build a house you need all kinds of expertise: architects, plumbers, construction workers, electricians, etc. All play their part. There isn’t one guy who can do it all, even a small house. Websites should be seen as the same.

By: Steven

Steven — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:36:05 +0000

I must admit, I gave up IE 6 compliance about a year ago. People should be ready for change. (You can hear the old people griping about how their bunny ear antennas have already gone the way of the dinosaurs. I love the new digital signal, and the free HD channels.)

I’m finding the biggest new headache for designers and developers is the competition. When such widely-used, and heavily-budgeted web applications include Facebook, freelance web designers must cringe when their clients expect the norm to compete with a multi-million dollar web budgets.

In this way, I find that freelancers and small studio firms are in great danger of becoming weakened by the big box guys, like Digg and Facebook. Many firms seem to already be dishing out out-dated technologies, and in my experience, have been lying about that fact.

Granted, many projects, including some I’ve worked on, don’t have the resources to obtain the newest and greatest web technologies, but still deserve a place in the web for whatever meager budget they can muster. Unfortunately, lowly freelancers as myself are put in a position to keep educating our clients on the difference between cubic zirconium and diamonds, as it pertains to web technologies. For the most part, it can make us feel like lazy cheap skates, unable to provide our clients what they really want.

This “gap” is what keeps me up at night these days, and makes me realize that my place in the web world is quickly fading.