A very geeky rant

[Empusa]

So DH and I can do a bit of web design/programming, and occasionally will do some as a favour for friends.

One particular friend called us this morning to say his website was looking odd, so could we have a look at it.

Now normally he asks one particular friend to do all his websites, we'll call this friend Twatface. Twatface has had the cheek to criticise our web designs before, so no love lost there. This also isn't the first time we've had to fix Twatface's mistakes. Twatface sells himself as a web designer, graphic designer and web programmer. Which is interesting.

Reasons follow -

1. if he wants an image with a transparency he will always save it as a .gif rather than a .png, even if it results in horrific quality. And he can't claim he's doing it to reduce load times, as all his images take an ice age to load, even on our super fast fibre optic connection.
2. he doesn't use CSS, at all.
3. he does entire sites in tables, tables nested in tables, nested in tables..
4. doesn't comment any of the code
5. but he does comment out redundant code, rather than just delete it
6. does even the most basic effects using images rather than styling. Eg. if there is a white background he uses a repeated white .gif instead of background-color
7. doesn't use any HTML4, let alone HTML5
8. if it is a large website he will do each page as a separate .htm file rather than using includes
9. and if you need to make a change to the header, he's written the code in such a way that you can't use find and replace to change all pages, you have to go through them all manually

10. he doesn't use id or class for any elements, so applying CSS retrospectively would be a mammoth task 11. one time he redesigned a site we'd done, kept the basic programming, made it as ugly as possible, and deleted any text crediting us with having worked on it 12. if he needs a vector image he will save it in such a way that it ends up full of artefacting, and therefore impossible to work with 13. he doesn't keep .psd files 14. thinks 800x600 is high res! 15. uses deprecated code

Our friend needs a site redesign soon - bet he still goes to Twatface and not someone who is actually competent!

Twatface seems to need to update his knowledge!
I hate people like that! Most I know who are incompetent talk big too. Aurgh!!

I was a web dev/designer at my old job and HATED fixing other people's websites. There were only two in our unit but we both used CSS, lovely designs in Photoshops (and save our files), background-color, 00000, png etc. Yes in the past we did gifs and tables but that was ages ago! I do notice that a lot of people don't comment. I'm not sure why. I took programming classes before I got into web and that was mostly where I got my commenting habit from. If I didn't take programming classes, I'm not sure if I'd be a good commenter.

Now, is HTML5 widely used now? I moved to the UK in 2010 and the last website I did was the end of 2010 in HTML4.

I think I should at least update my blog. If nothing else, it's so not to forget and see what this HTML5 is all about...

Empusa - they'll only go to Twatface because he's 'selling himself' better than you do. You need to be upfront about this with your friend - 'I can make your website quicker, look much better and be much more responsive, up to date and easy to change - would you like me to do you a quote for that?'

Twat is probably cheaper.

putri It's getting more widely used, seems a huge improvement on 4 for certain. CSS3 is better too.

mistle Yeah, should do really. I'm awful at selling myself though

It's the geek's eternal dilemma.

My heart usually sinks when I hear "Well I took the PC into PCWorld......"

Haha, oh yes!