Webdesign
11 June 2002, 06:27 PM
#31
dam that link doesn't work! :O
maybe your free hosting is to blame
p.s. i am a web expert - frontpage is nothing more than a glorified word processor.
i can create thumbnails with the best of them.
fact is that the most visited web sites are **** sites and let's face it you don't need a degree to cobble one of those together.
web design expert - pah - no such thing - trying to invent a job for youself and then claim to be elite so you can charge more !!!!
maybe your free hosting is to blame
p.s. i am a web expert - frontpage is nothing more than a glorified word processor.
i can create thumbnails with the best of them.
fact is that the most visited web sites are **** sites and let's face it you don't need a degree to cobble one of those together.
web design expert - pah - no such thing - trying to invent a job for youself and then claim to be elite so you can charge more !!!!
11 June 2002, 06:43 PM
#33
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It is a very thin line I am afraid. Where does the "beginner" become a true "web professional" as you put it Damaja? Degrees and design school provide you with the tools, but you also need flare and an eye for it.
I have turned it into a business, but it has taken many years of learning, obsession and a true passion for the internet to get where I am now. I do make a living out of it, not mega bucks, just enough to pay the mortgage.
I feel that I succeed at it for many reasons:
1. I have the experience
2. I have the passion
3. I have core values which I stick to, namely service, good design and not over charging.
The sites I design are good looking, functional, and solve a business problem. They dont cost a great deal (relatively), and I am a perfectionist who will spend hours on a single image to get it right, if needs be.
With regards experience mine is like this:
1. Business Communication Degree
2. Marketing HND
3. 11 years internet usage, and I mean usage not just hobby surfing - I remember the Ford website back in 1990 being the best thing back then (cos it had pictures on it
)
4. Created a 45 resort Intranet for all of the Airtours resorts.
5. Retail Intranet manager for Airtours/Going places - managed the intranet out to all holiday stores
6. Other Airtours ecommerce projects.
7. Current client sites.
8. 8 years tehnical skills - HTML, etc etc (Plus many paid training courses by Airtours)
My technical skills are second to none as I spend my life learning, trying, experimenting, and reading about everything.
I am involved in communities, magazines, BBS's etc and my life revolves around the internet and web design.
I understand the sentiment Damaja, but where do you draw the line? What makes you such a better web designer, professional, new media person (whatever you want to call it), than someone like myself who has spent 8 years training for it just because you have a degree in design?
And where is the point when you can call yourself a "web designer"? I design websites for companies who pay me, and so far are all EXTREMELY happy with my work. So am I a web designer or not? I dont have an official design degree, just a passion and a flare!!
It is a saturated market, but if you can provide a business solution then what does it matter how you have come to learn your trade?
All IMHO of course
DW
I have turned it into a business, but it has taken many years of learning, obsession and a true passion for the internet to get where I am now. I do make a living out of it, not mega bucks, just enough to pay the mortgage.
I feel that I succeed at it for many reasons:
1. I have the experience
2. I have the passion
3. I have core values which I stick to, namely service, good design and not over charging.
The sites I design are good looking, functional, and solve a business problem. They dont cost a great deal (relatively), and I am a perfectionist who will spend hours on a single image to get it right, if needs be.
With regards experience mine is like this:
1. Business Communication Degree
2. Marketing HND
3. 11 years internet usage, and I mean usage not just hobby surfing - I remember the Ford website back in 1990 being the best thing back then (cos it had pictures on it
)4. Created a 45 resort Intranet for all of the Airtours resorts.
5. Retail Intranet manager for Airtours/Going places - managed the intranet out to all holiday stores
6. Other Airtours ecommerce projects.
7. Current client sites.
8. 8 years tehnical skills - HTML, etc etc (Plus many paid training courses by Airtours
)My technical skills are second to none as I spend my life learning, trying, experimenting, and reading about everything.
I am involved in communities, magazines, BBS's etc and my life revolves around the internet and web design.
I understand the sentiment Damaja, but where do you draw the line? What makes you such a better web designer, professional, new media person (whatever you want to call it), than someone like myself who has spent 8 years training for it just because you have a degree in design?
And where is the point when you can call yourself a "web designer"? I design websites for companies who pay me, and so far are all EXTREMELY happy with my work. So am I a web designer or not? I dont have an official design degree, just a passion and a flare!!
It is a saturated market, but if you can provide a business solution then what does it matter how you have come to learn your trade?
All IMHO of course
DW
11 June 2002, 07:10 PM
#34
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Right, better be careful what I say here..
I've heard this before and argued this arguement before, but at the end of the day, there's a difference between a web designer and a professional webdesigner. I'd call myself a webdesigner, but I'm no where near a professional!
I think, that in my opinion I'm a webdesigner because I do just that. Anybody with a copy of frontpage can throw together a website, but it takes a few braincells to take the time to go through and design the site before you even go near a PC, then take your time to finalise the layout, before carefully coding the site (personally I do it by hand but some people prefer WYSIWYG editors, either way is ok I suppose), and then take a lot of time testing, checking and re-checking the site.
That's why I'd call myself a webdesigner, but I am by no way a professional, I don't have the time or the talent! However, I'm fluent with HTML and can code in php, and just as importantly, I'm learning fast and I hope that one day I can come back and say yes, I am a professional.
At the end of the day, it's your personal opinion whether you call your self a webdesigner or not, but if no one else thinks you are, your buggered (and skint).
I've heard this before and argued this arguement before, but at the end of the day, there's a difference between a web designer and a professional webdesigner. I'd call myself a webdesigner, but I'm no where near a professional!
I think, that in my opinion I'm a webdesigner because I do just that. Anybody with a copy of frontpage can throw together a website, but it takes a few braincells to take the time to go through and design the site before you even go near a PC, then take your time to finalise the layout, before carefully coding the site (personally I do it by hand but some people prefer WYSIWYG editors, either way is ok I suppose), and then take a lot of time testing, checking and re-checking the site.
That's why I'd call myself a webdesigner, but I am by no way a professional, I don't have the time or the talent! However, I'm fluent with HTML and can code in php, and just as importantly, I'm learning fast and I hope that one day I can come back and say yes, I am a professional.
At the end of the day, it's your personal opinion whether you call your self a webdesigner or not, but if no one else thinks you are, your buggered (and skint).
11 June 2002, 07:15 PM
#36
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OH My ****!ing GOD.. Have you seen his example of a site
http://www.geocities.com/webtekrocks/
My 12 Year old brother has done better
http://www.geocities.com/webtekrocks/
My 12 Year old brother has done better
11 June 2002, 11:28 PM
#39
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I'm not a Web Designer, I'm a Web Developer, I spend most of my time writing PHP and using it to talk to MySQL
I honestly don't design a thing, that's someone elses job, that someone else does what they are good at, being graphically creative and coming up with how things should look. I can say what I think works and what I think doesn't, but I know my weaknesses and know I'm not good at coming up with 'look and feel' stuff. I'm (hopefully) technically creative and take designs and turn them into functioning websites, mostly database driven.
Perhaps I'm cynical, but I don't think I've met anyone who I've thought were genuinely artistically AND technically creative, they seemed to be good at one area and limited in the other providing limited solutions. Then again I've spent long working on sites with large corporate identities to know most of the decisions are by sponsors and managers and not anyone with any comprehension of what they're doing
FWIW I started from scratch learning HTML with emacs and netscape 3 on our unix machines while studying my degree in computer science around 1997 and I mostly work on http://www.itv-f1.com right now, running on a cluster of eight machines that I also admin.
I'll stop rambling now...
P.S. Dreamweaver, don't trust user input.
http://www.scoobysport.co.uk/publics...icle.asp?id=22
[Edited by Andrewza - 6/11/2002 11:39:34 PM]
I honestly don't design a thing, that's someone elses job, that someone else does what they are good at, being graphically creative and coming up with how things should look. I can say what I think works and what I think doesn't, but I know my weaknesses and know I'm not good at coming up with 'look and feel' stuff. I'm (hopefully) technically creative and take designs and turn them into functioning websites, mostly database driven.
Perhaps I'm cynical, but I don't think I've met anyone who I've thought were genuinely artistically AND technically creative, they seemed to be good at one area and limited in the other providing limited solutions. Then again I've spent long working on sites with large corporate identities to know most of the decisions are by sponsors and managers and not anyone with any comprehension of what they're doing
FWIW I started from scratch learning HTML with emacs and netscape 3 on our unix machines while studying my degree in computer science around 1997 and I mostly work on http://www.itv-f1.com right now, running on a cluster of eight machines that I also admin.
I'll stop rambling now...
P.S. Dreamweaver, don't trust user input.
http://www.scoobysport.co.uk/publics...icle.asp?id=22
[Edited by Andrewza - 6/11/2002 11:39:34 PM]
12 June 2002, 09:08 AM
#43
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Second Andrews comments,
Theres a world of difference between designing an all singing all dancing Flash site and an N tier database driven dynamic site that supports thousands of internal and external users viewing, adding, deleting, and amending data at the same time, using IIS, COM+, ASP.NET, blah blah blah....I do the latter, and same as Andrew we have guys that make it look smart as well ourselves who make it work smart, I don't / can't do both.....
Theres a world of difference between designing an all singing all dancing Flash site and an N tier database driven dynamic site that supports thousands of internal and external users viewing, adding, deleting, and amending data at the same time, using IIS, COM+, ASP.NET, blah blah blah....I do the latter, and same as Andrew we have guys that make it look smart as well ourselves who make it work smart, I don't / can't do both.....
12 June 2002, 10:06 AM
#44
Scooby Regular
Andrewza - good points, but with the user input, if someone is willing to change the ID number of say a news article manually through the URL, then they are not that interested in viewing the site.
Unfortunately someone like myself has to try and do both, though I admit my design skills are superior to my tech skills - especially things like ASP. But give it time, and I will get to a very competent level at both.
With regards the user input, and you being a developer what would you suggest as a way around attempted user input error such as that which you have demo'd?
My presumption would be to check the db for the passed ID. If it exists continue to the show page, if not re-direct to an error page - no?
DW
Unfortunately someone like myself has to try and do both, though I admit my design skills are superior to my tech skills - especially things like ASP. But give it time, and I will get to a very competent level at both.
With regards the user input, and you being a developer what would you suggest as a way around attempted user input error such as that which you have demo'd?
My presumption would be to check the db for the passed ID. If it exists continue to the show page, if not re-direct to an error page - no?
DW
12 June 2002, 10:08 AM
#45
Scooby Regular
With user input, the same can be done with Scoobynet or any ID driven page from what I have seen:
http://www.scoobynet.co.uk/bbs/forum.asp?ForumID=44
So Andrewza, what do you suggest?
DW
http://www.scoobynet.co.uk/bbs/forum.asp?ForumID=44
So Andrewza, what do you suggest?
DW
12 June 2002, 10:35 AM
#47
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I'm assuming you take that ID and it's passed to be used for a database query, well first thing would be to make sure it's actually the sort of ID you expect. I only changed it to a number, but I've seen things where people will try bunging in a huge string of random letters. Trim it for excessive length, then specifically convert it to an integer. Use it in the query, then when you get your database result back, check to see you do actually have a result before just assuming you do and trying to read it, then if you find you don't have a result just print "No such Article" or even print nothing
As for scoobynet doing the same, that's not good, I'm always very careful where I read any input the user can change and even more so where I'm going to store that input in my database.
As for scoobynet doing the same, that's not good, I'm always very careful where I read any input the user can change and even more so where I'm going to store that input in my database.
12 June 2002, 12:45 PM
#48
Scooby Regular
Cheers Andy
All sorted now, and should work a treat for numbers, letters, strings etc See if you can break it again
I went for the multi checks - check there is an ID, check it is a number, reference db for ID, check EOF and BOF, then finally display the results or redirect back to news.
Seems to work so far - thanks again
DW
All sorted now, and should work a treat for numbers, letters, strings etc
See if you can break it again I went for the multi checks - check there is an ID, check it is a number, reference db for ID, check EOF and BOF, then finally display the results or redirect back to news.
Seems to work so far - thanks again
DW
12 June 2002, 01:32 PM
#49
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I'd definitely agree with the comments about design vs develop.
I'm a developer mainly and as a company we do solutions for websites, including the design, development and hosting.
I do some of the design, but mostly let others better at it do so. Many clients have specific ideas of what they want (ie other sites they like) so sometimes, you have to do something you don't think is any good: the customer is always right (otherwise they won't pay up!).
I've lost clients because they don't like the example sites and won ones because of the same sites, but I think the 'professional' people offer a complete service from collecting the requirements through to deployment and servicing afterwards.
Most work has been done on large corporate (generally intranet) sites and you'd be amazed how many places will get in loads of 'programmers' but no designers. UI ends up totally useless!
A _real_ ltd company, prof indemnity insurance, vat registration, membership of bodies like chamber of commerce also point to a more 'business like' setup - but of course, they could still be muppets!
Experience, well, everything from writing protected mode DOS extenders in assembler (long time ago), linux kernel additions, and yacht navigation systems for the vendee globe, through to big corporate workflow and imaging systems with intranet front ends running on $millions worth of hardware!
I'm a developer mainly and as a company we do solutions for websites, including the design, development and hosting.
I do some of the design, but mostly let others better at it do so. Many clients have specific ideas of what they want (ie other sites they like) so sometimes, you have to do something you don't think is any good: the customer is always right (otherwise they won't pay up!).
I've lost clients because they don't like the example sites and won ones because of the same sites, but I think the 'professional' people offer a complete service from collecting the requirements through to deployment and servicing afterwards.
Most work has been done on large corporate (generally intranet) sites and you'd be amazed how many places will get in loads of 'programmers' but no designers. UI ends up totally useless!
A _real_ ltd company, prof indemnity insurance, vat registration, membership of bodies like chamber of commerce also point to a more 'business like' setup - but of course, they could still be muppets!
Experience, well, everything from writing protected mode DOS extenders in assembler (long time ago), linux kernel additions, and yacht navigation systems for the vendee globe, through to big corporate workflow and imaging systems with intranet front ends running on $millions worth of hardware!
12 June 2002, 03:12 PM
#50
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Dream Weaver I would say from what you have written that you are more of a professional trumpet blower than a webdesigner he he
First rule of design club, Self praise is no praise
Second rule of design club, Self praise is no praise
he heFirst rule of design club, Self praise is no praise
Second rule of design club, Self praise is no praise
06 November 2002, 04:14 PM
#52
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For the record my experience
2 years design education
3 years media computing degree
3 years running my own Internet Solutions company
Around 7 years internet usage
Hosting is free - Dont make me laugh
Search Engines - Pff you know bugger all
Database development - Try developing one of the UK's biggest dating agencies
Online marketing - you have no idea
[Edited by Damaja - 6/11/2002 4:16:07 PM]
2 years design education
3 years media computing degree
3 years running my own Internet Solutions company
Around 7 years internet usage
Hosting is free - Dont make me laugh
Search Engines - Pff you know bugger all
Database development - Try developing one of the UK's biggest dating agencies
Online marketing - you have no idea
[Edited by Damaja - 6/11/2002 4:16:07 PM]
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