I got an assignment from somebody with my client who did not have time to do it.
The assignment was to port a flash site (bought and implemented in all haste) to HTML, so maintenance could be done locally and more cheaply - and of course for SEO activities a.s.o.
So I started out and I have spent a significant amount of time on this, simply because I am a moron when it comes to CSS.
I have mailed several of the involved parties as I have made progress to get feedback and so on. Two days ago I came to a milestone where all I needed was some graphics, so I ordered these from the local photoshop hotshot.
So I mailed the involved parties and the product manager responded.
She wondered if something was bad with the test environment, because it did not look good.
I have continuously tested in Safari/Firefox/IE7 and IE6. IE6 is the installed browser on the company machines here - and I tend to think I succeeded in getting the layout to be somewhat identical in the different browsers.
So I went and talked to her. I told her that it made no difference whether it was test or production and she informed me that the site was of no use to her in its current state, since it was too ugly and the texts looked like rugged and there where not beautiful enough.
I wrote a new mail to all the involved parties saying that I was unable to address the actual rendering of text in IE6 (and other browsers) and I would put the last images on the site and regard the assignment as finished.
I have not heard anything...
I am still waiting for the graphics and I really really want to get this out of the way so I can write an invoice and focus on my other assignments... I think it is the last time I take a layout assignment. There are too many opinions and I am not the best qualified person to do CSS and layout in different browsers. Whether the Internet is ugly and all texts should be replaced with graphics is not for me to decide, I completed the assignment and I need to move on.
I did learn a lot, but I am a programmer and programming practices are somewhat applicable to CSS and HTML work, but there is so much more to that field and I am simply not experienced enough in this particular field.
Frontend work is difficult, the back and forth can be exhausting and there is no real objective measure of what looks good.
It's especially problematic when dealing with a client that doesn't understand the limitations of HTML and CSS (especially if they're coming from Flash, where *anything* is possible).
If you need to do CSS work in the future, I'd recommend starting with YUI CSS (reset-fonts-grids & base) or some other CSS framework.
It really takes the edge off.
Good luck!
Re:Frontend work
jonasbn on 2008-09-06T19:49:08
Thanks for the tip on YUI CSS, I have just discovered grid systems - I can see the benefit, but I guess it takes some time to get the hang of it.
jonasbn
Re:Frontend work
Aristotle on 2008-09-06T22:05:06
Another interesting package in that area is Blueprint CSS.
