Re: professionalism and wysiwyg

At 10:21 a.m. 10/10/98 -0700, Brian Sinclair wrote:
>What I haven't noticed anywhere in this thread is "what if the client wants
>it?"  Since the client is paying the bill, are we going to say, "Sorry, I
>can't do it that way - it won't validate."

Brian, good point -- as a side note, this only really applies for
sites done for clients, though. :)  [More than half my work these
days is not on a work-for-hire basis.]

>I personally haven't run into
>this dilemma yet, as all my sites have validated under whatever the
>standard was at that time.  I'm going to do my darndest to put everything
>the client wants in the site while making it HTML 4.0 compliant.

Me too.  I think this is the best way to produce web pages that you
know won't break in the future -- validation not only helps OLD
browsers but NEW browsers too.

>However,
>if the client wants something that will only work in IE4 and/or NN4, I'd
>tell them that, "If they're not running IE or NN, they won't be able to
>read this at all, or enjoy the page to its fullest." (whatever the case).

I've told some clients that as well.  None of them have been willing
to say "okay, go ahead and do it anyway", although I've heard from lots
of freelancers who have other horror stories to tell about foolish
clients.  Maybe I've just been lucky. :)

>If the client won't budge, hey, they're paying the bills.  If a lawsuit
>comes up, as has been mentioned, I'd put it back in the client's court, as
>they authorized and paid for it.

Exactly.  Since they own it, and you did what you were told to do,
you've got a lesser legal liability.  I'm not a lawyer so I can't tell
you if this absolves you from ALL liability, but if you're doing work
for hire, and your client specifically tells you, "no, don't make
this ADA compliant", they're more to blame than you.  In my non-
legal opinion. :)

--
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn(at)idyllmtn.com>             http://www.idyllmtn.com/~kynn/
Chief Technologist & Co-Owner, Idyll Mountain Internet; Fullerton, California
Enroll now for my online stylesheets (CSS) class! http://www.hwg.org/classes/
The voice of the future?   http://www.hwg.org/opcenter/w3c/voicebrowsers.html

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