Re: HTML - why bother?

>From one coder to another I can certainly understand your frustration with
this client's words and actions, but from a marketing perspective, the
customer is always right.

Your work was probably a very elegant solution for updating the site, but
she could not grasp it.  Although she was only the "secretary", she had the
power to circumvent you and decide on an alternate solution.

I have learned this lesson several times.  As coders, we can sometimes
strive to write the most elegant routines, but if the client does not buy
into it, its worthless - regardless of craftsmanship...

Rudy Gomez

> Dandello wrote:
>
> Hear hear!
> I had (past tense - it's gone ) an award-winning site created for a
> church, designed to be easily updated and maintained using using
> data-files, perl  and SSI.
> The secretary couldn't figure out how to edit a data file using notepad,
> bought Dreamweaver, moved to a host that supported none of the scripting
> and proceeded to destroy what was left of the site - Quote from her:
> "It's so easy, I don't see why there's such a big deal about this stuff
> and why we even paid you for that."
>
> The concept of the value of the craftsman was certainly missing there.
> (Needless to say, I'm a little miffed about her comments.)
>
> Dandello
>
> Darrell King wrote:
>
> > We actually make use of Dreamweaver for running some sites, and
> > for conceptual work, and, if the client insists on using a WYSIWYG
> > for maintenance, DW is the one we recommend.  Ours has been
> > modified to produce XHTML compliant code, however, including empty
> > element formatting, a summary fields in the table generator tool
> > and other such tweaks.  The first thing I look for in any editor
> > for Web-related work is flexibility.  The tool must be
> > configurable in a way that allows me to modify the code it
> > produces.  DW earned my respect with this ability, and with the
> > recent improvements to the Site Manager, which allows us to
> > synchronize local and live versions of a project.
> >
> > That doesn't mean we use the WYSIWYG by dragging table borders
> > around or arbitrarily inserting rows and cells or otherwise
> > abusing the interface in ways that produce ugly code.  Everyone
> > here can code by hand, including tables and layers, and so we know
> > what is begin generated by the tool and we know what not to do
> > with it.  We also review the final code by hand after WYSIWYG
> > sessions, and we validate with Tidy as well, because we have old
> > eyes...:).
> >
> > Success and quality are not attributes of a tool.  They are the
> > mark of a craftsman.  To use any tool correctly, you must first
> > know the craft.
> >
> > D
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Noteworthy Web Designs" <webmaster(at)noteworthydesigns.com>
> >
> > Your point does make sense, but the combination is still good for
> > speed for
> > folks like us who do designs for many different customers. The
> > editor is good
> > for appearances and even some html clean-up, but knowing the code
> > and the
> > tweaking is what does the fine-tuning after we run it thru our
> > browsers. I
> > myself have run into several headaches with customers sending me
> > stuff in Word
> > to cut and paste, only to run it thru Dreamweaver's html clean-up
> > and find I
> > still need to go in by hand and do more cleaning. But, it's still
> > a time-saver.
> > And, yup, I also have customers who send me stuff in Publisher,
> > too. Ugh.
>
>

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