Posted by Richard Formby on 03/08/07 13:25

Big Bill wrote:
doraymeRidThis@optusnet.com.au wrote:
>>But generally, to make a site from scratch today with
>>transitional either suggests a lack of experience or confidence
>>or a special rare good reason.
>
> I have a special good reason; I don't wanna!

Let us assume that your statement indicates you still use deprecated font,
center and other such elements, and possibly tables for layout and all the
other nasties, as these are the usual reasons to use transitional as against
strict and still be able to validate.

The following comments apply *exactly* to the difference between the two
sites Adrienne has brought to our attention:

I had a sit down with client the other day, to discuss the new site I
started to build for her while ago[1]. She had changed her mind, as I knew
she would[2]:

Client: "I don't what that left hand menu with square boxes around the links
anymore, I want a nice buttony nav bar at the top like my favourite singers
web site and I dont like the gradient anymore and you were right we need a
"headerish" thing and I want a new logo and *how* to I get listed at the top
of google?"

Took me nine minutes, in front of client and over a coffee, to change *all*
of the presentational stuff[3], move the menu, change the colours, create
the "header", the nice gradients on the nav bar, the colours and balance of
the text/background. All in front of her. To her satisfaction. Almost no
change at all to the HTML/CMS. Mostly simple CSS stuff.

Client: "Crikey. That would have taken [other web drezigner] hours to do.

But it took us another whole hour to redsign the logo to her satisfaction.
Art, not mechanics.

We are still working on the google thing[4].

[1] http://australistrees.com.au/old/ (obsolete)
[2] Women do that...
[3] http://australistrees.com.au/ (may not validate, still in draft)
[4] This is a CMS site. She enters the content, I am gradually teaching her
how to enter google friendly content.

Please feel free to critique the [3] site with the caveat: the template is
*not* finished yet.

Cheers,
Richard.

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