Irish Web Designers With Standards!

eoge

Hi,

I'm interested in the portfolios of individual Irish web designers and Irish web design firms who work with web standards. They seem to be few and far between here.

All posted links appreciated! Thanks in advance for your help.

colm_c

We're not a typical design firm in the graphic design sense but any sites or templates that we produce are web standards based - www.iqcontent.com

smeggle

em you need to fix that contact form of yours. Once a message is sent your site goes nowhere except to a blank page with message sent. Stick a redirect in that template back to your homepage is what I'd do

richardo

From time to time, I check out other web designers' websites. 99% are non standards compliant, as are the sites they design. So it is no wonder there isn't a rush to post here.

I've been developing sites for a while now and do my best to comply. [portfolio at http://www.curratech.ie/portfolio.php]

My main problems are that CMSs tend to screw things up as clients paste in Word formatted text [loads of ampersands and non-standard hyphens and quotes] and also the sheer size of a couple of sites makes it very difficult to validate all pages.

I have just inherited a site from another designer. It was designed in Dreamweaver and, frankly it was in a mess - hundreds of validation errors, and massive file sizes. I managed to reduce one page from 396 errors to zero, and reduce its size from 43k down to 25k. Doesn't say much for Dreamweaver :cool:

seamus

I wrote a page during the week that validated on the first go. I was very impressed

In fairness though, I had written the header and footer ages ago, and I think I validated them then, so there's not a whole lot that can go wrong when you're only sticking in a H2 tag pair, a P tag pair and a few <br />'s

Gordon

http://www.w3csites.com/members.asp?Country=Ireland

bpmurray

Does the original query refer to sites that adhere to standards, or to companies that participate in standards efforts?

There are plenty of the former, and quite a few of the latter too.

cianuro

Hi there.
Our portfolio has not been updated in a while, however, our site and our portfolio sites are all standards compliant. (We wouldn't have the buttons in the footer if it were not true).

Our site is in my sig.

Sidane

cianuro wrote:

Hi there.
Our portfolio has not been updated in a while, however, our site and our portfolio sites are all standards compliant. (We wouldn't have the buttons in the footer if it were not true).

Our site is in my sig.

Argh, tables for non-tabular data! Standards compliant but not semantic html. Not having a dig, I like your site, just pointing it out.

For what it's worth, my little company's web development department (employee count - 1 - me) adheres to standards - http://www.4L.ie/

Why do you want to know eoge? Conducting some kind of survey or just curious?

cianuro

I was waiting for someone to pull me up on that :P

eoge

bpmurray wrote:

Does the original query refer to sites that adhere to standards, or to companies that participate in standards efforts?

Companies (and individuals) that adhere to standards.

bpmurray wrote:

There are plenty of the former, and quite a few of the latter too.

There are very few of the former, I believe. I'd guess maybe 1 in 500 web designers or web developers in Ireland believe in (or have even heard about) web standards.

Sidane

eoge wrote:

There are very few of the former, I believe. I'd guess maybe 1 in 500 web designers or web developers in Ireland believe in (or have even heard about) web standards.

I seriously doubt that!

Besides, there probably aren't even 500 web designers/developers in Ireland!

Asok

http://www.spoiltchild.com/ I have found their work to always be excellent and visually nyom!

eoge

Sidane wrote:

I seriously doubt that!

It may be a little low alright.

Sidane wrote:

Besides, there probably aren't even 500 web designers/developers in Ireland!

Indeed. Well then let me say 1 in 300, although I do believe there are far more in the industry than that.

eoge

Sidane wrote:

Why do you want to know eoge? Conducting some kind of survey or just curious?

Following on from my last reply and answering your previous question, the reason I ask is as follows.

Having spent the last couple of years immersing myself in the world of web design, I have some to respect the teachings of web standards. It is a given that any web site I create now will be written with clean, accessible, validating XHTML. I believe there is truly no reason not to do so and I believe the advantages of developing with standards are as clear as the light of day. This is why I am dismayed when I see "new" Irish web sites, created by large and successful design firms, sporting bulky, obsolete HTML. It has shocked me so that I've said "Eoghan, you've got it wrong, you're simply not finding the good guys". And so I post here and so far I've seen no sites I had not already found myself. Which lead me to make the "1 in 500" claim.

So who or what's to blame? Well I'm not sure this is a problem unique to Ireland. Maybe every country has a similar share of old/new generation developers. But I'll I'll you something that doesn't help; even to this day I am aware of three educational institutions teaching web design 90s style: IADT, TCD and DCU. My girlfriend (studying in IADT) showed me today how her lecturer thought the class to lay out their web sites with tables and implement their "rollovers" with JavaScript. Nice.

And by the way, for those that don't know... web standards are explained here.

mewso

What do you mean by standards complaint though? Compliance refers to declaring your doctype and adhering to it be it HTML or XHTML. Of course I assume you mean XHTML and hope you also mean accesability.

I am a web developer and I suspect developers would be more interested in standards than designers since designers like the visual side of things and perhaps are not yet convinced that they can create visually appealing sites using standards. I suspect alot of designers also rely too heavily on software like Dreamweaver and Flash and if that software can produce standards complaint templates then all well and good but if there is a complication that would requires examination of the html etc. it might not be as easy for them to solve. Thats not to say all designers are html ignorant but many are.

As a developer I enjoy the challenge of coding in html, hate dreamweaver and love that .Net 2 can now help render standards compliant HTML. I even go so far as to change some of the .Net output to ensure XHTML 1.1 output and as my ability on the visually artistic front is weak I regularly visit www.oswd.org for some nice open source templates. It's getting easier every day and with crappy buzz words like Web 2.0, AJAX etc. more designers will become standards compliant simply because their bank account will suffer otherwise.

eoge

musician wrote:

What do you mean by standards complaint though? Compliance refers to declaring your doctype and adhering to it be it HTML or XHTML. Of course I assume you mean XHTML and hope you also mean accesability.

Yes I'm talking about XHTML; I'm talking about accessibility. I'm talking about using XHTML for structure and CSS for presentation. The site I've linked to above defines nicely what I call web standards.

CuLT

I don't have the nads to design professionally, and I'm always somewhat irritated that there are such a large quantity of poorly designed, and poorly coded sites on display for Irish companies.

It's not the companies themselves that bother me, it's the pure gall that the "Web Design" companies they hire have to call themselves designers, or worse, developers.

eoge

My previous 1 in 500 claim was stupid and 1 in 300 still off. Thinking about it now I'd say it's probably closer to 1 in 50 designers/developers in Ireland that work with web standards.

Ph3n0m

eoge wrote:

Having spent the last couple of years immersing myself in the world of web design, I have some to respect the teachings of web standards. It is a given that any web site I create now will be written with clean, accessible, validating XHTML. I believe there is truly no reason not to do so and I believe the advantages of developing with standards are as clear as the light of day. This is why I am dismayed when I see "new" Irish web sites, created by large and successful design firms, sporting bulky, obsolete HTML. It has shocked me so that I've said "Eoghan, you've got it wrong, you're simply not finding the good guys". And so I post here and so far I've seen no sites I had not already found myself. Which lead me to make the "1 in 500" claim.

ahem

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eoghanmccabe.com%2F

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css2&warning=2&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eoghanmccabe.com%2F

eoge

Ph3n0m wrote:

ahem

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eoghanmccabe.com%2F

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css2&warning=2&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eoghanmccabe.com%2F

I know... :rolleyes:

eoge

Ph3n0m wrote:

ahem

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eoghanmccabe.com%2F

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css2&warning=2&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eoghanmccabe.com%2F

Fixed!

Ph3n0m

good good!

CuLT

eoge wrote:

My previous 1 in 500 claim was stupid and 1 in 300 still off. Thinking about it now I'd say it's probably closer to 1 in 50 designers/developers in Ireland that work with web standards.

The problem here is that it's total guesswork on your part, and thus entirely subjective.

If there was some way of surveying a "large" number of Irish web designers projects, then some useful information could be gleaned from it.

The main issue with this being that there really is no central location for web desingers. There's the very board we're posting on, there's creativeireland.com, and I'm guessing dgi.ie was abandoned (and even at that, who knew about it in the first place?).

I think a method that could be considered quantifiable, probably the only method at this point, would be to trawil through every single registered .ie website and make a note of the designers of the sites.


...and that sounds like a lot of work.

eoge

I'd like to add Webtrade to this list. I like some of their (recent) work.

richardo

eoge wrote:

I'd like to add Webtrade to this list. I like some of their (recent) work.

Which list? Valid or non-valid?.........

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webtrade.ie%2F

eoge

richardo wrote:

Which list? Valid or non-valid?.........

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webtrade.ie%2F

I was referring specifically to two recent sites of theirs: dlrceb.ie and callcosts.ie. (Which actually don't validate completely.)

However, I never titled the list either "valid" or "non-valid". I'm looking for companies that use web standards in their work.

eoge wrote:

Yes I'm talking about XHTML; I'm talking about accessibility. I'm talking about using XHTML for structure and CSS for presentation.

But it would be nice if they did validate.

richardo

However, I never titled the list either "valid" or "non-valid". I'm looking for companies that use web standards in their work.

I know that. But then you quote a site that doesn't? Sorry. I'm confused....

eoge

richardo wrote:

I know that. But then you quote a site that doesn't? Sorry. I'm confused....

Yeah there's a mix-up there somewhere. Maybe I've worded something funny...

Basically, I've seen a couple sites by Webtrade that adhere to web standards (dlrceb.ie and callcosts.ie) and said "add Webtrade to the list (of companies that use web standards)"!

smeggle

Whilst your site design is good and it's grand to see folk getting upto standards and reconising the need for them, do try not to get caught in the 'Transitional' trap.

Most get stuff working and validated at this level and then happily leave it there. It valdates as transitional xhtml - cool.

Not!

Transitional is used so as to expediate a web-sites implementation, after all the real object is to get the site up as soon as possible. W3C, therefore reconise that a more loser code is required for the initial construction and site implementation hence the 'Transitional' tag.

Your code is in transition between basic site construction code and finalised code. Here you would be making a transition to xhtml 1.0 or xhtml 1.1.

Technically both html 4.01 and xhtml transitional are get by code to allow you to expediate the sites implementation. It is fully expected for you to re-address and correct the code to the correct standard at a later date.

Allways best to just go straight for xhtml strict and save time is my opinion

Ph3n0m

smeggle wrote:

Allways best to just go straight for xhtml strict and save time is my opinion

www.blogireland.ie

why not practice what you preach (that is, if you control www.blogireland.ie)