[Tigglet]

Hi all,

This one is for the web designers on here. I am interested to know the answers to the following:

What was your path to becoming a web designer - e.g what did you do before?

Do you have any formal web design qualifications? If so, what are your qualifications?

Are you experienced in the integration of any particular shopping carts? If so, which ones?

Do you work alongside a developer/programmer or do you deal with the technical side too?

Do you design to W3C standards?

How important is W3C when designing a website?

Are you a member of any professional organisations? If so, which ones?


Thanks folks.

[Jeewhizz]

Originally Posted by Tigglet

What was your path to becoming a web designer - e.g what did you do before?

I've been making websites since the mid 90's (Angelfire anyone?) - more of a misspent youth I think!

Do you have any formal web design qualifications? If so, what are your qualifications?

None

Are you experienced in the integration of any particular shopping carts? If so, which ones?

Yup, Oscommerce and JShop mainly

Do you work alongside a developer/programmer or do you deal with the technical side too?

My main skills are in the developing/programming side. I.e. tweaking the shopping system to do what you want to do. I have others who do the majority of graphical stuff (I can't colour within the lines it seems )

Do you design to W3C standards?

How important is W3C when designing a website?

It's quite important, but not 100% vital. For instance, Google's homepage doesn't validate

You won't get all your CSS validating if you want your site to work in all the major browsers, inc IE 6, as you'll need to do some CSS hacks, which then won't validate.

However, we make sure all our sites validate XHTML Transitional at least. Obviously, if you are integrating into a shopping cart, you are at the mercy of their code, which if it doesn't validate, could take a lot of changes to make it validate.

Hope that helps

[Tigglet]

Thanks Khalid!

I'm not too familiar with J-Shop. Is it quite user-friendly?

[UKSBD]

I heard the other day that within 3 years the government are going to
start clamping down on businesses whos sites don't comply with the DDA.
Don't think they will be going AAA compliant but will be at least A, if not AA

[tommy]

What was your path to becoming a web designer - e.g what did you do before?

I use to work in HSBC but which was paying for my degree in e-commerce and have been designing sites since.

Do you have any formal web design qualifications? If so, what are your qualifications?

Nope, imho opinion I believe that experience can be more beneficial then any qualifications

Are you experienced in the integration of any particular shopping carts? If so, which ones?

Yes,
Oscommerce, ecommerce templates, cubecart, started developing in Magento

Do you work alongside a developer/programmer or do you deal with the technical side too?

I deal with the programming and database side and UI but things like logo's, graphics i get others to do.

Do you design to W3C standards?

How important is W3C when designing a website?

I am the same as Khalid, i try to get my XHTML and CSS valid everytime but it is not possible all the time due to the IE hacks that need to be in place to get it working correctly.

[Jeewhizz]

JShop is in a different league to Oscommerce - it's a lot better in my opinion

[awebapart]

Originally Posted by Tigglet

What was your path to becoming a web designer - e.g what did you do before?

My general path is from a PC software design and development background first. Interest in computers at school (O level and A level in Computer Studies). Degree in Computer Science at Aston University (1985-89). Working in PC software design and development for various companies since 1989 from small multimedia companies to large retail and merchant banks. First taste of internet style applications was developing corporate banking applications using intranet style technologies on the Microsoft platform. First taste of developing public websites was with a large business magazine publisher (Reed). Started my own company in 1998 designing and developing 3D PC and Java phone games, whilst still doing some custom web and development work for large companies. Then eventually moved focus to creating web sites for small businesses using open source platforms rather than the Microsoft platform.

Originally Posted by Tigglet

Do you have any formal web design qualifications? If so, what are your qualifications?

BSC (Hons) Computer Science 2.1
Out of my Os and A Levels, I would say that the most important qualifications at this level are O levels in English Language and English Literature.

Originally Posted by Tigglet

Are you experienced in the integration of any particular shopping carts? If so, which ones?

Just one, osCommerce, but in my field, i.e. providing an ecommerce sitebuilder service, I have to keep most of the other main ones on my radar too.

Originally Posted by Tigglet

Do you work alongside a developer/programmer or do you deal with the technical side too?

I can do both the creative design stuff and the technical stuff, my previous experience in multimedia and designing games has helped a lot with the design stuff. Nowadays, if any, the main people I liaise with are my client's graphic designers, who have already provided the client's logos, corporate re-branding etc.

Originally Posted by Tigglet

Do you design to W3C standards?

Yes

Originally Posted by Tigglet

How important is W3C when designing a website?

Not very important. What is more important is testing in various browsers. Some of the validation errors that the W3C validator throws up can be very important as they might be serious issues with the code, which means that the page might not work on some browsers. However other errors/warnings the W3C validator registers, which prevent a site passing validation, are much less important and it doesn't mean that your site wont work in the browsers out there.

Originally Posted by Tigglet

Are you a member of any professional organisations? If so, which ones?

No. When I first started my career back in the 80s, I was with the British Computer Society, but didn't bother keeping my membership up with them as I felt it was too out of touch with what was going on and a waste of time. I have a similar attitude towards most 'professional' bodies. I also became a Microsoft Certified System Engineer when that 'professional' scheme first started in the 90s, but soon gave up on that too realising that it was mainly a nice little earner for Microsoft.

For anyone thinking of getting into web design my advice today would be don't do it. It will be a rough ride because there are too many factors going against you, including:

1. The general move towards businesses and people doing this themselves as tools get better and easier to use, have a read of my comments on www.webdesignnorthampton.org.uk - not only does this DIY route severely reduce the marketplace for web designers, there is also a knock-on effect in terms of creating more competition and a more saturated web design market, since if better tools allow normal people and novices to create websites, anybody can set themselves up as a 'web design company'.

2. The general move towards website creation getting cheaper and cheaper, with Microsoft Office Live giving fairly decent business websites away for free

3. The general move towards a global market, which means you as a web designer are competing with lower priced suppliers and workers from around the world, this also means that there will be less work in the UK, as more and more UK web design agencies outsource their work

So if it is so bad why am I still doing it? Because I'm not doing web design in the traditional sense, I'm focusing more on services and tools in area 1.

If you are still thinking of getting into web design my advice would be, think again, and then focus on your graphic design and English skills for a non-technical side career, and focus on computer science, software engineering, software design and development, database design and development etc for a technical side career.

[openmind]

What was your path to becoming a web designer - e.g what did you do before?

Studied CAE at university, moved into sales and developed www.webmasteredge.com as my first major site back in the late 90's, honed my skills from there.

Do you have any formal web design qualifications? If so, what are your qualifications?

Nope and IMHO they are worthless anyway. Experience is a great leveller.

Are you experienced in the integration of any particular shopping carts? If so, which ones?

I've worked with a lot of carts in the past and never found one that ticked all the boxes. That's the reason I developed www.openmindcommerce.co.uk

Do you work alongside a developer/programmer or do you deal with the technical side too?

Purely coding/development. Apparently my rendition of a stick man looks somewhat like a mishaped banana

Do you design to W3C standards?

As far as technically possible, yes...

How important is W3C when designing a website?

Becoming more important every day...

Are you a member of any professional organisations? If so, which ones?

Nope mainly as there isn't one that is well enough regulated for our industry that I know of...

[Tigglet]

Thanks for such a detailed ressponse Paul.

Not very important. What is more important is testing in various browsers. Some of the validation errors that the W3C validator throws up can be very important as they might be serious issues with the code, which means that the page might not work on some browsers. However other errors/warnings the W3C validator registers, which prevent a site passing validation, are much less important and it doesn't mean that your site wont work in the browsers out there.

With regard to testing in various browsers, I have seen a few sites that allow you to do this. Which ones would you recommend and with regard to testing, do people generally have both a PC and a Mac when designing?

The general move towards businesses and people doing this themselves as tools get better and easier to use,

Yes, I agree and I am interested to know if the web designers here are finding work easily with this in mind.

Thanks again. Great post!

[Tigglet]

Thanks Phil