Yes, use a contract, in case you may not have noticed its pretty much essential. Not using a contract is like having sex with an STD ridden prostitute without using protection. Clients are always trying to screw you and they often leave you with something that burns.
Also, for the rest of us, please charge a reasonable price. A professional web designer or developer should make $40/hr+ depending on your region. Its a grave disservice to your peers to charge less than this, as it it not an acceptable wage for the amount of work and skill required to design and implement a proper web presence. I suggest buying a copy of the Graphic Artists Guild's Pricing and Ethical Guidelines, it will detail going rates for design work.
I too was a Speakeasy customer until recently. As a Seattle resident living three blocks down from their head office, it seemed a natural choice of an ISP.
After being a faithful subscriber for 3 three years, the buyout happened. Then everything went to hell. When I moved to a new house shortly aftter the buyout, I was double billed for 3 months. On top of that they had told me that I was capable of running 15mb/sec ADSL2 (which I was quite excited about) Sent out an install guy to my new location, only to find out that the line did not support it. The guy just took off anyway and told me to call the office. I was left without internet for a week, while I waited for another guy to come out with an ADSL1 install package. That package did not take either so Speakeasy contacted the copper owners (Covad I believe) and had them come out and do a repair on the line... two weeks later. A whole month went by with my line being gimped to about 200k/sec when my first bill came. Not only was I double billed for my old cancled line at my apartment, but the had the balls to charge me for the full install price, and the full price of my new line (which was still not functional) I asked to speak to a superior, who simply told me that service was not guaranteed and that I still owed them the full amount.
I highly recommend that people avoid Speakeasy/Bestbuy
4. Dreamweaver allows preview easily and pretty much automates repeatable tasks. Handcoding requires a Mechanical Turk.
Score: Hancoding 2: Dreamweaver: 2 Anyone who relies on dreamweaver to preview their site should not be writing code. Any decent html editor will have hotkeys for previews in multiple browsers. Not only is previewing in a browser a more accurate glimpse as to what the page will look at, but any web designer knows that they need to preview in multiple environments. I personally stick with the most recent standards compliant browser to preview sites for individual and minor changes, then every 10 or so minor additions, go back and double check it in IE6 IE7 and Safari (Yes firefox and safari sometimes render differently, example: divs containing floated items often do not interpret margin css tags correctly in Safari.
How many times have we crashed into or blew by mars or the moon? Its not that unlikely that an alien societies first attempt to come to earth ended poorly.
1) Quake 1 (PC)
2) Warcraft III (PC)
3) Lemmings (Mac Classic)
4) Grand Tourismo (Playstation 1)
5) Command and Conquer: Red Alert (PC)
The newest game on the list is Warcraft III, but I find myself playing that after I keep getting destroyed in AQ40 and am not quite ready to separate myself from the Warcraft.
I disagree, to some extent. Often parents don't know what their children are doing on a computer, this is what matters. All through Jr High and High School I spent at a minimum of 2 hours using a computer (not including homework time) This is when I taught myself Pascal and HTML! If it were not for my parents lack of controls about what they largely regarded as an "entertainment device" I never would have gained interest in computers and taken the successful career path as a user interface designer! So suppress children's curiosity about electronics is a crime! The emphasis should not be put on using or not using a device, but HOW it is being used.
World of Warcraft Excercise Station...
Work on your cardio as your run from X-Roads to Thunder Bluff for the first time.
Feel the burn from large dragons... Onyxia takes a deep breath... Crap, I cant get away, Im out of breath myself.
Ok, lets think about this one a little bit. I have no patience for toolkits and perfer to write my own code, and Im sure that there are other folks who want to figgure this one out and not just whimp out and borrow code from google.
On Entering the page:
1) check the url for a hash that would say which subsection if it exists load that section
(this resolves the problem of bookmarks, as the string after the hash will identify the specific section)
2) if there is no hash in the url, check for a cookie that is keeping track of the users location once again, if its there load that section
(twice cook it, keep a cookie updated with the current section of the page, this also solves the problem of people using the back
and forward buttons when entering and leaving the page, however does nothing for in page back and forward functionality)
3) If there is no hash or bookmark you can assume this is a new user create a bookmark and load the default section.
On clicking a link:
Update the cookie,
Update the hash,
load the new section.
This was just a quck thought, as Im a designer not a dev and dont have to do the dirty work myself most of the time. So Im just throwing this out to be picked apart.
The site is a wreck. How are we supposed to put our trust and hope in the design of a massive mutliworld universe, when the company cant even whip up a creative web site? The concept as so much potential, but Ill reserve my hope for later.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, use a contract, in case you may not have noticed its pretty much essential. Not using a contract is like having sex with an STD ridden prostitute without using protection. Clients are always trying to screw you and they often leave you with something that burns.
Also, for the rest of us, please charge a reasonable price. A professional web designer or developer should make $40/hr+ depending on your region. Its a grave disservice to your peers to charge less than this, as it it not an acceptable wage for the amount of work and skill required to design and implement a proper web presence. I suggest buying a copy of the Graphic Artists Guild's Pricing and Ethical Guidelines, it will detail going rates for design work.
I too was a Speakeasy customer until recently. As a Seattle resident living three blocks down from their head office, it seemed a natural choice of an ISP.
After being a faithful subscriber for 3 three years, the buyout happened. Then everything went to hell. When I moved to a new house shortly aftter the buyout, I was double billed for 3 months. On top of that they had told me that I was capable of running 15mb/sec ADSL2 (which I was quite excited about) Sent out an install guy to my new location, only to find out that the line did not support it. The guy just took off anyway and told me to call the office. I was left without internet for a week, while I waited for another guy to come out with an ADSL1 install package. That package did not take either so Speakeasy contacted the copper owners (Covad I believe) and had them come out and do a repair on the line... two weeks later. A whole month went by with my line being gimped to about 200k/sec when my first bill came. Not only was I double billed for my old cancled line at my apartment, but the had the balls to charge me for the full install price, and the full price of my new line (which was still not functional) I asked to speak to a superior, who simply told me that service was not guaranteed and that I still owed them the full amount.
I highly recommend that people avoid Speakeasy/Bestbuy
How many times have we crashed into or blew by mars or the moon? Its not that unlikely that an alien societies first attempt to come to earth ended poorly.
1) Quake 1 (PC) 2) Warcraft III (PC) 3) Lemmings (Mac Classic) 4) Grand Tourismo (Playstation 1) 5) Command and Conquer: Red Alert (PC) The newest game on the list is Warcraft III, but I find myself playing that after I keep getting destroyed in AQ40 and am not quite ready to separate myself from the Warcraft.
I disagree, to some extent. Often parents don't know what their children are doing on a computer, this is what matters. All through Jr High and High School I spent at a minimum of 2 hours using a computer (not including homework time) This is when I taught myself Pascal and HTML! If it were not for my parents lack of controls about what they largely regarded as an "entertainment device" I never would have gained interest in computers and taken the successful career path as a user interface designer! So suppress children's curiosity about electronics is a crime! The emphasis should not be put on using or not using a device, but HOW it is being used.
World of Warcraft Excercise Station... Work on your cardio as your run from X-Roads to Thunder Bluff for the first time. Feel the burn from large dragons... Onyxia takes a deep breath... Crap, I cant get away, Im out of breath myself.
Ok, lets think about this one a little bit. I have no patience for toolkits and perfer to write my own code, and Im sure that there are other folks who want to figgure this one out and not just whimp out and borrow code from google.
On Entering the page:
1) check the url for a hash that would say which subsection if it exists load that section (this resolves the problem of bookmarks, as the string after the hash will identify the specific section)
2) if there is no hash in the url, check for a cookie that is keeping track of the users location once again, if its there load that section (twice cook it, keep a cookie updated with the current section of the page, this also solves the problem of people using the back and forward buttons when entering and leaving the page, however does nothing for in page back and forward functionality)
3) If there is no hash or bookmark you can assume this is a new user create a bookmark and load the default section.
On clicking a link:
Update the cookie, Update the hash, load the new section.
This was just a quck thought, as Im a designer not a dev and dont have to do the dirty work myself most of the time. So Im just throwing this out to be picked apart.
The site is a wreck. How are we supposed to put our trust and hope in the design of a massive mutliworld universe, when the company cant even whip up a creative web site? The concept as so much potential, but Ill reserve my hope for later.