Web design can be good for your self esteem

[David]

I had another of those warm moments from the web today. I received this email:

Hi David

I'm a Multimedia/Web Developer and am also very much involved in 3D design with Maya. When I discovered your site I thought it was one of the best I've seen for visual impact, style and usability - it's great.

One of the things I like best are your vivid images that stand out from the blue/grey background, especially the flowers. I'm going to be a bit cheeky here and ask how did you get the images to look as though they float over the boxed areas underneath them - e.g the big fish on the home page. Is the fish a 3D model that you've rendered and cut it out of the scene with the shadow? Or is a neat Photoshop trick?

I ask this as I have various 3D work that I would like to include in a new personal web site I'm developing and would like to emulate what you've done.

Your help and advice would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Steve Hodgson

OK, so what do I reply?

Do I...

a ) Thank him for being so nice and tell him exactly how it's done.
b ) Tell him how it's done and bill him for the advice.
c ) Tell him how it's done but warn him not to do it because it involves a mess of nested tables and no CSS whatsoever.
d ) Tell him it's a state secret and that I'd have to kill him if I told him.
e ) Tell him to f*** off.

Advice greatly appreciated :D

[James]

(a) :)

[Tom]

Recommend him to sign up for a course in Website Architecture! - or just recommend a book.

[francis]

Well, taking into consideration the old phrase "if it's really that secret, don't put it on the Web", I'd go with A

There's nothing to stop him viewing the source or saving the page and doing with it what he pleases (as you've already found out with the car site). If you don't tell him, he'll just find out for himself. I saved all the files for that CSS driven site map yesterday. It's one of the best ways to learn - go through someone elses work and see how and why. If he doesn't know that he can view-source or save the page, I doubt he'll be too fussed about nested tables and lack of CSS.

++++

You new avatar in Google's calculator (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=MCMLXII+in+decimal&btnG=Search). A strange case where Google is case sensitive - put mcmlxi in as lower case and you don't get the conversion.

[David]

As far as I am aware, Roman numerals are always upper case so I suppose it's consistent - like the calcolator, hadn't used it before.

As for the nested table design; all you say is true Francis. Of course, I'm going to take option "a" - my initial question was rather toungue-in-cheek.

The thing that made me smile is the fact that he describes himself as a "Web Developer" but still had to ask how this was done. As you say, a quick look at the source code would have revealed all - maybe he does need to come on the course!