psd design to html

what to ask for?

[raijen]

I'm having a small html website redesigned and am wondering what I should ask for when I start to look for coders to convert the psd design to html? It's been a while since I've had this done so I'm not sure what the new guidelines are for having good validated html code. If you were hiring someone to do this for you, what would you ask for? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Rai

[tangor]

New guidelines are same as the old guidelines: get estimates, a contract, partial pay to start, mid-term performance pay, then final on delivery. As for "validated code" you'll need to check that with each update submitted to make sure the product is worthy. You as the contractor have more to do with best final results than the workers producing.

I'd also remain open to any input the code team might submit that is NOT based on a static PSD layout... sometimes they have better ideas.

[raijen]

Thanks tangor! I've got the guidelines down for hiring someone, it's what to look for in an html site that I'm not sure of. css, no tables, html5?

[tedster]

I would definitely go with HTML5. Even more, for any site being built today, I'd make sure the code is smartphone friendly. I wouldn't worry about feature phones too much, unless you know that the feature phone demographic is squarely within your site's target market.

[edited by: tedster at 5:48 pm (utc) on Jan 19, 2012]

[raijen]

Thank you tedster!

[thesheep]

Note that it is sometimes quite reasonable for code not to validate, especially if using newer technologies such as bits of CSS3 and browser vendor-specific attributes, or bits of code included from Google Maps and the like who don't seem to be bothered to write valid code. But it's good to check there are no nesting errors, of course, and no old deprecated code.

If it's a small site, you could consider asking them to produce a responsive web design (RWD). Although in that case you might need to revisit your initial PSD design, as you'd need to consider the alternative (small screen) layouts right from the start, at the design phase.

But above all this, the main advice is: make sure it is well tested on all your target browsers! Ask them specifically to test it and give them a list of browsers it's got to look good on. They might use something like Browser Cam or similar. You could ask to see the screenshots too, for peace of mind.

[raijen]

thesheep, that's a great idea about asking for screenshots for all of the browsers I want it to work with. Thanks for that tip!