benleb

Thanks a lot everyone for your comments! The worst is that my client is also a graphic designer and this is a project that has been going on for 3 months now. The briefings were for another part of the project. Go figure... Ben.

Hi, I'm a web/graphic designer doing freelance work. A client of mine was offended I charged the briefing time for a project the same price I'm charging for doing the actual design work. What I did was to bill her 3,5 hours for time I spent at her place discussing a project. I usually work from home and she's the one who asked me to go to her place to discuss and start working on the project. I've been working for her for about 10 weeks designing stuff for the same client. So she says I should have billed her half my usual rate for these hours, since they were briefing hours. I replied that I'm hired at an hourly rate whatever the nature of the work is. She's paying me for my time and not for the kind of work I do. Plus, I did not charge her for the time I spent on the bus going to her place (about 90 minutes round-trip) and for the price of the ticket of the bus. I have also billed her 1.5 hours for a briefing we had on the phone. Again, she says I should have charged her half my usual rate for the briefing time. I do not agree. What do you think? Thanks! Ben.

Hi everyone! I'm gonna be teaching a 4-hours class of basic design tips to a web design class. I've been a graphic designer for quite some time and I need your help finding which subjects should be taught in that class. I need to put no more than 4 hours in preparation of that class. I was thinking of showing example of nice looking vs ugly websites as one way to do this but what can I do to make it more interactive, i.e. what kind of exercices could be included so that the students can participate instead of just having some design theory thrown at them? Thanks for your help! Ben.

Thanks to al of you for your answers! What I'd figure is do the design. Then do my own development in Dreamweaver just to make the CSS style sheet and then give it to them with the HTML files I made. So there seems to be no way for me to avoid building the html files... Ben.

Hi! I'm new at web design. A client is asking me a price to design his website. His programmer is gonna do the development and the programming. However, he's asking me to give him a CSS style sheet... But wouldn't I have to do part of the development (in Dreamweaver) build the style sheet ? That way I'm going to charge him the time I spent developing the site, give him the CSS style sheet and then his programmer will redo the development. Does that make sense?... Thanks! Ben.

Wow! Gavin, thanks a lot. This is exactly what I needed

Hi! A potential client wants an animation just like the one on this page. Not the one in the header but the big one in the main section. Is it made entirely with flash or is there some JavaScript in there ? Thanks! Ben.

Thanks everyone for sharing your stories! Well, 10 years ago I could easily spend 10-12 hours working in front of the computer... now, at 40 years old, it's another story. Both my mind and body get tired way faster than it used to and I really have to take actions to take care of myself, which I didn't have to do years ago. Friday of last week was my first "real" day working 7 hours straight at a client's office. Being a freelancer, I'm kind-of testing what's my limit of being able to work at a computer. It went pretty well I must say. Right now, I'm doing freelance work for 2 clients. One I work from home in the morning like 8:30 to 11, then it's shower time and I take a 20-25 minutes walk to my other client's office where I spend the afternoon. This way, my day gets cut in half by doing some healthier thing like talking a nice walk outside and it gets my stress level down a bit, if not to zero. Also, I like the balance of working alone and then going to work in an office where I meet people and get to have some interactivity with real people! lol It's some kind of 9-5 work schedule, but doesn't really seem that way. Also, two nights a week - and every next Saturday, I attend web design classes where I still get myself sitting in front of a computer. In May, I'll make a nice switch and teach some of these classes - Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, HTML, CSS - so it'll be more complementary to the computer work I do, which will be a good thing. So for me, after 15 years working as a graphic designer, it's really a question of getting a better knowledge of my mind and body limits - and finding the formula (or job) that works for me to keep a healthier professional and personal like. And I'm still learning. Ben.

Hi, I love web design - and been a graphic designer for 15 years - but the reality is, as I'm getting older (I'm 40), I have to limit my computer work to a maximum of something like 4 hours a day. I just need to do other things during the day to keep a healthy balance. Lately, with design classes and freelance work, I kind-of overdid it and find myself having (another) computer overdose... So, life's teaching me a lesson once again. Do you guys also have to limit the time you spend in front of he computer even though you like design & creation as much as I do? Ben.

Hi, Am I the only web designer who doesn't understand nothing about JavaScript?... I'm attending JavaScript classes and each and everyone of these hours are pure torture... Puts me right when I began college and left Computer classes to go into the Art program I've been a graphic designer for 15 years and I'm taking web design classes. I'm a very creative guy with excellent design/technical/Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign/QuarkXPRess/Flash/Dreamweaver skills. Learning HTML and CSS recently was a breeze and I loved every minute of it. But JavaScript, well... doesn't seem to work for me. I guess I'm more an "image" guy. Ben.

Thanks, mteam! I'll try the CSS sprite. What I did was to put the first image as background and the second as a hover to this background. Ben.

Hi, I have before/after rollover pictures on my portfolio website that are working fine except for one thing... The image disappears for a fraction of a second the time it uploads on the page. Is there a way to avoid this? Here's the page on my site : my website Thanks Ben.

Thanks for your comments! @Tamizhan Five languages and no French? Pff... lazy you ;-P lol @Lev Merci pour les quelques mots en français ! Cheers Ben

Hi! My own portfolio site is online! I've been a graphic designer for 15 years but I'm new at web design - still taking classes. The site still needs a lot of work to do, like a proper contact page and sections to complete, but I needed to put it online asap. It's in French but an English version is in the works. http://www.benoitlebel.com/ Cheers! Ben.

As simple as that? Thanks! Ben.

Hi! I'm working on my website and I'm wondering what would be the best way to build it. As you can see on the attached image of the design, the background is in 2 parts, one for the main part and the other for the footer. The layout is 2000 px wide and 860 px for the main part (container). The way I did it in Dreamweaver is to put the background #1 in the body. Over it, I put a div container in which is the header, menubar and main. For the footer, I had to seperate it from the container so to put the image #2 as background which is also 2000 px wide. I put a 860 px wide div that contains the info for the footer. I'm not sure it's the right way to do it. I'd appreciate if you could correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks! Ben.

It works Thanks a lot, Wickham! Cheers Ben.

Hi, I need help setting up the basic structure of my website which has full background image with the main section at 860 px wide. Attached to this post is a (reduced) preview of how it looks like. I'd like my site to be like this one, technically speaking. Everything is fixed in the center and moves from left to right when adjusting the width of the browser window. How should I set the Body and Container sections to achieve that ? The background image for my site is 2000 px wide, is it ok ? This other site has a background image of 1920 px so I'm wondering is 2000 px would be too much. Thanks! Ben.

BrowserLab? This is really interesting

Thanks for your help guys! I wanna use just one machine, i.e. my Mac. So I guess the solution would be to install a program such as VirtualBox and then install Windows on it. Will I also need to install a web program in Windows to preview the web site I'm coding in Dreamweaver under Mac OS X? Thanks again! Ben.

Hi, I'm a newbie at web design and I'm working on a Mac. I'm wondering how do you fellow web designers that are also working on a Mac preview your websites in Internet Explorer? I'm previewing them in latest versions of Firefox and Safari, but since most of the people are using PCs (and IE), is installing Windows on my Mac the only solution? Thanks! Ben.

Thanks for your comments everyone Ben.

The picture of the students isn't mine but stock photo. The header image in the Cable Car Museum is the one I created with my own photos. Sorry for the confusion. Ben.

Hi everyone, I'm taking web design classes and I'm proud to present my first designs. The first one is a fictionnal educational homepage for Collège Lapomme (Apple College). The other is a modern version of the homepage for the Cable Car Museum in San Francisco. I used three of my own photos to create the header image for the Cable Car Museum page. I've been a graphic designer for 15 years and I'm very excited about diving into the web design world Hope you like my designs! Ben.

Thanks In the View Info option of the menu, under the Media tab, we can see that there is indeed three images that were used to do make the background. I have now to find out how they were put together in web program. Ben.