In Defense of Difficult Clients

by Rob Swan taken from http://alistapart.com/articles/difficultclients


There’s a certain breed of clients that lives in the past: web 1.0 clients in a web 2.0 world. They can be a nightmare to work for, and they often end up commissioning horrendous sites that pollute our precious internet. It might seem easy to just pretend they don’t exist, or, worse still, to do as they ask, but—brace yourself—these clients are the stepping stones to enlightenment. It can be frustrating to work for clients who force us to justify our strongly held beliefs, but, budget permitting, it may still be worthwhile.
The salt of the earth

“[T]hese few are the salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant pool…. There is only too great a tendency in the best beliefs and practices to degenerate into the mechanical…” —John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

J. S. Mill may have died many years before the birth of the internet, but that’s not to say he can’t teach us a few things about dealing with clients who need to be educated. Only by being made to question our own beliefs can we prevent them from becoming dogma—and difficult clients certainly ask plenty of questions.

These clients represent the ultimate test: They require that we explain why frames are bad. Why cross-browser compatibility is a serious issue. Why the use of “click here” is considered inappropriate. Why we now consider the web to be a medium in which vertical scrolling is acceptable. They test our knowledge and they test our patience.

We all know why our methods are best practices, but can we justify them? Because there’s no getting unjustified statements past these clients, and there’s no bamboozling them with buzz phrases and marketing spiel. You have to justify each of your points in plain, simple English, whether it’s a usability concern, a standards issue, or a design choice.
Why enlightenment matters

The big clients—the clients who are already paying megabucks—often tend to believe whatever you say. You’re the expert and they’re the client, and you’re implicitly right because it says so in the last “0” on that invoice. If you weren’t, they’d feel it was money poorly spent, and nobody wants to admit to a bad investment—so nine times out of ten they’ll take your word as gospel.

The little man, on the other hand, isn’t always so easily convinced. They’re not intentionally testing you: they just don’t get it.

But there’s a benefit to staying on top of your game. Because the next time you hit that one client in ten who’s paying megabucks and wants a better explanation, you sure as heck don’t want to be caught off guard. Perhaps it’s been 12 months since you last had to explain everything from grassroots. Perhaps that hesitation, that delay in justifying your fee, is going to go down badly. Maybe today’s the day that you lose out on a Fortune 500 gig because you’re wearing your comfortable slippers and no one’s made you dance in a while.

If it is, it’s going to humble you to realize that the owner of the corner shop (let’s call him Mr. Smith) might have helped you win that contract.
Finding the stepping stones

Nine times out of ten these clients will have already found you. Remember? You probably turned down the job because they asked too many questions. They often tend to be shopkeepers or the owners of small businesses. Sometimes they’re just innocent technophobes embarking on their first web adventure. The last website that they were involved in was 1991, and they don’t understand why things have to be different now.

They insist fervently that there should be “absolutely no scrolling.” They want those cool animated GIFs. The concept of writing content specifically for the web seems as alien to them as this new-fangled and utterly unnecessary thing called “broadband.” They more often than not have a son who is a web designer. He uses FrontPage and hemorrhages “frames.” Isn’t he clever?
Falling from the path

You: You’ll see I’ve removed all the “click here” links…

Mr. Smith: Why?

You: Ah. Well. You see, they’re not considered to be good practice these days.

Mr. Smith: Why?

You: Well, for one thing they don’t mean anything if the website is printed.

Mr. Smith: Well who does that?

You: Right… well, urm… the other thing is it’s not really technically accurate. If the user’s using a keyboard instead of a mouse… if they have a disability for example…

Mr. Smith: Well that’s just political correctness gone mad. You’re being stupid. You’ll be telling me Microsoft’s had to rename itself to “Vertically-challenged-soft” next…

You: ∗Contemplates beating the client to death with a handy philosophy textbook…∗

Mr. Smith: ... why are you looking at that book?

You: I was just thinking how to best explain the virtue of this concept to you. Would you perhaps be persuaded by an amusing and colorful comic strip?

Mr. Smith: No.

You: Oh.

Hold fast, gentle reader. There’s another reason to remain on the path. What if we’re wrong? What if Mr. Smith is right?

It’s only by being forced to question our beliefs that we can be certain they’re right. The web is an ever-changing medium, we need to be prepared to accept that there’s a possibility that some of our practices are no longer best. Or that—and it happens—they may never have been best in the first place, but no one thought to question them with enough force when they were first mentioned.

Should we really not be using tables for layout? Is the use of “click here” really so wrong? You don’t need me to play Devil’s Advocate—Mr. Smith is more than happy to do so without even realizing it. Periodic reasessment can only improve your work.
Sleeping well at night

After learning to deal with these antediluvian clients, you’ll breathe a sigh of relief next time you’re dealing with an “easy” client. They’ll be infinitely more convinced that you know what you’re talking about, and I wager you’ll have increased confidence in what you’re preaching. Even if they never question your decisions, you’ll have the kind of self-confidence that puts a smile on your face.

Difficult clients who require education represent the ultimate test. Before we devote all of our time and efforts to producing all-singing, all-dancing websites for Fortune 500 companies, let’s see if we can spare the time to keep the local shopkeeper happy. Go on. The path to enlightenment is never easy, but you never know: you might even enjoy the challenge.

Using Ubuntu Linux 6.10

taken from : http://www.skunkworks.ro/?p=19

I am a proficient Windows XP user and more, but after seeing what’s Vista going to be with all the issues in relation to implementing security and the way Microsoft wants to license it, I decided that it is time for me to try to find an alternative. This was happening around a month ago after I attended a Microsoft Techday dedicated to Vista. So in the past month I used exclusively Ubuntu Linux 6.10 on my laptop. Below is the journal of what happened.

I’ve wiped out Windows XP from an IBM Thinkpad R51, selected boot from CD and started the install. Installation went smoothly, everything got recognized including the wirelles network card and I realized that in this particular case Linux installation was easier that a Windows XP installation. I didn’t had to manually install drivers for everything: motherboard, video card, soundcard, network, power management etc….
Then I had in front of me the standard Ubuntu desktop and it took me around 30 minutes to realize that I can delete and recreate panels the way I want it. You know as long as you are going after the windows users why don’t you give them an option during install to select a panel layout which is similar with the taskbar in windows?
Then I went on the net and following instructions from their site I installed Automatix which allowed me to install audio and video codecs (including standard windows codecs), Adobe Reader, Skype, windows fonts, gaim 2.0 RC and VLC. I understand why you are not including these in the distribution and I see that you are planning to allow some easier integration of these binaries and licensed codecs in the next release.
Everything so far took me around 90 minutes from the moment I started the installation.
Then I realized the fonts are not as pretty as the windows fonts with cleartype enabled. I tried to play with the settings but I still wasn’t happy. I had to read some forum, install an Xserver patch which because of apt-get and copy paste went fine and again playing with settings and choosing standard antialiasing and to LCD antialiasing. At this stage the fonts are looking ok, but still not as pretty as in windows. Now jumping a little bit ahead in the story: After using OpenOffice, Abiword, Gaim, Firefox, and some other Gnome applications I saw that in some applications the fonts are looking better than in other applications. I really don’t care why, but it is important to me that fonts should look the same in all applications and at least as pretty as in windows without being forced to achieve something like that using the command line. Ubuntu still has some work to do here. Fonts part, is usable but a little bit annoying.
After that I installed my standard firefox extensions, again everything went smoothly
I opened Openoffice and I realized that the icons are bigger than in the windows version. I had to go into settings and reset the icon dimensions. Again why this is different on linux I do not understand. It took me 5 minutes to make Openoffice look like the windows version, but ubuntu could have done that at build time.
I had other minor annoyances:

* I am used from windows that when something goes wrong with a program to right click the taskbar and kill that program. Because I had issues with Firefox 2.0 (which could have been related to extensions) it took me 3-4 minutes until I discovered system monitor. Maybe Ubuntu guys will implement the right click shortcut in the next release.
* I am not able to understand why only some software is in add remove programs and the rest of it is in synaptic manager. Can you guys integrate more software from the synaptic manager into add remove programs? I know that maybe there are some packaging issues, but it is awkard for a guy coming from windows.
* I like the desktop integration, but you could add some bits like new open office document. Also maybe I would like not to use send to mail using Evolution because I am using webmail. I wasn’t able to remove Evolution without removing the desktop functionality. So I just hided the evolution from the menu. Again usable but a little annoying
* I have an Sony Erricsson K750i, I tried to connect the phone to the laptop using bluetooth and an Asus bluetooth adapter. The bluetooth adapter was recognized, and I was able to pair the phone with the laptop. I wasn’t able to transfer files or syncronize the phone with the laptop using Gnome Phone Manager. I would like to be able to achieve this using only the mouse and not going into command line
* I am a happy webmail user for both my business Exchange account and for my gmail personal account. I used firefox before on windows, but it still annoying that nobody was able to come up with an extension or a greasemonkey script which could render the OWA interface in firefox the way it looks in IE6. Not really an ubuntu issue, but maybe guys you can do something about it.
* The last issue that I had was that I wasn’t able to connect by CDMA modem. Is recognized by the operating system but the guys in the support center from the telco are plain stupid. Again not really an ubuntu issue.

I really like the way ubuntu deals with running things as an administrator (root, sudo). Much easier than Vista. After a month of using exclusively I am a happy user, but I know I could have been a little happier. I know that if I start to learn command line syntax, I would be able to become a little happier, but I have no intention to learn another script (command line) syntax. I was able to do everything that I was doing on windows: browsing, email, IM , office work, watching movies (all possible formats, including in a flash player in browser), burning cds, listening to podcasts, downloading using bit torrent, updating my blog, connecting using remote admin to a windows server that I have under control, connecting using to other computer using vnc protocol.
I still have 2 things to achieve connecting to a windows domain and sharing files using samba (I didn’t had to do that yet) and printing again I didn’t had to print anything (I am against printing, but this is another discussion). For the time being if I will solve the issue with the CDMA modem, Ubuntu is going to become my main OS.

How to block Google ads in Opera 9?

I don’t really mind ads unless they are too intrusive but currently alot of bloggers/webpublishers have resorted to putting their ads at places we’re so used to expect content (e.g. under the header, next to images, etc) and unfortunately, this has made even Google ads which were originally designed to be non-intrusive otherwise!

So, one of the major complaints about Opera is that its new content blocker isn’t as good as Firefox’s Adblock, especially for text ads but it’s actually pretty simple to block ads with it.

Here I’ll attempt to show you the step-by-step method of disabling Google ads in Opera:

1. Goto Tools –> Preferences:



2. Click on the “Advanced” tab, and then on the left sidebar, click “Content” and the button “Blocked Content”:



3. Finally click on the button that says “Add”, a new text field for you to put a web address will be there and you can just put this in them:

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/*



This method will work as long as you know where the link/source of an ad.