http://www.visitmix.com/ en GreenJoe Nishant had me rolling on the floor like a Weimar. It's been 3 years since my 15+ yr old Weimar passed, and today I feel faced with a very real conundrum: do I get a new Weim puppy or an iPad? Both will be addictive and take a lot of time. Both will get a lot of attention wherever I go. Both cost about the same upfront, but the Weimar will probably have a higher cost of ownership, but a better ROI due to it's likely much longer life. Hmmm...guess I'll get both and hope the Weimar doesn't get jealous of the iPad; even a mil-spec iPad case cannot stand up to the wrath of a Weimar. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Kindle-vs-iPad-vs-Weimaraner#201003180438580 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Kindle-vs-iPad-vs-Weimaraner%23201003180438580 Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:38:58 GMT Gulshanur HTML5 is definitely going to take some of the roles that are being played by flash or silverlight like videos and adds. If somebody just think that these are the main purpose of silverlight/flash then they are going to die. But actually flash/silverlight will just change their sector. They will be used for RIA. Developers will have the options choosing among [html, css, javascript], [silverlight, c#] and [flex, actionscript]. Each of them have their own strengths and weaknesses. And some lightweight desktop apps may also be replaced by RIAs. A silverlight/air mail client can serve the purposes of both web email client and desktop email client by installed and used as oob application with main storage in the web. They can also be used for chat apps. Also they can be used instead of heavily used web apps like facebook with more functionality and less web traffic. Because only data will be moving not the other static things. Actually they are in a phase of changing their roles. Only future can show the real answer. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/HTML5-vs-Silverlight-Which-Will-Win#201003180113195 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/HTML5-vs-Silverlight-Which-Will-Win%23201003180113195 Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:13:19 GMT Patrick Will the presentations given at Mix become on-line? Where, when? http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Rethinking-the-Traditional-Convention-Booth-at-MIX10#201003171222061 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Rethinking-the-Traditional-Convention-Booth-at-MIX10%23201003171222061 Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:22:06 GMT DawnV LOVE the concept and that you are going to stand out in a sea of sameness. I third the request for pics :) http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Rethinking-the-Traditional-Convention-Booth-at-MIX10#201003150609484 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Rethinking-the-Traditional-Convention-Booth-at-MIX10%23201003150609484 Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:09:48 GMT Ray Yes, I second the request for pics... c'mon...for us poor devs chaine...er um I mean sitting at our desk instead of at the conference. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Rethinking-the-Traditional-Convention-Booth-at-MIX10#201003150555237 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Rethinking-the-Traditional-Convention-Booth-at-MIX10%23201003150555237 Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:55:23 GMT Ian Blackburn Well said. I absolutely agree - build something to solve a problem not the other way around. That takes real vision to do well, and a knowledge of both the business and the technology; a combination that can be rare in a single person and needs to be solved by having good communication between the technical person and the customer - isn't that where all or successes and failures are made in this industry? http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards#201003150927032 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards%23201003150927032 Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:27:03 GMT Mike I think its great you guys are trying something more creative. I see a lot of convention and trade show booths and most companies are really conservative. Our clients that give us more creative freedom with their booths ALWAYS end up happier with the outcome. I can't wait to see some pics! http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Rethinking-the-Traditional-Convention-Booth-at-MIX10#201003150923014 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Rethinking-the-Traditional-Convention-Booth-at-MIX10%23201003150923014 Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:23:01 GMT Joe Suchy Great article Tim, with some very interesting comments! I agree with you that at least for developers the problem should always come first. I've seen way too many projects that are on the bleeding edge only because the lead developer wanted to be there! I love Silverlight, WPF, Azure, and SaaS, but there are plenty of "problems" that could be solved with simple 2-tier applications, pick your front end and a database, and would be fine. As developers we need to be mature enough to use the best approach to a problem and not just use a new technology so we can put in our our resumes. Just my thoughts. Once again, great article. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards#201003110528045 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards%23201003110528045 Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:28:04 GMT leah Too funny. I see so many people 'trying' to be witty on Facebook and twitter, I often think someone needs to invent a witty app. You plug in the basic subject and someone gives you a funny take on it. Haiku app? Genius! http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Dear-Twitter#201003110143339 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Dear-Twitter%23201003110143339 Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:43:33 GMT Tim Aidlin Thanks for all the comments, y'all. I absolutely agree that it's important to have top-notch developers and designers creating things "just because they're cool," and I've personally benefitted by using these technologies. And some of them are just fun or beautiful, which is totally fine. I do find, however, the tools and tech I keep in my pocket, as fjpoblam suggests, are those that, again, solve specific problems. JQuery datepickers, for instance. Our lab project, Glimmer, is a good example of developing tools to solve a specific problem. We saw that there were designers out there who would benefit from a visual way to build JavaScript animations without having to actually code the JavaScript. We then focused on the scenario, developed personas, etc ... So, rather than decide we wanted to create a cool WPF application that did something awesome, we started with the problem, and developed the solution. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards#201003110142168 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards%23201003110142168 Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:42:16 GMT Brian I use twitter like SMS. It provides me "alerts" into the minds of others. Which may or may not lead to real content that I'd like to read, bookmark or share. So I only follow people that I think use twitter to "alert" others about their real content - blogs, articles, etc. I don't care to contribute to twitter (anymore). I'm selfish that way and I like being disconnected. It's unfortunate I can't use something like google reader to accomplish this. If everyone would just post to one damn place w/ a working RSS feed... http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Dear-Twitter#201003111212263 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Dear-Twitter%23201003111212263 Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:12:26 GMT Ken Jackson I do believe that we need both types of people. People who build toward a specific problem. And people who build technology that just does stuff that is really cool. The reason the latter is important is because sometimes the people who can build these really cool technologies aren't the same people who are good at finding problems. But if they get that technology in front of the right person, that person may say, "Wow, this would be perfect for XYZ!". http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards#201003100940263 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards%23201003100940263 Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:40:26 GMT kingsofweb.com Just look at people/companies portfolios before committing to giving them money such as these India based companies . http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/How-to-Identify-a-Web-Designer#201003100439597 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/How-to-Identify-a-Web-Designer%23201003100439597 Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:39:59 GMT fjpoblam I've built (and rebuilt) lots of projects around technology. XHTML ...and then HTML5; CSS2.1...and then CSS3; come to mind. I've built templates, thinking I MIGHT use them later. I build websites AROUND the templates. I have numerous little CSS and javascript toys, built up over the years. And, yes (if this is further required by what you're saying) my possession of these tools has motivated me to create things around them BECAUSE I have them, and not just wait until I need them. Parts is parts. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards#201003090913316 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards%23201003090913316 Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:13:31 GMT Matt What problem does a web browser solve? No, really. Think back to 1993 and try to come up with a plausible user story. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards#201003090748546 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards%23201003090748546 Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:48:54 GMT Adolfo You nailed it. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards#201003090654131 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards%23201003090654131 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:54:13 GMT Ian I use the 'OK Give me nine women and I'll get the baby to you in 1 month' argument' it's often quite effective at helping understand the fundamental issue! http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201003090540105 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201003090540105 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:40:10 GMT Ian Sadly business people are often so focussed on a specific issue that they fail to see related opportunities that technology solutions can uncover. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards#201003090536159 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards%23201003090536159 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:36:15 GMT Riskyt You'll get this a lot when you have your business owners trying to be the designers. "Make it use AJAX!" "Can this use Flash?" "I heard about this Web 2.0 stuff...can we use that for this?" Most devs are guilty of this at one point or another. I know I am! But it's not a bad thing, it keeps your skills sharp and your enthusiasm high. You know the old saying, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail?" Well, eventually you FIND something to nail, and it's good to have that hammer when you need it. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards#201003090516472 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards%23201003090516472 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:16:47 GMT Discorax I find that I work FASTER and more EFFICIENTLY when I'm working to solve a clearly defined problem. I relate it a lot to being an artist. If you are trying new techniques, or playing with software it'll take you forever to get a "finished" product (if at all), but if you have a vision of what your goal (problem) is at the outset, all your decisions will take you toward meeting that goal and not necessarily exploring alternatives. In contrast, however, sometimes exploring or working to build a solution to a problem that doesn't exist leads in some very creative directions. You will often end up in a wondrous place if you work this way, but it's rarely cost effective to do so. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards#201003090507058 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Bass-ackwards%23201003090507058 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:07:05 GMT Victorya Shidlovskaya Wow! I thought that only russian webdesigners have such problems! So I was loughing and translating this post to my husbund. The same thing happened to me not so far ago but more bloody. I've started to work with miss X, done a lot of work and was pre-paid for it. But when she started to make me do undiscussed work, I tried to say "no". I wanted to pay back a part of money and give her all .flas, .psds and so on. In turn I've been receiving tons of letters, saying I am a scum... http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201003091110336 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201003091110336 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:10:33 GMT Mike Simon I got a Dell SX2210T dual touch monitor for Christmas and immediately began designing touch applications for my daughter. Having already become accustomed to using my iphone for entertainment and educational apps, she's pretty used to the touch interface and its limitations. The interesting thing I found was that she was far more interested in using touch when it was simple button pressing and and selection (I wrote a preschool app that uses text-to-speech and asks her to select the correct sight word) than for drag and drop (another app let her drag lowercase letters to the same uppercase letters and made cute little "magic" sounds when she got them right). After playing around with it myself, I found my fingers and arms would get sore from dragging them across the screen. I would encourage touch screen manufacturers to enable their monitors to tilt to extreme degrees to offset this kind of fatique. Another interesting side effect was that she wanted to combine her fingers with a stylus at times. I have a Wacom Cintiq 21UX as my second monitor and she's been drawing/painting on that for a couple of years now. It would be nice if all touch surfaces allowed for use of a stylus as well for finer uses like that. Until then, for dragging and dropping she's using the mouse and for drawing she simply drags the window halfway over to the Cintiq with her finger or the mouse, then takes it the rest of the way with the stylus. This is great for teaching her the power of different tools, but I think a single UI paradigm might be more intuitive :) On a side note, most of my work is done in either Silverlight or WPF for Win7/64, but touch stuff seems to work pretty well even if you're using Vista, and hardware support for multiple touch/pen interfaces is definitely more mature in Vista for now. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Design-for-tables#201003080628339 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Design-for-tables%23201003080628339 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:28:33 GMT Chris Check out: http://www.squidoo.com/amazon-kindle-vs-apple-ipad http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Kindle-vs-iPad-vs-Weimaraner#201003061036089 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Kindle-vs-iPad-vs-Weimaraner%23201003061036089 Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:36:08 GMT Zack Forget the iPad and Kindle. I'm thinking that we need a Weimaraner vs. Vizsla comparison. I'm partial to the Vizsla mainly because it has all the features of the Wimey but in a smaller package. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vizsla http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Kindle-vs-iPad-vs-Weimaraner#201003040639407 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Kindle-vs-iPad-vs-Weimaraner%23201003040639407 Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:39:40 GMT Geri Love the article, this is my first time on the website and I just want to say that I love it. Great job! keep it up http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201003040530460 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201003040530460 Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:30:46 GMT J. Jeffryes Developers make sure something is built right. Designers make sure the developers build the right thing. This is a lesson I've had to beat into people over and over again. You can have the best development team in the world, if you don't spend the time to make sure you're building what the client needs (not wants), and build it in a way that the client can use, then all of that development horsepower is wasted. Will developers resist this? Of course. They all want to be Captain Kirk, not Scotty. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Ninja-Coders-and-Despot-Designers-Game-Over#201003040509052 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Ninja-Coders-and-Despot-Designers-Game-Over%23201003040509052 Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:09:05 GMT Eric Saying "no" is just plain smart, especially when it comes to web development. Some companies just aren't hip enough to really understand how web development (or any software-related project) really works. Like you said, "Because you *know* this would change 4 times.” Small companies are used to changing direction mid-stream, so if you get the feel that a client or potential client doesn't really know what they are doing, be prepared for the worst. One alternative to saying "no" is to clearly tell your client exactly what it is they want you to do. Tell them that to do everything will cost them X dollars, where X is a really, really high number. Tell them that it would be less expensive if the project were more focused and try to be as honest as possible about your concerns. I feel that one big problem with contractors is that they aren't good at being up front and honest about concerns or issues. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201003040455520 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201003040455520 Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:55:52 GMT Matt Robin Of course, the other approach is to make all of (your) specific requirements for a project to be known upfront at the start. Then the possible client (x) who you would have said 'no' to, actually realises they would be going nowhere by asking for the wrong thing. This reduces the number of times you need to say 'no' at all. Well, hopefully! No one likes having to say 'no', but I agree: it should be said if needed. Trouble is: saying 'no' too many times = no business at all, so it's definitely a fine-balance. I like Meredith Gould's comment (above): 'do great work, have fun, make money' (or at least 2 out of 3)...if that's not going to happen, then don't take on that work. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201003040747311 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201003040747311 Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:47:31 GMT getsandom people who call thenselves developers should stop talking about Silverlight as if it was just a content presenting tecnology like HTML('cause HTML is just content). Silverlight is basicly the way Microsoft found to make .Net platform have a foot on the web, although mos people still use it only for the crappy content as replacement for Flash, you could do about anything you do in .Net directly, from content to high level aplications like some people I've seem port the entire Quake III xbox engine to silverlight as it was wrote in C# http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/HTML5-vs-Silverlight-Which-Will-Win#201003030240296 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/HTML5-vs-Silverlight-Which-Will-Win%23201003030240296 Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:40:29 GMT Tim Aidlin Thanks for all the great comments above. It really can be hard to say "no," especially in a tight market, and with a lot of talented competition competing for clients. But I stand by the idea that the agency/client relationship must be a strong one if the best-quality work is to be produced. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201003030125391 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201003030125391 Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:25:39 GMT Joshua Hughes (Fifty Digital) Couldn't agree more. Saying no to work is terrifying at first, but it gets easier the more you do it. And after all, it's the 'no' projects that you tend to complain about for months afterwards. Why take them on in the first place? http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201003030534217 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201003030534217 Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:34:21 GMT David Vosburg I am pretty well booked out as far as my personal workload, & have begun networking out/subcontracting new clients. I've found that to be a great way to maintain relationships with & income from clients that I might not be able/willing to do the creative execution for otherwise. There's a great opportunity in saying "No, but..." http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201003010210483 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201003010210483 Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:10:48 GMT Melody hahaha, talk about anxiety while reading/listening to this scenario. Cheers to saying no, Indeed! Clients need to learn to appreciate all that work anyways... http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201003010206451 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201003010206451 Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:06:45 GMT Ahmed Yearwood Honestly, what struck me more about the above post wasn't the designer turning turning down the gig, but the client still willing to work with him/her after being told they'd have to wait until the end of the NEXT MONTH to start. Especially in this competitive environment, most clients would have said, "Thanks, but No Thanks," to the designer and found someone else. If I took that approach to new business development, I would have run out of business years ago. I'm guessing the person in this situation is an independent contractor who only has 24 hours in a day, two hands, and one mouse. In the case of studios, however, assuming it's a YES project, you 1) accept the gig and 2) work out how to make it happen (re-assign, staff up, etc). http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201003010827423 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201003010827423 Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:27:42 GMT Andy Gongea I said enough at 3:00 AM in the morning when a client wanted to make additional adjustments for a site. And keeping in mind that my team worked several consecutive weekends - I have to say that it was a big failure. I really hope to meet fewer clients like that. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201003010514480 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201003010514480 Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:14:48 GMT Mario Allegro just read clients from hell :-) http://clientsfromhell.tumblr.com/ enough arguments to say no to a client http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201003010444000 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201003010444000 Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:44:00 GMT Meredith Gould There's nothing quite like the thrill and terror of resigning a PITA client. My criteria: do great work, have fun, make money -- two out of three must exist. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201002280651570 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201002280651570 Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:51:57 GMT Joshua Allen @Mark, I'm the biggest fan of HTML5, but I don't think we do HTML5 any favors by evangelizing it with arguments that don't make any sense. I'm not sure that you've thoroughly evaluated the points you make here. First, Flash and Silverlight are a lot more widely deployed than HTML5 right now, so it doesn't make sense to say that you "risk isolating" fewer users by depending on HTML5. That might be a consideration in a 3+ years, but not now. Second, you say that new versions of plugins are harder to deploy. That doesn't make any sense, either. New versions of browsers are at least as hard to deploy as new versions of plugins. Third, you use mobile as an example, which is pretty interesting, since mobile is one major area where Google is *not* betting on HTML5. Android apps are written in Java. iPhone apps are written in Cocoa. The idea of using HTML5 for mobile apps is definitely speculative at this point in history. Fourth, you mentioned Google as being your incentive for concluding that plugins are bad. But I don't think that Google would even agree with you. Sure, Google dropped Gears, but they replaced it with ChromeFrame, which is their official plugin that's a superset of Gears. If you think they're not promoting their plugin heavily, you're mistaken. There are plenty of reasons that HTML5 is good, but making up some imaginary battle between "plugins" and "HTML5" just confuses things. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/HTML5-vs-Silverlight-Which-Will-Win#201002270338018 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/HTML5-vs-Silverlight-Which-Will-Win%23201002270338018 Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:38:01 GMT Mark When I heard that Google was going to abandon the plugin-style development through the browser (Gears), I was taken back a bit but after thinking about it I think that is the right way to go. As a developer I want to write applications with the largest user base and the plugin architecture just doesn't scale. Plugins like Flash and SL put a burden on browsers and platforms to support them and keep them updated, that burden just doesn't exist using pure HTML (+js). On new platforms and mobile devices HTML support will come first then plugins (if ever). It is arguable that you simply cannot create robust applications without these plugins but Google's web applications are solid (maps, gmail, docs, wave), and they run everywhere (no plugin required). For me I just cannot afford to bet on one of these plugins to specialize in and risk isolating some users, so I choose html5 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/HTML5-vs-Silverlight-Which-Will-Win#201002270203460 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/HTML5-vs-Silverlight-Which-Will-Win%23201002270203460 Sat, 27 Feb 2010 19:03:46 GMT Nishant I read Seth Godin's book "Dip":http://www.amazon.com/Dip-Little-Book-Teaches-Stick/dp/1591841666. a couple of nights ago. It's a little book about "quitting". It should be required reading pre-graduation reading for everyone. I've always thought that "Winners never quit and quitters never win" was a load of crap; some of the best decisions I've made in my career involved walking away from something. As Michael Bierut said in the presentation Nick posted, "Bad clients lead to more bad clients and bad work." I'll raise my glass—cheers to saying no! http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201002261132069 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201002261132069 Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:32:06 GMT pidge It seems half my web usage is learning to use new upgrades/versions/improvements so after I set a restoration point I'll give it a whirl albeit I am somewhat trepidatious. Pidge http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/MIX09-Live-Blog-3-Internet-Explorer-8-Dean-Hachamovitch#201002251139036 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/MIX09-Live-Blog-3-Internet-Explorer-8-Dean-Hachamovitch%23201002251139036 Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:39:03 GMT Lukas Bradley Tim, I appreciate the story, buy the UPDATE that she took the work ruins the entire story. The problem isn't that clients ask for the impossible, it's that vendors tell them it is possible. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201002241208515 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201002241208515 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:08:51 GMT Karsten Januszewski @Brittny - I'd start with the tutorials at http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/What-ASPNET-Developers-Should-Know-About-jQuery#201002241102415 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/What-ASPNET-Developers-Should-Know-About-jQuery%23201002241102415 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:02:41 GMT Dave Tanner I'd second Sean's comment above. When working as an employee those decisions can be beyond your control, and usually by the time you're involved it's too late or too much has already been invested to back out now, and all you can do is damage control. All of which should highlight how much more critical a considered decision to take work on or say 'No' should be for a business. Aside from the monetary difficulties, there's the potential effect on company morale and culture as employees wind up in the firing line of a difficult client, difficult or tedious work, or unrealistic expectations either by the business or the external client in terms of budgets and times. Either way though, whether you're a designer with internal (as an employee) or external clients (freelance), you're always going to need to manage those client's expectations. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201002231156597 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201002231156597 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:56:59 GMT Brittny Thanks Dave. You made my day. I was looking for JQuery info. for asp.net programmer and hung here.... One Question, do you know site where we can find JQuery examples??? which are easy and for startup.... http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/What-ASPNET-Developers-Should-Know-About-jQuery#201002231012008 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/What-ASPNET-Developers-Should-Know-About-jQuery%23201002231012008 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 03:12:00 GMT fjpoblam I have just recently learned to draw the line *precisely* anywhere it's not comfortable for me. Life's too short. I'm pro-bono webmaster for a nonprofit group. For some time I was demoted to copier and paster of content, even. It became no fun. I drew the line. For a paying client, I found out another code-writer (relative of the client) had diddled my code. Not much, but some. I'm picky. I drew the line. Loss of income, but... I drew the line. If I think it's gonna impair my work, then it's surely a matter of efficiency. It may effect work for other clients as well: mental stamina, concentration, and like that. A good webmaster can sense oncoming discomfort. Just say no. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201002230731361 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201002230731361 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:31:36 GMT chitra desai I loved this write up , Nish !! Keep it up ! http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Kindle-vs-iPad-vs-Weimaraner#201002230909013 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Kindle-vs-iPad-vs-Weimaraner%23201002230909013 Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:09:01 GMT Aidan Most clients are lazy to find other designers as they get used to one. It become a habit of over reliability on the same designer which just does the same routine. I think clients should be bolder in searching for the ideal designer that worked for them. But bear in mind, who work for them today does not necessarily means it will always works for them. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/How-to-Identify-a-Web-Designer#201002230316064 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/How-to-Identify-a-Web-Designer%23201002230316064 Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:16:06 GMT Sean Gerety What about saying "no" when you're not in a freelance position? When you work for a company, either large mega-corp or small startup you have to be a lot more delicate in saying "no". In fact, you actually have to figure out a way for the client (internal) to say "no". And "no", may become a compromise. http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201002221130504 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201002221130504 Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:30:50 GMT Nick Finck Wait, you worked with client X too? :) Great post... sometimes it just isn't a good fit and despite the need to make payroll sometimes "no" is a much more effective and lucrative business decision than "yes." Michael Bierut of Pentagram gave an amazing talk on this topic: http://bit.ly/cBQ934 Amazing not because it wasn't anything all that new or common sense, but because of how well it was articulated and how all the pieces added up. Cheers, -Nick http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No#201002220716163 http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Cheers-to-Saying-No%23201002220716163 Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:16:16 GMT