- Knowledge of web standards.
- A good, recent portfolio. Make sure that at least one site was done within the last calendar year.
- Someone you arenââ
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I have to disagree with your claim that hand-coding everything is a sign of a bad designer. An efficient web designer/developer will use, at the least, a lightweight template system put together with PHP includes or similar methods. This allows you to write structural code once and use it everywhere. Free CMS software like Textpattern and WordPress are also excellent for this kind of thing, with the added bonus for your clients that they’ll be able to update their own sites.
I have yet to use a visual editor that I trust to produce clean, standards-compliant code consistently. Some of them can be made to behave, but only with more effort than is worth my time. Give me a copy of jEdit any day. It’s free, powerful, and works on any platform I may find myself using.
Of course, this largely boils down to personal preference. I don’t think it’s fair, however, to say that the choice to hand-code is a sign of a bad hire.
hmm, i dont agree on 2 points :
– Handcoding prove that he perfectly know css and html, someone who use Dreamweaver for instance, may no know how to work without it..
– If he knows Flash, he can make the choice to integrate some anims in his website, its a plus i guess
Main point is, imo, clean coding with comments, clean psds, and good graphic feeling, its 90%
Thanks for sahnrig. Always good to find a real expert.