XHTMLized Turns Your Design into Code

The black picture links to http://www.htmlized.com, which just contains sponsored links.

Fixed it, thank you for pointing it out.

Sounds fun. What’s stopping someone from saying “I don’t like the design” and walking away with the new design for free?

Bookmarked on Digg

who is the target for this?
is this for the remaining 5 print designers who don’t know html?
an average consumer wouldn’t have a photoshop mockup for a site ready to go.

@simran:

you submit the design to them, and they code it.

@Brian:

this is for cheap companies that can’t pay a real firm to create a proper web presence (branding, marketing, etc).

I’m Dave, XHTMLized founder. Thanks for putting us on Techcrunch!

@siram:

Customers pay afterwards so if they aren’t happy with the code quality, then no food on our table! Hasn’t happened yet.

@Brian

Many designers out there would prefer to spend time determining colors, not classes. Especially with an ever changing browser landscape. It’s not only for those who are still stuck on table based designs, but also for those who just don’t want to.

@Jason

I wouldn’t say it’s for cheap companies. Sure the service is affordable but I don’t see how this makes the companies cheep. We work with a lot of design firms - our specialization in is code.

@ Jason: I get that already. But to quote Michael:

Projects start at a very reasonable $150, and you don’t pay if you don’t like the product.

What’s stopping someone from taking and implementing the product and saying, that they don’t like it and thereby walking away pockets full of un-spent cash?

It’s Simran. Interesting idea for a company, Dave. What I still don’t understand is how this is going to be profitable on a mass scale when you have a large percentage of people claiming they don’t like the final product, just to avoid paying.

@simram

If they don’t pay, then we’d expect they don’t use the code. May be we are just lucky, but so far we’ve been working with amazing customers, most sending repeat work and always prompt payments.

In reality not many people do that. Don’t you see ads for products which tell you if you are not satisfied by our washing powder- you get your full money back- no questions asked. It’s a strategy to get user confidence in making a purchase. They must be for sure backing it up with good quality to keep the refunds low.

For that matter most american retailers accept returns for no questions asked. It just works.

Five days? Wow. I can get a design sliced within a few hours, XHTML, CSS and all.

@siram

I see what you’re saying - there are people who could abuse the system. We toyed around with the idea of asking for a starting deposit but we’d rather keep things simple. If we were finding we started to get a lot of cases where people were not paying we’d evaluate it then.

@Don

In reality most projects take a day, but then you get ones with 50+ pages which require the buffer. People like having a timeframe, but we can work to whatever milestone you have.

that’s a great service at very good price, but once you get the XHTML, then what? You need a hosting and you need someone who can update your content without screwing up the layout. And you may need someone to code one contact form or a voting poll. I think the small-budget folks will be much better if use services like moonfruit, SiteKreator or even Godaddy…..

WHat about databases…..is that extra?

@danny

XHTMLized isn’t focused on databases. We specialize in markup. However we’ll help you out with your site in anyway we can, be it pointing you to some top-notch programmers or helping iron out what you really need.

Great idea.

Best of luck!

Hey Dave

Good luck with this. I’m sure you’ll see loads of new customers roll in off the back of this coverage, some good, some maybe not so good. I guess that’s going to be one of your big challenges as you grow way beyond word of mouth.

All the best though and hope it goes well.

Oh, boy. After checking out similar services, i.e., meretricious domain companies that claim they can do this, e.g., will not name - I am going to use this service for my web design. I understand that for those who are fortunate enough and have the CSS/HTML skills to do this in 24 hours - seriously, great for you. For those like myself that need to launch a bunch of domains with quality web pages that index well, while I work daytime as *not* a web developer, this is a dream come true. I maybe proven wrong, but am currently very excited. I would love to hear of a better alternative if there is one.

Seems to me that, if the templates provided as as well-produced and as full of the rich semantic goodness as is being claimed, then this company is radically devaluing the skills of professional web designers. I mean, quality modern web design is a complex, synthetic craft, requiring an unusually broad skill-set. An individual designer, who might be expected to have skills in information design, graphic arts, markup, and writing, would surely find it very hard to make a living on US $150 a week. But I’d say that it’s that sector of the market that would be hit hardest by this kind of service. I mean, it’s bad enough that we have the concept of “nephew art”.

@ Nick, this doesn’t answer the question for ok well-produced sites that i have, i mean, I really am not happy with Moonfruit, SiteKreator or even Godaddy. That’s why I had some hope with this service.

Kind of sounds like a web design sweat-shop. Whats the designers cut?

I always cringe when I hear people start talking about “sweat shops”. Because where I live that isn’t bad money for coders. And there are other places in the world where that is very good money, assuming they got around 50% of that fee.

It seems arrogant for people in developed countries to look down on us just because the currency exchange rates mean what they spend on lunch is a full day’s pay for us. And when some western politician or celebrity shuts down our little “sweat shop” and we lose a good paying job that is a crime, or should be.

@Nick

Look it’s simple mathematic…if i can get the same quality coding done oversea; why would I reduce my profit by contracting it to someone here in the States!!! Business wise and financially it doesn’t make sense!

Why do u think us consumers flock to Costco / Sam’s Club…because as consumers we like/appreciate a good bargain!

Still not as fun as making your own

@ asiansweetheart

I’m not talking about the pay; That doesn’t really matter to me. Its the working conditions that some people have to work in that appall me.

Believe it or not, America does have a little experience with poor working conditions and sweatshops. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.....sweatshops

@ Asainsweetheart (and partly agreeing with Deff), i’m not talking about the pay either, and there are better websites for you to offer sweat shop advice too (which have none to do with this post). Try myspace which you are probably on, or tagworld. In your words, “It seems arrogant for people in developed countries to look down on us just because the currency exchange rates mean what they spend on lunch is a full day’s pay for usit’s a place for non arrogent countries to offer “advice” and “sell” their products.”

Stop selling yourself, and start selling the post, as you sound so niave and impertinent to this discussion. If you disagree, I would love to be proven wrong.

Bottom line: Techcrunch is such a quality site and it’s sad that answers from the public come from “pros” like yourself. If you need to date a quality guy in the Valley, there are other ways to do that than participating here.

I really don’t see how this is a web 2.0 company, or service.
There are tons of people that code vaild XHTML 1.1 for the same price or cheaper.
Were they profiled because they use the Basecamp API?

What I still don’t understand is how this is going to be profitable on a mass scale when you have a large percentage of people claiming they don’t like the final product, just to avoid paying.

All the people saying this clearly have no idea what 98% of clients are like. People are not, generally, out to rip you off. Most pay their bills, most are honest, and the world isn’t entirely populated by sharks.

@ deff, westerners have similar views of working conditions and pay. The working conditions in those “sweat shops” are better than the alternatives, just like the pay is better.

@ that other guy, you can insult me, that says more about you than me. I have opinions on technology as well as offshoring. And they are probably more valid than yours since I have some experience living and working in a couple of countries. And I have been to the Valley when I worked in California. I’m sure there are some quality guys there, but I’m not interested thank you anyway.

And back on topic. My point was that the concern by deff about the work being done in sweat shops shouldn’t really be part of whether you would want to use the service or not, for the reasons I mentioned above.

dave

ignore the haters. This sounds like an excellent service and I’ve bookmarked your site. I hope to put some work your way soon.

@ asainsweetheart:

From your site: http://www.asiansweetheart.net/ - you say
“Please view the photos of our beautiful and exotic Thai ladies, select from our services and place an order. Be sure to check out our special offers and our many free services.” and it gets worse…

I’m going to Thailand with my boyfriend in two weeks and unfortunately, he’s in technology and can block this site right now. Sorry. This is a reminder to only give positive feedback (or negative that is relevant) on the post. People turn in here for relevancy, not whores. You are the first I’ve seen in months.

Besides the point, I really like this service XHTMLized - that’s why I’m confirming your “pros” to go elsewhere. Could this be a spam filter not working correctly?

Dave,

Alex is right! Ignore the haters…your service seems like a good idea. Bookmarking it and will be using the service for my projects!

Ibid to Evision. Plus, so far there are no true haters on this post, Dave, which is something I don’t need to explain as you know it already. All I can say is keep up the good work - you have an extremely valuable product which I will use.

whoa. seems to be a lot goin on here. personally, i think the whole idea is pretty cool, and some people could really use such service. nevermind such hate comments and the whole “sweat shop” idea.

Very good idea, and very good and respectable person Dave seems to be.

Also if you go Sitepoint or any webmaster forums, this is the going rate to have your PSD/design made into webpages… good stuff

Regarding talk of sweat shops - I know that XHTMLized opperates differently.

Dave looks after his team because each member is an asset and part of a functional unit. I have even thought of working with him (I have known him for over 8 years and respect him personally and professionally).

I think that XHTMLized is a great idea - and there does seem to be a need for such a service. Simple, clean, fast and affordable. It’s not for everyone, but neither is Microsoft Windows, Coke (or Pepsi), etc.

Thanks to those who have offered the XHTMLized.com team encouragement, I’m sure they appreciate it.

- Mike -

wow, calling names “whores” and all. what happened here? i don’t see anyone pimping their stuff or off topic. maybe afraid boyfriend will run off? (oops, probably get banned for that).

btw, xhtmlized look cool. hope we see user reviews in the future. back to lurking…

Mike:

“Regarding talk of sweat shops - I know that XHTMLized opperates differently.

Dave looks after his team because each member is an asset and part of a functional unit. I have even thought of working with him (I have known him for over 8 years and respect him personally and professionally).”

I doubt this work is done in a sweatshop, ala Apple and iPod. But the price does reflect that the work is most likely done offshore, in countries where the US dollar has more buying power than here in the US.

If we continue to offshore any and every last bit of whatever labor we can to other countries, especially our technology work, eventually they’ll have problems with finding the labor to do the work and then the offshoring will begin to other countries. The same will happen in these second-tier offshored companies until it comes full circle one day and ends up being accomplished by some designer in Kentucky just trying to make payment on their trailer–the American worker finally reduced to a point of desperation that yes, even 150.00 a week at least keeps one off the street.

Chances are, there are independents in this country who can do much of the work for a good and fair value, and these people will also be around to help with database work and other programming and a relationship is established between the business and developer. A relationship that, for a small business owner, will eventually prove essential.

Any company looking to the long view is not going to be enticed by cheap costs up front. Eventually this service will exhaust the quick buck folks, and life will go on.

And is it my imagination, or are many of the posts here being written by anonymous people who all seem to have the same written ‘dialect’?

@Shelley: work is also completed in Australia and the US. XHTMLized.com does not discriminate based upon nationality/religion/age/sex/etc. - and nor should they. Quality skills is what is sought - which is essential to having satisfied customers.

Dave has told me that XHTMLized has completed projects for clients in Australia, Russia, Italy, and others. One member of the XHTMLized team lives in Russia - so that project was a match made in heaven.

I have developed web sites commercially since 1997 (I currently develop a web based financial application for Amex EMEA and banks in Europe) - and I too am partially concerned about offshoring. The origins of the projects and the team members are widely dispersed enough for this to not concern me. (I am not employed by XHTMLized.com - I just went to university with the creator.)

Regarding companies and the long view, in my experience, many companies only look at the bottom line for the current fiscal year. What is delivered to them by XHTMLized.com is a flexible template that can be extended later to have database/Ajax/etc functionality whenever new features are sought.

As for the ‘dialects’ - I am not a linguist; nor can I pick the origin of posts. But I can say that I have never heard a fellow Aussie say “throw another shrimp on the barbie”.

It’s past 2am so it’s time for me to punch out. Night all.

- Mike -

This sounds like a great idea to me, and thanks to Mike for blogging about the service. I’m surprised at some of the anti-offshoring rhetoric that’s surfaced in these comments. In the technology sector, we’ve lived with a global economy for a long time. The acid test has always been the quality of work delivered for the money paid. If XHTMLized delivers on their promise, more power to them.

It’s funny … 60% of my time is spent making a design look good (colors, nudging, shapes, etc) in Fireworks/Photoshop. I absolutely dread the other 40%, which is kicking it into (X)HTML & CSS.

My question is … can designers justify the increase in their prices to accomodate an outsourced service like this?

I’ll give it a try on a couple projects … the end-product is excellent.

@Bas
Perhaps they were profiled because like many 2.0 companies they simplify the experience for the user, especially the beginning user.

Could you please name those other companies?

As it is with all things: you get what you pay for.

Any designer worth his salt can crank out a mockup to some functional CSS/XHTML in a few hours. This service only appears to be inexpensive because they do not perform any of the other steps a customer would have received from a more thorough web design process. So instead of receiving a bill for a few thousand dollars for research, design, backend coding and interface coding, they receive a bill for interface coding. Smaller chunk of work, smaller bill.

Sure there’s a demand for this service, but nobody is doing themselves any huge favors by going with it.

@Dana

Precisely right. And for those fixating on the $150/under 5 days thing and inferring that you get 5 days of coding for $150… I’d bet not. Remember, they say “starting at $150″ not that $150 is a flat rate. And of course, if you need some kind of a CMS or other db interaction and AJAXy goodness, that’s likely more… Plus, of course, you need the design in the first place. But for people whose sites can be done with a handful of templates and who have a decent visual design but not the time or skill to code it up… this is a nice service. If the coders really can turn out 2-3 templates in a few hours for $150, they’re grossing an effective $30-$40 per hour… not bad.

This isn’t to say that outsourciing isn’t a worry… but this doesn;t compete with a full on, do the IA, design, db and coding solution. Now, getting clients to understand that…..

@ Don Wilson
“Five days? Wow. I can get a design sliced within a few hours, XHTML, CSS and all.”

WOW eggface, so at their rate you’d be pulling around $30/hour! Start your own company, it’ll be hyooge!

I’m sure it takes them 5 days…shut your cakehole.

Jeez…. 150 bucks? I’ve been charging 20 for years now.

/me hikes price…

Thanks luvsDon, I loved the childish comment.

@ Dave Rosen, 50+ pages of design to chop up for $150 doesn’t sound right, unless you’re boosting the number of pages out of proportion when there is only text to insert on most of the pages.

@ Dave Rosen

Dave- this may sound like a dumb question, but what prevents someone from stealing the code? I’m assuming we get to view and test the site before buying so can’t someone just “view source” and steal the code???

Well, this post and this company certainly pissed off the designer crowd. It was up on the digg home page for a few minutes and then pulled down as multiple people reported it as “lame” and “spam”. I’ve also deleted a bunch of flame comments on this post. Congrats, HTMLized, when designers get that pissed off about something it almost certainly means you are onto a good idea.

Dave here again. It’s great to wake up and read through these comments. Thanks everyone (big thanks to Mike!).

Wed design involves a growing myriad of talents - information design, graphic arts, marketing, and copy-writing to name just a few. That’s a lot on a typical web designers plate. It’s hard to give each area your 100%. By having XHTMLized, web-designers have an option of not having to worry about markup. One less thing for their plate, meaning they can spend more time on other aspects of the site that they enjoy. Just like how building a house requires a whole lot of individual tradesmen, building professional websites ideally requires individuals with different talents.

XHTMLized customer base is designers, programmers and developers. We have very, very few direct business clients wanting a page XHTMLized for themselves. Frankly, I’ve never meet anyone outside the web industry would knows what XHTML or CSS is - although my Nan tries hard. So XHTMLized isn’t competing against freelancers at all. Far from it. Most of our customers are freelancers themselves. So we’re not taking work away but providing a resource which makes some people’s job as a designer a lot more enjoyable.

XHTMLized is the furthest thing from a sweatshop I can think of. To me, if your locked into going to an office 9 to 5, then your working in a sweatshop yourself. Serious. No matter how much you are getting paid - $5 a month or $5 million a year. Your giving up your time. Money can come and go, but you never get time back. As an ex Macromedia evangelist, I’ve travelled extensively. I’ve lived and worked in the US, Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, China and of course my homeland Australia. And I have to say from all the people I have meet, the people are the happiest, are the people who control their own time. Be that the reggie bus drivers from Samoa or the guy writing poems for couples in the park. Having time to think about and enjoy your life is what matters most.

If there is a designer who is a gun at photoshop but works on a mac and doesn’t have a PC to do proper browser testing, why should they be left out in being able to deliver a companies site? Without this sort of service jobs like that may only be in the grasp of web design outfits with full-time CSS XHTML employees. Employees stuck in the office working 9 to 5….

We’re small. Currently there are 12 of us doing the XHTMLizations - some are just newly on board to meet the new demands. Majority are in the US - Trey, Matt, Lane, Tine, Jeff and Dustin. Stan, Joseph, Ilya, Dmitry and David dotted throughout Europe. Glorie and Aja in Asia. I’m in Australia where the company is based.

At XHTMLized things are totally flexible. A steady stream of projects flows through. Each project has a budget and timeframe. We XHTMLizers then pick and choose which projects we want to work on. XHTMLizers work when they want. They work as much as they want. They work from wherever they want. They take as many holidays as they want.

How many people in the world are free to just go fishing in the middle of the day and not have to worry about money coming in? Not many. We have this freedom.

Everyone who does the XHTMLizations specializes and has a passion for XHTML and CSS. With years of experience, the process to convert a design is damn fast. I totally agree that it would be difficult to live on US$150 a week. However most projects can be XHTMLized in a couple of hours. It’s easy to convert 2 a day which makes a very good weekly salary. With the pricing each project is quoted. So $150 is the base but this increase with more complicated or time consuming designs. Naturally a cut goes to XHTMLized - marketing, admin, tax further development.

Prehaps the best thing is the majority of XHTMLizers might only put in 20 or so hours a week - then have the rest of their life to do what they want - be it surf, study or spend time with the people you love. That’s the dream, and it’s the furthest possible thing from a sweat-shop I can imagine.

Another huge advantage is the community we have going. It’s very cool working with people from all over the world. It gives a much bigger perspective on life. I’ve freelanced solo before - it’s great. But it can be lonely and reclusive if your not careful. It’s great collaborating and sharing your life with others. Some of my best friends are the XHTMLized team. It’s a goal to have a big meet-up one day. A XHTMLized camping trip at some scenic part of the globe.

That’s why XHTMLized get 100s of applications a month from freelancers wanting to join (big thanks to everyone who have sent in their portfolios - we’re constantly amazed at the talent out there!).

Thanks for all your comments and thanks for checking out our service. I hope this post has answered your queries and provided more of an insight into what XHTMLized is about, who we are and how we work.

Even bigger thanks to all of you who have sent in quote requests due to the mighty Techcrunch spotlight. We can’t wait to work with you to make sure machines dig your designs. Thanks for your patience, as we get around to you all personally.

@Don

Your right. 50 pages is going to cost a lot more than $150! My experience is projects this scale can be flexiable on budget but not on time.

@Jamie

Honest, faith and Superman.

@Michael

It was one of my goals to make the Digg homepage. I’m sorry I didn’t get to actually view it while it was there but thanks to everyone who dugg it!

multiple people reported it as “lame” and “spam”

This is a good topic with good comments
it is definitely not lame nor spam - it could be a few members with multiple accounts who abused the system

I slice and dice for designers for a living and you can bet I’m going to try this service out on my next project.

You’re dead on Michael - if this was lame, nobody would have bothered commenting.

I say bring it on and I’m going to the beach.

Mike, your point is good: if a person has already made a design decision and has a picture of what they want, it’s all drawn out, and all we would be doing is creating the XHTML and CSS, this doesn’t necessarily take much time.

I think I was thinking of my past work for sites, where I’m starting with vague ideas of what the person wants, going through the iterations to discover it, and then having to incorporate all the backend processing just to make it work.

Starting with a picture and _just_ delivering an XHTML/CSS version of that picture, I can see now where the rates are coming from. I just can’t understand how this work differs from what a good design tool delivers, but hey, if this employes folks, more power to them.

I think the phrase, “They outsource your design to coders around the world and return it to you within five days”, set a tone for several of the responses.

As for the dialect, it just seemed to me that some of the earlier comments seem to be written by the same person using a different signature.

Michael Arrington, I’m not sure what you’ve had to delete, and maybe it was _really_ bad, but have you ever questioned your sense of what is flaming? I’m still trying to put together a post from what I saw of your ‘core values’ Bloggercon presentation on just this.

@ Shelly
“I just can’t understand how this work differs from what a good design tool delivers”

There’s no design tool that can produce good markup that I know of. There’s tools which help, but you still need markup artists to create code which is truly beautiful.

But you’ve raised a very interesting question. What if there was. Say XHTMLized had developed a technology which actually automated the process by machines? Or the next version of Photoshop has a ‘Save as XHTML CSS’ option which actually works well?

Do you think if this was the case XHTMLized would have been removed from the Digg homepage? I doubt it.

I agree that ‘outsource’ is a word which congers thoughts of cheap labour. As I’ve mentioned before, XHTMLized is the opposite of a sweat-shop. It’s a pity we’re being pegged as a sweat-shop.

Being a web developer (that stays in PHP), i always outsource designing and slicing of designs. I usually pay a little less than $150, however reliabilty isnt that great. Personally, $150 for a reliable service is definately worth it.

As for the discussions on price, its reasonable compared to the average internet freelancer price, however if you were to ask a local freelancer for the same thing over here (UK), it would probably set you back about £250GBP ($460USD).

@Dread

Thanks for the input on pricing in the UK.

If your on your own freelancing, then you need to charge a premium price. Unless your connected jobs can be rare and so the ones that you do have, you need to account for the downtimes.

Out of all the quote requests we get, several knock us back as the price is too high. On the otherhand we could probably put the price at $1500 and just do large high-budget projects (which we’ve done several of).

Price is a tough thing on an international market. $150 seems to be a good medium which is affordable. Needs to be enough to keep the stream of projects flowing.

Dave Rosen, obviously you’re going to take a lot of flack from people who can do the same job. The jealousy is that they’re not able to make as much money per layout like you guys are. I, and most of the people who are leaving comments, don’t need your service but I know there are a lot of people out there that do.

$150 seems to be nice.

But I can turn your design into CSS or XHTML for free!

Send your design to http://www.jorux.com/ or joe7419@gmail.com

Think XHTMLized shouldn’t have been pulled from Digg? Then please digg this.

http://digg.com/tech_news/XHTM.....lled_-_why

@Don

Thanks Don. I read your comments on svn now and then. One thing - did you think you’d need a cellphone before you tried it?

I see this as a great example of a new kind of bussines in a multiple locations outsourcing. This is the future, the completely decentralized work. It doesn’t care where you live, only that you have an access to Internet.
The price from an international point of view, is low, but in South America you can obtain it for the half.

“There’s no design tool that can produce good markup that I know of. There’s tools which help, but you still need markup artists to create code which is truly beautiful.”

ImageReady does a decent job if you spend time tweaking the settings. It requires a little bit of editing the source, but in general you get nice slices and pretty code. I realize it’s not perfect for every situation, but for most it works great.

This post is brought to you by the letter M
——————————————–
I find this so incredibly interesting. That story disappeared off of digg’s front page for one reason and one reason only.

money

Digg, from my experience is populated with mostly tech minded readers.Probably,coders by day, gamers by night (nothing wrong with that) I’m probably wrong. Now, when Photoshop gave designers and anyone for that matter, the ability to code their designs quickly at the push of a button (subtitles…George Jetson style) chaos ensued in the coders realm. When Template Monster, Stock Layouts and all those(will go unamed) logo template sites started selling cheap “undesigned products, uproar in the design community. Everytime a service gets commoditized we lash out.

My advice, shut up and get used to it!

I am a designer who hates to code, but droool over having a site that validates and is easily crawled. Enter XHTMLized. Now all of a sudden going from Photoshop to crispy code (on the “cheap”) empowers designers. The ones who are worried are the coders who can’t design! Hence the dig dismissal.

Balance, rythymn, focal point etc, etc all of a sudden are relevant again. While gradients, rounded corners and funky repeating patterns take a back seat. Now I can really use my imagination…but with restraint. Why? Every context has it limits, Every path has an edge. There is just so much that can be achieved with any tool or service. PRINT is delimited by what can come out of a press. The WEB is delimited by what can be seen on a monitor. Architecture is delimited by…physics. (where did that come from

The sweatshop thingy and the GoDaddy effect.
———————————————————–
What many persons do not realize, is that the web can exponentially scale any service or product (and your bank account) to infinity. Allowing one to access and wide market even though your product is…one thing. Bob Parsons realized that. GoDaddy sells thier domains for a rock bottom price. They helped to change an industry, everyone catches up even Yahoo, by that time GoDaddy has achieved world wide popularity thanks to the web. (1&1 Hosting has done the same). Now XHTMLized will too. That scares people…it shouldn’t.

My advice, shut up and get used to it!

Now what should the coders do…find a way to add value to your service. THINK! This is the era of the knowledge worker, not bots and crawlers. How do I as a designer add value to my service when a client can get it cheaper in India, how does a lil bookstore in Roswell GA add value when Barnes and Noble is just up the street. THINK! There is a way, find it. What have I done in my case? I am in Panama (the canal) As in most developing countries there are web designers that can do huge sites for very little…with Flash
mind you! What do I do. The demand for sites in, well written English is rising. Well I’m from Jamaica,I know English, I can write a little, most of my competiton do not know my mother tounge as well here in this Spanish speaking country. So I plug my writing skills into the design of their print and web ads. Find ways, play to your strengths, no two persons are exactly alike, or, are your contact networks. Explore your context, mine your potrential.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming (pun intended)
Of course, this “removal” from the Digg front page may be the best thing that could have ever happened to XHTMLized…Now my patience to use their services is running thinner than a blackslash.

Dave Rosen, don’t take offense, but I personally care if this story was pulled from Digg or not. That’s nothing but PR. I’m surprised it was pulled, because I don’t tink that Digg is into marketing, and this is a marketing post. Michael is marketing your service.

If you were offering a tool, it most likely wouldn’t have ‘dropped’ off the page, because it would be tech, and it would be usable by many folk. Not surprising there. And we would also like tools that could take what we sketch and make it real.

As for the discussions of ‘jealousy’–please stop attributing negative emotional context to critical discussion. I won’t speak for others, but I’m critical of outsourcing (or offshoring) primarily because it is a spiraling effect that can only lead to adverse effects globally: corporations and business gets richer, temporarily, workers get poorer, eventually stop buying anything but essentials, and corps come crashing down.

It’s not sustainable in the long run. And it’s a decent discussion to have. Also one that was triggered by the phrase mentioned earlier. It’s very difficult, though, to have a discussion when the only commentary is focus on being Digged, and a deliberate attempt to make this into a controversy in order for the company to be Digged.

Wow. All the concern for the XHTMLized business plan seems off the point. Great service, great price - so what’s the prob. Use them or don’t. I did, and my client and I are very happy.

I’m sure Dave it going to make it big, this is a grewat idea. For those who want to walk away with the design - (forget them, hope there are not as many people there to worry about). All the best Dave

Dave,

I’m a bit embarrased to admit that your post (at 51) not only made me rethink my criticism of your service to contemplating signing up! For the record, I’m not one of the “arrg! sweatshop!” commentators. In my modestly lefty-social-democratic-overly utopian opinion, one of the joys of the Internet is the way that artisans and professionals in different cultures and at economic strata can co-operate and interact without the corrosive influence of multi-national corporations. And certainly, I know there are many talented designers out there who should never be let near a text editor or copy of Dreamweaver.

So consider this a qualified retraction.

Where do you think the $150 limit is? Is it a per design ?(some designs are complicated to slice up). Is it per page (obviously 50 pages should not be $150 unless they are all exactly the same). How is proce determined?

Would love to see it.

WOW! such a passionate discussion. As many have pointed out, this certainly suggests that this is a “big idea” and in my opinion, a good one.

However, I’m shocked that only one person mentioned (implied, actually) a very important issue that was the subject of hundreds, if not thousands, of discussions just like this one only a short time ago.

Yup, you got it one the first guess (I have faith in people): WEB STANDARDS.

I’m not certain if the services meets the requirements, but if the XHTML and CSS are valid, you’re half way there. You see, It is my belief that Web Standards will never come to be unless there is a free-or very inexpensive service or software-that will convert a design or an already coded site to meet code complaint Web Standards; there’s just no way it will happen by any other means. So for the supporters of Web Standards, be grateful.

And for those of us who design and code but have found that the move to CSS and XHTML means 20% design time and 80% coding (hacks, bugs, simple two and three column layouts that still have problems in some browsers, etc..), I say thank god. The best way to learn good front end programming is to see it applied to your own design or reworked code.

If you think of this service as partly educational, it changes the conversation completely. Bravo!

Who else does this besides these guys? They are inventing their pricing scheme in an ad-hoc way and I would prefer someone reasonable, reliable, with good quality, and a better understanding of theor own rates. Anyone know anyone off shore?

@ Xumequinho

I’m not sure why you think the pricing system is ad-hoc? It’s fixed price! Can’t really get less ad-hoc than that?

Wow, this thread is outa hand.

Kudos to the crew at xhtmlized. This is certainly a great example of how sourcing benefits all involved and equalizes the playing field in a market which has become more and more commoditized.

For you laggards out there you may want to pick up “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman.

We sent our first design today and look forward to reviewing the code.

namaste~

We just received the coded design back today, and our entire team is extremely impressed.

We will be sending another design tomorrow.

cheers~

@stugahtz

Appreciate it! Thanks for giving us a go!

Xumequinho: Hey, here is psd2html.com. We do this for 1.5 years. Our service seems to be a bit faster, we usually take 8 business-hours to deliver the order. We also provide our clients with more options. Check this out: http://www.psd2html.com/order-now.html.

Also, we have all 20 developers in-house

So far, it’s been disappointing. I sent XHTMLized a PSD last week Saturday and haven’t heard back from them. Oh, the automated response from the server came…yeah, that was helpful.

Dave and his team are offering a good service. If anything, I believe they are underselling themselves.

I bet you find that doing single page jobs make less profit than doing multiple pages by far.

Best of luck,

80 comments many months ago, but the time has come now to go to the source. Design is culture-sensitive. Mark-up is not. It can be validated and necessarily needs to comply to established standards. This is what is going to make the big difference.
Designers in developed (read expensive) markets need not go to these middlemen anymore. Thats the real power of the internet.