PSD to HTML Reviews & Tutorials

Not a tad, more than your website won’t be visible to everyone, you would loose your SEO score, and your reputation would be tainted.

The coding standards laid out by W3C are not a decree that are to be followed religiously. But then, expert XHTML Developers do follow them religiously. The reasons for this are numerous. With new type of tools and technologies, it gets inadvertently difficult to comply with all the factors- designing and cross browser compatibility per se.

Designing a website in compliance with W3C standards mean that your website would be viewed by all the people exactly the same way, no matter what Internet browser they use. I would forgo listing the technical standards in this article; W3C.org explains them in detail. The essence of W3C complaint standards is that the code should be clean, semantic and systematized. And a clutter-free and semantic code clearly mean a SEO friendly code. So if you are following W3C coding rules, you aren’t just entering a herd race, or following the rules laid out by some web-established punditry; you are adorning your site with the best possible XHTML and CSS that offers many advantages.

How To Check if your Website is W3C Validated?
Many clients give their PSDs to XHTML conversion companies, who claim on offering a 100% W3C validated code. But seldom do they know how to check their authenticity. After you get your coded design back, you can check its authentication with the W3C Validator Tool at http://validator.w3.org/. You can check them by three ways:-

• Validate by URL
• Validate by File Upload
• Validate by Direct Input

A 100% W3C Validated Website would show the result “Passed”, with no errors or warnings. But if a page is not coded according to the exact W3C standards, it would display the “Errors” and “Warnings” in number, along with the detailed report of the bugs.

The “Errors” refer to the mismatched coding vis-s-vis W3C specified coding. Instance, element “META” undefined, end tag for “img” omitted, etc. This points out the areas where the programmer has not used the W3C standards.

The “Warnings” are a kind of recommendation and not bugs. For example, If a developer has defined color attributes twice in a CSS, it would show this as a warning.

This is the basic step for measuring the W3C qualities of any Web Page. So next time when you get your XHTML back from your client, do check its W3C validation!

LPG (Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization) comes with its share of benefits for doing business globally. Internet however, recognized its LPG benefits way back, with its increasing (and still emerging) scope and trend. More and more businesses are getting online, and entrepreneurs are developing websites to interact with their target audience. As websites become their only principal gateway of reaching out the people, they press on designing best and pixel-perfect websites. This also highlights the ever increasing importance of Website Designing and Development.

It goes without saying that designing a static web page, or for that matter, an entire website, doesn’t end the process. It is rather the beginning and includes many processes including XHTML.

XHTML isn’t just a hype created in the website designing arena. It is a much needed process that makes the website come alive. The versions in XHTML however differs. For perfect clarity and vision, there are Professional versions, and Basic versions include less advanced conversion techniques.

XHTML conversion companies flourish with copious conversion orders, and fulfill various clients’ specifications. Reasons for their increasing popularity are mainly two-

• Little or no Knowledge and Expertise in XHTML
• Time Constraint

Programmers without extensive knowledge and expertise in coding hire conversion companies. Unlike website designing, which is centered on creativity, theme, choice and ideas, XHTML is a process with defined rules and coding standards. You might at once try out your hand in web designing, but XHTML is a far-fetched dream until you have extended knowledge of the field.

The another common factor for availing PSD to XHTML services is ‘time constraint’. There are many companies, including those of Web Designing itself, that order PSD to XHTML Conversion online. When a whole-and-whole web designing firm chooses a conversion company, chances that they are not pro at XHTML are quite less. If their domain is designing mind boggling websites, they might not try their hand in a less or never-tried-off business activity. They might then have to cut down time and resources on website designing, from which they are getting good business.

The quality XHTML conversion service providers often have a proper streamlined process with a manager, support team and QA team, to handle clients and their requirements; and keep timely-delivery as one of their highlighted USP. Hence, offering your PSD to reputed XHTML Conversion company is always a safe bet.

The web is brimming with PSD to XHTML conversion tutorials, showing experimental WebPages with step by step coding process. But then, with more and more people getting hooked to web development, the demand of tutorials is being equally proportionate. One of the frequently asked questions addressed in PSD to HTML Tutorials is how to slice your PSD into quality HTML and CSS code. It may sound too random, but the beginning in XHTML conversion process matters a little too much.

My acquaintance with many web designers has lately been so strong that I can now get into their shoes and sympathetically understand their point of view. I have realized that the biggest challenge for a successful web designer is to get timely and quality conversion done; and for a seasoned XHTML programmer, it is the beginning process.

The two prerequisites of XHTML are Adherence with Time and Adherence with Quality.
After a long association with competent web designers, I have sensed the irrevocable importance of timely work delivery; and along with it, the irresistible need of outsourcing to XHTML Conversion companies.

Website design/ development companies can not take the risk of being behind the times and subsequently cut a large number of potential clients. The recessionary period simply outcasts any chances of loosing clients! Just because the web design companies are brimmed with design orders doesn’t mean saying “no” to new clients, thereby ruining client relationship. So to accelerate time to business value, design pages are outsourced to XHTML companies.

Stiff competition in the web designing market has also outlined the need for pixel perfect websites, which is precisely one reason why more and more web design firms hire XHTML conversion companies. XHTML is not so much about having a ‘strict code’ as about ‘conformity and compatibility’. E-marketers of the 21st Century have realized that even the high-end booze businesses are making serious efforts to survive in the global recession. This formula reiterates in e-business too- and when it’s about XHTML conversion, quality is revered.

All-in-all, XHTML conversion is all about time, quality and cost- or to be precise, it’s about all three going hand-in-hand. This is realized by many top notch XHTML service providers who leave no stone unturned in their service offerings. Having said that, I’m going to use this as a basis for ‘how to select a promising PSD to XHTML Conversion Company’.

• Work Process- If you have decided to outsource your PSD for XHTML, it’s not because you want to, but because you have to. Hence you would like the work process to be seamless, easy and less time consuming. Check if the provider allows you to integrate with CMS/Blogging Engine and Shopping cart of your choice. As you are the client, you ought to have choices! Check for the same liberty of choice with PSD file format.
• Client Support- You are hiring a conversion company primarily for saving time. Quick response time and instant communication options prove to be the success measuring devices.
• Work Quality- XHTML quality should not only meet, but supersede the PSD mock up design. A qualitative XHTML means quick loading, optimized pages, table free design, cross browser compatibility, SEO semantic code, and most importantly- meeting all client’s requirements- howsoever and whatsoever they may be.

The complicated thing with web programmers is that their learning process never ends. Just as XHTML has overshadowed HTML, some other language/coding style may hammer its identity in the coming days!

Need of XHTML
XHTML became a W3C recommendation in 2000, and within the next five years we did see many websites framed in XHTML standard.

Prior to XHTML, HTML was the successfully running coding standard on the web, and shared wide popularity. But the amazing thing however is that even after the release of XHTML as the new recommended markup language, HTML did not cease to evolute. Neither did the websites which were framed in HTML stopped to function.

HTML uses XSL to transform it into XML and that too only when HTML is also a well formed XML. Whereas in XHTML, direct transformation with XML can take place.

XHTML was a recommendation of W3C, but it did not condemn the earlier language. Webmasters were also reluctant to use XHTML any soon, given the complexity it involved and the skepticism that comes with everything that’s new. Few webmasters also believed that XHTML would slow down the browser’s speed. To a casual Internet user, an application seems fine as long as it is visually satisfying and user friendly. The HTML websites were running successfully and web designers found it irrelevant to switch to any new method.

Yet the advanced technologies hammered the need of XHTML, and this pushed the designers to leave their doubts and accept XHTML as a comfortable mark-up language. XHTML on the better side, is not entirely different from HTML. They aren’t two different languages altogether. They can be said as two different dialects of the same language.

Benefits of XHTML
They say, “Necessity is the mother of all inventions”. The need for XHTML did not show up when HTML was used successfully by web designers, because that era was not marked by the advanced technologies. Coding was desktop complaint but did not consider the compatibility with 3G Phones. Neither did it apprehend the fast arrival of different web browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla and others.

Also, the cascading style sheet is capable of controlling all the aspects of page presentation and layout. This saves a lot of precious time of the coder and also helps to cut down the amount of code needed to display a web page properly. So in this context, XHTML offers a dual benefit. And as all major browsers support the Cascading Style Sheets, they can be used without any hitch.

HTML doesn’t bother about proper nesting of the tags, whereas XHTML considers proper nesting of tags which makes it syntax error free.