The Underscore Archives

																Afternoon [_]

Like most of you, I'm recurrently pitching to update a small/medium  
sized static (bread and butter) website.

During this process, a stumbling block has been the prevalence of  
table-based layout and deprecated code used in these sites. I have to  
recommend a complete site rebuild using CSS for presentation and  
layout as part of the update, because we just don't work like that  
round y'ere.
Obviously, this adds an additional cost to the pitch which I have to  
justify to the client.

And there's the rub....


I tend to use the following standard reasons for 'upgrading' - but I  
think it's still taking a lot to convince someone (who's site appears  
to be working just fine to them) that they should spend extra,  
especially as the major benefits are generally of the 'warm fuzzy'  
rather than the 'cold hard' variety:

1. Bandwidth saving due to smaller filesizes
2. Easier to maintain and update in the future via CSS
3, Easier to repurpose content to different media (print, handheld)
4. More accessible due to semantic markup (no DDA issues)
5. Higher search engine ranking due to clear, hierarchical coding  
(css, not javascript menus etc)
6. More future-proof (probably- actually this should come with an  
asterisk)


So, I ask the collective mind of [_], what are your experiences in  
this, are there any other benefits that could and should be included?

Thanks for your thoughts,
Liam

--
Liam McMurray
Interactive Designer and Producer
Element Media /::elem.me.uk::\
Bath
liam at elem.me.uk
Tel:   01225316638
Mob: 07773001836