psd > xhtml

Tripnologist · 20 May 2010 at 14:48

We're at the point where there is too much work for me but we're still not quite ready to bring on another Front End guy. As such, we're considering using a psd > xhtml service for many of our smaller, lower budget sites.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

Just need a service which is decently priced, puts out clean code and are willing to do some small things such as set up the directory structure how I specify and set up page groups a certain way due to our CMS. They also need to be precise with times as we schedule everything quite tightly.

GravyMonster · 20 May 2010 at 15:15

We normally use:

http://www.htmlblender.com/
http://xhtml.pixelcrayons.com/

Tripnologist · 24 May 2010 at 11:24

Thanks mate. I'll give those a look over.

Mint_Sauce · 24 May 2010 at 12:29

A guy I know does this as a service.

http://www.jameskirby.me.uk/

rickh · 1 Jun 2010 at 03:23

sites like talkfreelance.com or clantemplates.com have a user base full of people who are able & willing to do this for very little money!

ManishRawat · 2 Jun 2010 at 10:30

Spunkey said:
We normally use:

http://www.htmlblender.com/
http://xhtml.pixelcrayons.com/

even I have tried markup services of Pixelcrayons and I am kind of impressed, cos my project was in pretty bad condition when I gave it to them and I kinda needed it urgently. And they acted as a savior for me

cheers to them.

Spyhop · 2 Jun 2010 at 20:24

^^^ Blatant plant

Tripnologist · 2 Jun 2010 at 20:32

Are you suggesting that ManishRawat may have noticed this link in analytics and subsequently registered and posted the above, his first post, for no other reason than to push his own interests? No waaaaay.

tbf though, the original link was posted by someone who posts quite a bit in this area of the forums and that'd be good enough for me to give them a go.

Slogan · 2 Jun 2010 at 21:02

Subtle first post.

Izi · 2 Jun 2010 at 22:14

LOL :

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=manish+rawat+css+html&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

I was going to try them, think I might just use html blender instead

GravyMonster · 2 Jun 2010 at 22:19

Haha! Shameless pimping backfires.

They do do good work though. And I don't work for them - promise!

Tripnologist · 22 Jul 2010 at 10:45

Well, I decided to give them a try anyway as they offer 50% off subsequent pages and I found less bad reviews than the other one.
First project went in and I've got half back so far. The first half was on time and although not as neat as I would have done (I'm really picky), it's better than I thought it would be.
Emailed them about a discount as I'll be sending them at least 5 more projects this month and they actually called me within 2 minutes of my email to give me a discount code.

So thanks for the recommendations Spunkey.

gord · 22 Jul 2010 at 11:26

How do they decide where to splice? Does it have decent cross-browser compatibility?

Tripnologist · 22 Jul 2010 at 12:20

Guesswork I think unless you tell them.
Like I said, it's not as neat as I would have done and I wouldn't trust them (or anyone for that matter) with our high value projects but for everything else (sub £5k), it's acceptable.

Cross browser is good. IE6, IE7, IE8, FF, Opera, Safari and Chrome.

Edit: Forgot to mention, they charge extra for things like nav dropdowns, jquery stuff, nav hovers so I'm just dropping those in myself. No point paying soneone $100 for a jquery accordion when I can drop one in in less than 10 minutes.

GravyMonster · 22 Jul 2010 at 13:36

Tripnologist said:
So thanks for the recommendations Spunkey.

No problem matey.

gord said:
How do they decide where to splice? Does it have decent cross-browser compatibility?

Either you can leave it to them to do it as they please, or you can send accross a guide document specifying how you want certain areas built - for example, you want it done a certain way so that text is read better for SEO, or you're going to put a jQuery slider in the banner.

Our normal level of browser compatibility is for IE5.5 and XHTML 1.0 Strict.

Tripnologist · 13 Aug 2010 at 14:04

It's been a little while so I thought I'd post an update.

My original verdict on Pixel Crayons was based on the first completed half of the first project I sent them. I have sent them 3 or 4 more templates in the last couple weeks and my opinion has changed somewhat.

1. The code quality is pretty bad. Well, not bad bad, but it's just bad for me. If I'm honest, it looks a lot like the code I was putting out 4+ years ago. It's just very bloated. Semantic naming conventions for classes/id's is pretty sketchy at best.

2. Their customer service is pretty good. The templates I've been sending them are just little cheap ones we wouldn't otherwise have time for so I basically just get it straight from the designer and send it over. Rather than guess on some things which may not be clear, or if there are obvious problems, they do take the time to ask for clarification which is nice.

3. I put a ticket in to enquire about getting a discount on everything I send in as I'll potentially be sending in 5-10 projects a month and within 2 minutes, I received a phone call from them with my code. Is only a 10% discount but it's better than nothing.

4. They charge extra for everything which is perfectly reasonable but I ran into a problem asking them to use em for font sizing. They wanted me to pay the $45 fee they have for 'em based layouts'. My obvious problem was that my layout is in px, it's just the fonts I want in em which is a pretty standard way of doing things and not any more difficult than using px.
In the end, they wouldn't listen to reason so I told them to just do it in px and I would spend the whole 5 minutes it would take to convert all their px font sizes to em.

So after all that, I'm going to start looking around at some alternatives. I need higher quality and am willing to pay a bit more for it.

So my final verdict? PC is actually great as a low cost psd>xhtml service but not so great if you're picky about your code.