I’ve been designing websites for many years and it became clear very early on what makes the perfect client.

Website Designing is what I do, 40 hours + a week, I sit their designing and building, constantly updating my knowledge, absorbing the changes, trends and methods… and yet it still happens… someone who works in an entirely different industry with limited experience feels they must dictate sizes, colours, methods, layouts and structures, ignoring my know-how and recommendations.

It’s very frustrating for us as designers, as the website ends up with a poor aesthetic, it is not as user friendly and it takes longer to build and then to top it off the meddling client then blames us for its poor performance??! ARGHH

So if any potential clients are reading this, trust me when I say, less is more, communicate what you want to achieve and then rely on the agencies skills to make it happen. After all you don’t walk into a mechanics garage and start telling him how to fit your new exhaust, you’re paying for the service why would you? You’re relying on his skills and experience? So why is web design any different?

I can say, without exception, that the best websites I’ve produced are the ones when the client has said “I’ll leave it to you you’re the web designer”, the free reign combined with the desire to impress is a winning formula!

After many years of using nested tables to build websites, I made the conscious decision to fully learn CSS and table free HTML. However it took me a while to get my head round getting elements to line up and not overlap and I struggled to locate anything on the web that could help me make the transition from traditional table orientated HTML to CSS driven div layouts.

So when a friend asked me for advice on making the same transition I created this little document.

Ultimately it all revolves around clearing and floating as you will see, and hopefully after you’ve read the text and viewed the source it will all come clear.