Website Design

[space cowboy]

I am seeking website design firms in Bangkok. This is NOT my area of expertise but I am looking for companies that do good work . Seeking quality and know-how.

[Jockstar]

Send me an email and i'll pass it onto my mate. He does website desgin and has done alot of work. Always busy. I'm sure he may be able to help you out. He lives in Bangkok. Wherever is no problem. Up to you.

[girlx]

Redlab is probably the best of the lot... run by a very smart Thai girl who speaks english well. http://www.redlab.net/

[yuyi]

Many will make you a site with a lot of blinking colors and nice big images. That might look nice on first view, but might not attract customers. Not everybody has broadband, you need to understand what your potential customers are going to accept, to like, and what will make them clicking away. Long loading times will surely not help.

Look under the hood. Make sure that the site is designed using modern web standards, such as xhtml and css. Many are still using browserdependent old style html from the last century. This is not what you want for a new site.

You can recognize old style sites easily, if you look at the html code on the page. If there are font tags, such as "<font ....>", then it is old style. Many big sites are now investing a lot to redesign their sites to the web standards with xhtml and css, because they missed it when they did it the first time. You better skip that costly step and start using modern web standards directly.

Sites designed using webstandards are easier to maintain, easier to update, and more compatible with more browsers than old style html.

See also this thread here to see what influence an old style coded website can have on the perception of a good business:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=40626

They use old style html, enhanced with some little parts of css.

So do it good right from the start!

Ask how the web designer designs the web pages, which software tools he/she uses. If the answer is Microsoft frontpage, run away quickly. All you will get is old style html, but bad old style, and problems can be expected in any non Microsoft browser, such as Apple's safari or the more and more popular Firefox.

Still, many kids use Frontpage, that is what they got free from Pantip, and they learned how to use Frontpage, but they did not learn how to do good webdesign.

Good luck

[rainman]

I am seeking website design firms in Bangkok. This is NOT my area of expertise but I am looking for companies that do good work . Seeking quality and know-how.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If you can't find a good company to do it for you, send me a PM and i'll see. I don't usually do website development (design and scripting) for other companies than my own but if you need assistance let me know.

[Amethyst]

Well you could always do it yourslef...try using Mambo...Its free and yes its easy to update .....

Edited July 30, 2005 by tytus

[Thaipwriter]

I am seeking website design firms in Bangkok. This is NOT my area of expertise but I am looking for companies that do good work . Seeking quality and know-how.

Hi

I recently commissioned a company in Bangkok to create my website www.khonkaenrealestate.com

This post is a shameless plug for my business and the abilities of the Guys at OAWEB Ltd

The head man there is called Sumrit and you can contact him: [email protected]

His English is not great but they got the job done, i can highly recommend them, this is not something i dish out for too many Thai businessess!

They delivered what i wanted, when i wanted it

[yuyi]

I recently commissioned a company in Bangkok to create my website www.khonkaenrealestate.com

This post is a shameless plug for my business and the abilities of the Guys at OAWEB Ltd

The head man there is called Sumrit and you can contact him: [email protected]

His English is not great but they got the job done, i can highly recommend them, this is not something i dish out for too many Thai businessess!

They delivered what i wanted, when i wanted it   

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nice site, looks good. You obviously did put a lot of effort in it. I understand why you are happy with it.

I did however look a little under the hood. Again, sorry, this is old style html with a little css. And it is targeting MS Windows system only, giving your site an unpredictable look in other systems, such as Apple, Linux, or the new PDA systems.

To give examples, taken from the source code:

content="text/html; charset=windows-874"

better would be to use a real standard instead of windows only "windows-874", such as "utf-8". then there are no problems with any character on any modern system, including the non-windows systems.

FONT-FAMILY: arial;

so which font will be taken on systems which do not have "arial" installed? Nobody knows. better is something like "FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif;", or "font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;", always giving as last option a Font type such as serif, or sans-serif, etc. This way the font will at least look closer to the one you had in mind.

A little later also the developer of this site realizes this, and uses "<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif".

<font face="MS Sans Serif" size="1" color="#5A6044">

Now it is asking for the system sans-serif font, this is fine, but why the MS in front of it? Again, developed on a windows system for a windows system only.

And then, using css (cascading style sheets), why not putting the font specification where it belongs, in the css style sheet.

<span style="font-size: 3pt"> </span>

This statement and similar ones are repeated numerous times. This could be done better with one definition in the style sheet.

Repeating them again and again is only making the page bigger, less easy to understand and to maintain, and slower to download.

It is obvious that the author of this page did hear about the power of modern standards and tries to use some of it by adding some css to the page. However he did not understand it, not at all, and so css is not really helping him.

By making better usage of webstandards and css, the size of this page could easily get reduced by 50 %, and at the same time be much more easy to update and maintain.

I understand that without knowing much about webdesign this is not easy to see for you, but I strongly recommend to make sure you get a site which is designed using modern web standards, such as xhtml and css.

Many will give you a nice site, but under the hood is browserdependent old style html from the last century. This is not what you want for a new site. For the same money, and with less trouble for the webdesigner, you can have an equally nice site, but also a modern web site with xhtml and css... If your webdesigner only gets his bottom up and learns the standards, and how to design a site using them.

You can demand from your designer to design your site standard compliant, using "XHTML 1.0 Strict" (or later 2.x etc.). With not much knowledge you can verify if he delivers, by looking at the source code of each page. A "XHTML 1.0 Strict" compliant site starts every page with:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

Old century html does not have such a statement at the beginning of the pages. Thaipwriter, i doubt if these guys, no matter how nice they might be, know what this means. But they should, in your interest.

If you buy a new car, you also do not want that they deliver it with an engine from the last century. You want the new ones, state of the art, right?

So why wouldn't you want the same when it comes to your website?

[Kringle]

Check with Michael at:

www.WSItheWebExperts.com

All contact information is on the website.

[Amethyst]

Thaipwriter,

I suggest you take off the Design&Program by OA Web Hosting Co.,Ltd. Line at the bottom of the footer...Cuz you paid for this site..unless OA Webhosting is giving you a free hosting and website creation

[rainman]

I am seeking website design firms in Bangkok. This is NOT my area of expertise but I am looking for companies that do good work . Seeking quality and know-how.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi

I recently commissioned a company in Bangkok to create my website www.khonkaenrealestate.com

This post is a shameless plug for my business and the abilities of the Guys at OAWEB Ltd

The head man there is called Sumrit and you can contact him: [email protected]

His English is not great but they got the job done, i can highly recommend them, this is not something i dish out for too many Thai businessess!

They delivered what i wanted, when i wanted it

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

A little advice. Your website looks good, but the one from the people that developed it (OAWEB) looks awfully familiar like the old burlee.com site design. I could pull it up in a cache for you somewhere ..they definitely didnt create their website themselves and if they didn't create theirs then i wouldn't want any website from them because likely your website won't be original, but a copy from somewhere else.

[bino]

content="text/html; charset=windows-874"

better would be to use a real standard instead of windows only "windows-874", such as "utf-8". then there are no problems with any character on any modern system, including the non-windows systems.

Hi Yuyi,

Are you a designer? You seem very knowledgeable... I have a question regarding the above; Have you ever designed a Thai website or mixed content site containing Thai and English characters? It has been my experience that the windows-874 character set is the only one that will display Thai characters correctly, especially with mixed content.

Can you tell me a UTF equivalent that will permit this?

Also, can you tell the OP (and me) which "tools" you consider to be worthwhile? I use Macromedia products- Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, and Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator. Are these acceptable? Or- can you tell us what is better?

Rgds,

Bino

Edited July 30, 2005 by bino

[yuyi]

A little advice. Your website looks good, but the one from the people that developed it (OAWEB) looks awfully familiar like the old burlee.com site design. I could pull it up in a cache for you somewhere ..they definitely didnt create their website themselves and if they didn't create theirs then i wouldn't want any website from them because likely your website won't be original, but a copy from somewhere else.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That would also explain the chaotic mix of font definitions in a style sheet, inline styles and font tags, and the inconsistent font tags. The sourcecode looks indeed as if put together using pieces from here and there.

The result looks good, so these guys do have talent. Just using it the wrong way

[yuyi]

content="text/html; charset=windows-874"

better would be to use a real standard instead of windows only "windows-874", such as "utf-8". then there are no problems with any character on any modern system, including the non-windows systems.

Hi Yuyi,

Are you a designer? You seem very knowledgeable... I have a question regarding the above; Have you ever designed a Thai website or mixed content site containing Thai and English characters? It has been my experience that the windows-874 character set is the only one that will display Thai characters correctly, especially with mixed content.

Can you tell me a UTF equivalent that will permit this?

Rgds,

Bino

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Bino,

Windows-874 is a legacy encoding.

Windows-874 is Microsoft's charset for Thai and English. Only. You want to add other characters, such as the European umlauts? Good luck. And are you sure a Microsoft charset is supported on non-windows systems, which there are more and more?

Look at this list below. You see the many different windows charsets to support all these charsets. No windows charset supports all of them. But there is a Unicode universal charset which supports all of them: UTF-8

Albanian  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  Arabic  UTF-8, Windows-1256, ISO-8859-6

  Bahasa Indonesia  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  Bahasa Malay  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  Bulgarian  UTF-8, Windows-1251, ISO-8859-5, KOI8-R

  Catalan  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  Chinese  UTF-8, GB-2312, HZ-GB-2312, ISO-2022-CN

  Chinese  UTF-8, Big5

  Croatian  UTF-8, Windows-1250

  Czech  UTF-8, Windows-1250

  Danish  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  Dutch  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  English  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  Estonian  UTF-8, Windows-1257

  Farsi  UTF-8, Windows-1256

  Finnish  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  French  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  German  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  Greek  UTF-8, Windows-1253

  Hebrew  UTF-8, Windows-1255

  Hungarian  UTF-8, Windows-1250

  Icelandic  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  Italian  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  Japanese  UTF-8, EUC-JP, ISO-2022-JP, Shift-JIS

  Korean  UTF-8, EUC-KR, ISO-2022-KR

  Latvian  UTF-8, Windows-1257

  Lithuanian  UTF-8, Windows-1257

  Norwegian  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  Polish  UTF-8, Windows-1250

  Portuguese  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  Romanian  UTF-8, Windows-1250

  Russian  UTF-8, Windows-1251, ISO-8859-5, IBM-866, KOI8-R, x-Mac-Cyrillic

  Slovak  UTF-8, Windows-1250

  Slovenian  UTF-8, Windows-1250

  Spanish  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  Swedish  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  Tagalog  UTF-8, Windows-1252

  Thai  UTF-8, Windows-874

  Turkish  UTF-8, Windows-1254

  Vietnamese  UTF-8, VISCII, VPS, VIQR, TCVN, VNI

And UTF-8 is even supported on recent windows systems, despite being a standard. Not on old win95 / 98 though. But on Microsoft Windows CE, Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.

The Unicode format commonly used on the Internet is called Universal Character Set Transformation Format 8-bit (UTF-8). UTF-8 is the only Unicode format that is commonly supported by Web browsers and by Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions.

Unicode allows users to create multilingual Web pages that not only use multiple scripts but also produce smaller files that are easy to parse on your intranet. You need Internet Explorer 4.01 or later, or Netscape Navigator 4.03 or later for your browser to interpret Unicode Web pages. If you want to maintain compatibility with earlier browsers, avoid using Unicode.

Unicode is required by the new technologies coming from the W3C, IETF and OMG; including XML, XHTML, XSL, LDAP, CORBA 3.0, etc.

Therefore, as long as you are not focusing on very old systems with windows 9x and stone age browsers older than Internet Explorer 4.01 or Netscape Navigator 4.03, then you want to specify utf-8 as the charset to use.

In XHTML use: <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

I have to say though, that on my Linux desktop Thai and English and European characters are displayed all together on websites such as thaivisa, despite them specifying a charset such as iso-8859-1. Haven't tested that with a windows box lately.

Regards,

Yuyi

[bino]

Hi Yuyi,

Thanks for the reply and the good information.

Windows-874 is Microsoft's charset for Thai and English. Only. You want to add other characters, such as the European umlauts? Good luck.

Windows-874 has worked fine for me in the past- had no need for European umlauts on a Thai website.

How to code Thai characters in UTF-8? Is it as easy as creating a style on the stylesheet in Thai, and using that style? If so- I'll try it on my next project.

Still curious to know which design softwares you consider to be the best / most professional.

Rgds. Bino

[rainman]

A little advice. Your website looks good, but the one from the people that developed it (OAWEB) looks awfully familiar like the old burlee.com site design. I could pull it up in a cache for you somewhere ..they definitely didnt create their website themselves and if they didn't create theirs then i wouldn't want any website from them because likely your website won't be original, but a copy from somewhere else.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That would also explain the chaotic mix of font definitions in a style sheet, inline styles and font tags, and the inconsistent font tags. The sourcecode looks indeed as if put together using pieces from here and there.

The result looks good, so these guys do have talent. Just using it the wrong way

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

...its put together in FrontPage, i wouldn't call them designers in that way.

[yuyi]

Hi Bino,

I see you edited your post, so here I answer the new part:

...

Also, can you tell the OP (and me) which "tools" you consider to be worthwhile? I use Macromedia products- Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, and Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator. Are these acceptable? Or- can you tell us what is better?

Rgds,

Bino

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

All these are great tools. Very expensive though, if you got them legally and not from Pantip Plaza

The later versions of Dreamweaver have good XHTML support. Adobe Golive also. But you need to understand XHTML first, they will not teach it to you. But once you know it, you can use them, no bigger problem.

I'm carefull with Flash, many have it, but not everybody, and some people do not like it anymore, after having been forced through too many heavy flash intros on some website.

Photoshop is great, but I would not let it do my html. But for image manipulation, it is the best.

You have good tools, do not worry about them.

I might recommend to add TopStyle Pro 3.0 -

TopStyle is the premier CSS/HTML/XHTML editor for Windows. Written by the creator of HomeSite, TopStyle contains powerful tools for creating standards-compliant sites. ... $ 80

See http://www.bradsoft.com/topstyle/

Cheaper than your other tools, but great for creating clean code. And guiding you on the way.

I'm not using all this windows stuff anymore, except topstyle. I'm a poor guy, I cannot afford it

There are great free tools coming with Linux, such as Quanta for the webdesign and GIMP for the graphics. Did I say great? Did I say free?

regards,

Yuyi

[TizMe]

...its put together in FrontPage, i wouldn't call them designers in that way. 

First rule of "website design".

Don't use FrontPage. Microsoft don't use it, so why would anybody else?

Also be careful about graphics and unneccessary animations (especially flash). If a site takes too long to load and wastes bandwidth then you might be p*ssing off potential customers that only have a slow dial up connection.

A great place to learn what not to do is Web Sites That Suck

Edited July 31, 2005 by TizMe

[yuyi]

...its put together in FrontPage, i wouldn't call them designers in that way. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As I said, if they use Frontpage run away quickly

Scanning quickly through the sourcecode I did not notice a 100% proof of using Frontpage. What makes you being sure about it?

[ilyushin]

Look for "Bluefox" on the yahoo/google search engine. He does a great job. He built my site and I have no problems.

[Thaipwriter]

A little advice. Your website looks good, but the one from the people that developed it (OAWEB) looks awfully familiar like the old burlee.com site design. I could pull it up in a cache for you somewhere ..they definitely didnt create their website themselves and if they didn't create theirs then i wouldn't want any website from them because likely your website won't be original, but a copy from somewhere else.

That would also explain the chaotic mix of font definitions in a style sheet, inline styles and font tags, and the inconsistent font tags. The sourcecode looks indeed as if put together using pieces from here and there.

The result looks good, so these guys do have talent. Just using it the wrong way

...its put together in FrontPage, i wouldn't call them designers in that way.

I had taken my eye off this post, i did not realize my post would generate such discussion!

When I approached OAWEB it was becuase I had seen another website that they had done (designed, created??????? who knows!)

They asked for 2 month to create a new site from scratch, i denied them this time becuase i had been messed around by other companies who supplied nothing but promised everything. I was way past the deadline to launch my business and had no website! I gave them 2 weeks, it was finished in just over 3 which is what i expected.

It has a really easy to use back office to upload new properties in 5 mins.

I did not ask for something original, i asked for an exact replica of the other site i had seen and that what i got. I'm happy with it, and my target audience of 50 somethings looking at the site will not likely be using Mac's or Linux so I'm not to worried about those issues.

Referring to coding issues, I will show them this thread and ask them to make the required changes kindly suggested by Yuyi...thanks for all your input

One question: will the limitations you discuss affect my chances of getting good visibility from search engines??

[yuyi]

... I'm happy with it, and my target audience of 50 somethings looking at the site will not likely be using Mac's or Linux so I'm not to worried about those issues.

Well, I did buy recently 2 properties which I did find browsing the web with my Linux system. i did also search in Udon, not far from you, but I did not find a suitable property.

Another guy I know did buy a couple of month ago a house which he did find browsing with his Mac.

Wouldn't it be stupid if someone like us would not buy from you just because your site looks bad in our browsers

But do not worry, the latest browsers on Mac and Linux are very good, they show your site despite the problems.

More critical I think is that PDAs and all the new little gadgets and smartphones, plus the browsers and webreaders for people who do not have their full eyesight, will get a heavy hiccup at such an old style code. And the people using them do have money too.

Keep in mind that having your site looking good for all of them requires nothing additional. Designing with modern webstandards, XHTML and CSS, does not cost more, but gives you good accessibility for all plus the same nice site you have now. There is no reason not to use the webstandards, only advantages. Of course the designer has to be willing to learn it before.

Referring to coding issues, I will show them this thread and ask  them to make the required changes kindly suggested by Yuyi...thanks for all your input

They had been just examples, sorry, there is much more...

One question: will the limitations you discuss affect my chances of getting good visibility from search engines??

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This is a very important point!

The searchengines do look for the relevant content on your page. They do not like all a mess of code, not at all. They prefer sites in XHTML, where the structure and the content is easy to get from the XHTML file, while all the design specifications, which the searchengines do not need, are in the CSS file, allowing the searchengines to ignore them.

Experience shows that a simple recoding of a site from old style html to new webstandards with XHTML and CSS does result in a clearly better position in the searchengines.

A searchengine friendly site is just another bonus you get free when you have your site designed with web standards, XHTML and CSS.

[Thaipwriter]

... I'm happy with it, and my target audience of 50 somethings looking at the site will not likely be using Mac's or Linux so I'm not to worried about those issues.

Well, I did buy recently 2 properties which I did find browsing the web with my Linux system. i did also search in Udon, not far from you, but I did not find a suitable property.

Another guy I know did buy a couple of month ago a house which he did find browsing with his Mac.

Wouldn't it be stupid if someone like us would not buy from you just because your site looks bad in our browsers

But do not worry, the latest browsers on Mac and Linux are very good, they show your site despite the problems.

More critical I think is that PDAs and all the new little gadgets and smartphones, plus the browsers and webreaders for people who do not have their full eyesight, will get a heavy hiccup at such an old style code. And the people using them do have money too.

Keep in mind that having your site looking good for all of them requires nothing additional. Designing with modern webstandards, XHTML and CSS, does not cost more, but gives you good accessibility for all plus the same nice site you have now. There is no reason not to use the webstandards, only advantages. Of course the designer has to be willing to learn it before.

Referring to coding issues, I will show them this thread and ask  them to make the required changes kindly suggested by Yuyi...thanks for all your input

They had been just examples, sorry, there is much more...

One question: will the limitations you discuss affect my chances of getting good visibility from search engines??

This is a very important point!

The searchengines do look for the relevant content on your page. They do not like all a mess of code, not at all. They prefer sites in XHTML, where the structure and the content is easy to get from the XHTML file, while all the design specifications, which the searchengines do not need, are in the CSS file, allowing the searchengines to ignore them.

Experience shows that a simple recoding of a site from old style html to new webstandards with XHTML and CSS does result in a clearly better position in the searchengines.

A searchengine friendly site is just another bonus you get free when you have your site designed with web standards, XHTML and CSS.

Yuyi

Thanks for the further insight, I am in a good position to have them recify these issues......i still owe them some money. this should incetivize them.

I will talk to them tomorrow. At is happens i am having a very good run of luck with search engines yahoo.com give me top 5 listings with search strings like "khon kaen condo" msn.com gives the same, because of course they take their data from yahoo. Google is the tough nut to crack for me , I am struggling to make top 20 but getting there, i had a jump up of about 10 places during the last dance......i am using a rather good SEO software package that is available as freeware. its giving me excellent results so far.

[bino]

i am using a rather good SEO software package that is available as freeware. its giving me excellent results so far.

What would be the name of this package?

[buksida]

Could try this site: www.digitalmetrix.net

Looks like they've done a fair few websites.