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I’ve heard about various services that charge a flat rate to chop Photoshop (etc) files into clean (X)HTML and CSS, generally for a flat fee and quick turnaround. The topic came up today when a freelancing application developer buddy asked me about this type of service.
So this morning I asked my twitter followers (follow me!) which services they knew of. Here’s what came back (in a matter of minutes - gotta love twitter!):
Then @jasonw22 pointed out that Jonathan Snook (a hero of mine) has a list of about 20 such services, and just this week posted a review of his experience auditioning the psd2html service.
If you’ve used any of these services, I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments below (and of other services you may know of or recommend).
I’ll report back on my friend’s experience.
(I must mention, in closing, that I’m skeptical of such services. I’ve spent the last several years of my career promoting the professionalism of frontend engineering, and so I have a twang of fear that these services are a step in the wrong direction. Then again, perhaps services such as these — if, in fact, the quality is there — prove that some aspects of “professional grade” web development are now par for the course. Jury’s still out.)
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Ross March 21st, 2008 - 10:26 am
I think the fear is you would get back a lot of absolute divs in your code, per the way ImageReady seems to work.
http://tinyurl.com/b93sk
…but I’m happy to read that didn’t happen to Snook.
I feel like MY job could be somewhat described via the demand of “turn PSDs into XHTML in LESS than 8 hours…and make sure it works in an ancient version of Mozilla. Also, the client needs it EOD, even though it’s Friday.”
Nate Koechley March 21st, 2008 - 10:53 am
I was pleased to read that too. There’s a continuum from “100s of absolutely positioned divs” through “a mild case of unsemantic divitis” to “beautiful semantic HTML”. In my professional work I aim for full semantic html, obviously, but from a service I’d settle for anywhere on the middle or far end of the spectrum from the madness of position:324px;width:3px; etc etc.
Thanks for the comment.
Paul Irish March 21st, 2008 - 11:28 am
There is also a resource of reviews for these services already:
http://www.mostsliced.com/
Avi Flombaum March 21st, 2008 - 12:11 pm
xhtmlized.com is amazing. Their turn around time is fast and the quality of the code is unbelievable. I’ve sent over 20k (US $) worth of work their way in the last year and not once have they disappointed me. Enjoy.
Jonathan Snook March 21st, 2008 - 12:31 pm
Paul, that’s a great link and I’ve updated my list of services to point to it.
For me, it’s about hitting a comfortable level with the results. I’m finding that it’s becoming increasingly important to outline my expectations from the beginning. In doing so, I’m happier with the results. If things are missed, it’s easy to go back and say, “this is what I asked for.” If you don’t ask then it’s harder to complain. Also, some of these services are run by people just making some extra cash on the side. XHTML Genius is an example. I know the guy and the results I can expect but he doesn’t always have the availability since he has other projects to work on.
PS: A hero? I blush. :)
James Duncan April 8th, 2008 - 7:51 am
We used psd2html on a few projects at a recent older gig (surprisingly large clients btw, but given our resource crunch, it was the only way unfort).
Pretty good over all. Focus was on matching the PSDs (which was good) but the code overall was aslo well formatted and clean.
I ended up taking the initial work and breaking out CSS into more of a “framework” (for lack of a better term). But when we sent those files back to them for some add-on work, they did a good job of following the file structure and document structure that I had had updated. And they were good on their word for timelines.
Due to the location (Eastern EU?), there were some funny translations in some of the ID names.
But over all, pleasantly surprised and they helped us hit some tight deadlines on a multiple projects, when the proverbial sky was falling.
Cheers and hope this helps.
James
Charles Adler April 28th, 2008 - 10:56 am
I actually just used PSD2HTML a few months back. My build was somewhat complex so there was a bit of back and forth, and they missed a few requirements, but fixed all issues fairly quickly.
I’m not a hardcore front end developer so I can’t speak to the nuts and bolts of their code standards, but it did pass W3C strict guidelines, and they were really great to work with. Overall I would definitely use them again if the need came up.
Overall, depending on the need and type of work, these slicing services are amazing. I’m sure it challenges those of you who are essentially contending with their skill set, but for certain jobs this service works very well. That said, I’m a fairly collaborative guy, and love working hand in hand with savvy developers who bring something to the table. That level of interaction was definitely missing from this situation, but I knew that going into it.
To Paul’s note above, I use http://www.mostsliced.com as a resource for my search. Great little site.
John Kerh May 15th, 2008 - 8:12 am
Hi
The best xhtml slicers are for sure Instant Coding. I’m a designer and I use slicers every day. The best code I got from Instant Coding.
John