Today I’ll be taking a look at a service called XHTML Slicer that takes the hard work out of web development by doing all the coding for you. XHTML Slicer is ideal for busy web designers who want to be productive and outsource the tedious XHTML/CSS work as well as the casual Photoshop tinkerer that isn’t up-to-date with all of the modern CSS techniques and browser compatibility tweaks.
How It Works
First, you send XHTML Slicer any templates or PSD files of the website design along with a document detailing what the project is and the specifics of how the website should work. XHTML Slicer can work with the following file types: Photoshop PSD (Preferred), Fireworks PNG, Illustrator AI as well as PDFs, JPG/JPEGs, GIFs or TIFFs. Once that is all done, you pay half of the price ($350 USD for a one day turn around, $200 for a 3 day turnaround) upfront. Then XHTML Slicer goes to work checking to see if your design will cause any problems and if not, proceeding to slice your template into valid XHTML, CSS and optimize it for SEO.
Once the slicing has been done, you can view the progress and ask for any revisions before the website is browser tested with Firefox, IE6/7, Safari and Opera. Then you get to see the finished product and pay the remaining balance. Fortunately, if you find any problems at all with the newly-sliced pages within 3 days of the work, XHTML Slicer offers free technical support.
Quality
While I have not personally used XHTML Slicer’s services, I did go through their portfolio and have a look at their XHTML and CSS. True to their word, markup was valid and they code with the XHTML 1.0 Strict Doctype rather than the easy way out with XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
Examples of XHTML Slicer’s CSS and XHTML markup.
From the portfolio websites I have analyzed, code is neat, well organized, structured and commented on. As far as other code comments goes, XHTML Slicer makes use of IE conditional comments to utilize IE version-specific CSS depending on the browser viewing the website, rather than resorting to IE hacks. However, I did not see the use of any title tags for links which is good SEO practice and adds relevancy to the pages the link goes to. Although that might have something to do with the fact that not all clients know exactly which links will be going where when they order slicing. Regardless, just mention the use of title tags in your order and I don’t think they’ll have a problem including them.
On the other hand, XHTML Slicer made use of meta descriptions and keywords to gain the upper hand with search engines. As a comparison, many of the other slicing services I have been around don’t take particular consideration to SEO when creating these web pages.
Competition
XHTML Slicer is not the only slicing service on the Internet. A quick search online will find you more than a handful. However, not all of these services have the same price/time ratio and many of them advertise a certain price which keeps increasing depending on layout options (fluid/flexible, header stretch, Safari/Opera compatibility, code comments etcetera).
After having looked at other similar slicing services, I would trust XHTML Slicer with any slicing work I might find myself with. I encourage you to check out other services first and see if their price and code quality comes close to what it would with XHTML Slicer. For example, XHTMLized charges $339 for a 3 day turnaround slicing of 1 page and CSS Sage charges $345 for a 7 day turnaround slicing of 1 page, whereas XHTML Slicer charges $200 for the same work with a 3 day turnaround. The choice is yours.
Disclosure: This was a paid review.
A problem with these services is that they never work to reduce the loading times. Personally, I’ve also never tried them, but have heard about them from their customers. For example, if you see their header background image:
http://xhtmlslicer.com/images/bg.gif
Now, that image could have been spilt, and repeated in the header, so as to reduce site loading times.
Saw that you have Joost. :)
May I ask for a invite? Been itching to try it out.
@Arjun – I see your point and I myself am a huge loading time person as you can probably tell with my site. Although, I think what you are talking about is typical of most slicing services – that’s what slicing is, cutting up a template into corresponding images and using them as the background.
@ Dustin,
I can’t speak for Stammy but he’s usually very busy. Keep watching 99lives.org, I’ll be posting a post for invites entry shortly where you can ask.
But Paul, they are not just “slicing” up a PSD file into chunks- they are making a web site layout. They pay attention to things like validation and SEO. So I think the critique about loading time is valid (no pun intended though certainly fortuitous :-)
Would it stop me from using them because one or two graphics weren’t optimized? meh. Probably not.
But more importantly, I wanted to make a brief comment about sponsored reviews. waitwaitwait… I’m not about to flame or rant about paid reviews. I say hey… go for it. In fact, many of your reviews I have felt to be honest and helpful. AND you’re always good about the disclosing when something was paid.
This review, however, is sort of different in that you didn’t actually go through the process or use their service. I can jump on their site, inspect their portfolio, and maybe even email them a question or two. A review should be something more than that though, eh? A review should answer questions about their communication methods, payment process, if they understood YOUR layout as you intended it, etc etc. All those questions that I can’t get from just reviewing their sample sites and reading their own web site.
Let me repeat that I am all about smart people, with a good track record, with good insight, writing reviews as a source of revenue. I only ask that if you review a product- please have it in hand. If you review a service- please use the service at least once!
I follow probably about 200 RSS feeds… there’s one folder called “Daily Reads” which only has about 10 blogs in it. That’s where this one sits. Keep up the good work and good luck with everything.
~ Jerm ~
@Paul
But then they shouldn’t do that. Slicing services are run by people, not machines.
Hey Paul,
Have you seen any sample wordpress sites? I’m wondering if they could do a custom blog design that holds its functionality. They said they do on their site, but wonder how effective it would be.
I’ve been doing freelance work with XHTMLized quite a while now, mostly specializing in converting psd templates to content management system templates (wordpress, mephisto, joomla, and etc.) So it all depends on whose doing the markup / coding, we always keep to high standards but the organization of code is vastly different.
As for the title links, I kinda have to disagree with you about the need for it due to search engine optimization. To me, it just becomes an accessibility issue. I mean, why do we have alt tags or title tags anyways? To be more beneficial to users using screen readers? It becomes more of an annoyance then anything, as the title tag will be read first, then the link. Putting the link in context of where its headed to is always how I code things. I dunno, maybe thats just me.
Hey, thanks a lot! We have only minimal experience working with CSS and XHTML. This could really come in handy. Thanks again!
@ Arjun: That header image is as optimized as it could be, it’s made for higher resolutions too and although that pattern is repeated it is done this way because the header on our site doesn’t extend 100% (Notice the curls).
@Prashant
Even though the header on your site doesn’t extend 100%, the whole image is downloaded each time your site is visited.
Don’t know what ‘curls’ you are talking about, but if you are referring to the fibers, I believe they can be repeated horizontally if the image is cut.
Jeremy does raise a very valid point.
The sponsored-or-not issue doesn’t interest me. But how can this be a review when the reviewer hasn’t used the service?
@Arjun – I believe he is referring to the other images that are used on the other side of the image you presented, that curl up.
I would see this as a very good service though it is just slice and dice, and no web design pur sang. Outsourcing is what is about…
Nice to see the point raised by Jeremy and I getting a reply.
Not valid enough, I guess.
:-(
@Jeremy – Thanks for the comment. I totally understand where you are coming from. I often turn down reviews for things that I don’t know enough about to talk about or review, but for something like this, using the service would have involved hiring him for a project which I don’t have. I did my best to analyze XHTML Slicer’s previously completed work and be as objective as possible when stating the facts and then listing my opinions. There have been other paid reviews which I have canceled and asked the reviewer to supply their product for review (such as that lapdawg laptop stand) but with services it’s not that simple. The next time I am asked to review a service for payment, I’ll make sure can try it out first hand.
Also though, my student loans don’t wait until I graduate. I have to make monthly payments so there are times when I’m just like “screw it” if you know what I mean. Thanks for sticking it out.
“But how can this be a review when the reviewer hasn’t used the service?”
Most of the time when I’m paid for reviews, the purchasers are much more interested in merely getting their name out there than the review aspect and urge me state the facts + my opinion. Sometimes I will title the review as “Sponsored Review” in addition to the disclosure notice at the end of the article. It’s posts like those that the review doesn’t meet my standard of quality for a real review, but with this XHTML Slicer review I applied what I considered to be serious effort in giving as much of a review as possible with what I was given.
Thanks for the follow up Stammy (oh snap- can I call you that?). haha.
Let me re-reiterate that 1) I really enjoy this blog and the reviews, and 2) that I hear you on the student loans. It’s gonna be neat to see where you end up after graduation because I think you have an odd mix of creativity, writing ability, and an aptitude for higher level thinking. As your readership on this blog grows, I think it’s important to understand that this blog will naturally attract the same type of people (critical thinkers who wouldn’t be afraid to call you out on something). Of course, a lot of these people are just jackasses with too much time on their hands.
Anyway man, keep up the bloggin and the helpful reviews. Oh and if you ever seriously consider using one of these slicing services do check out Snook’s lineup (which may be a TAD dated now).
Thanks for the response Paul. Let me reiterate that I enjoy this blog and all the effort you put into it. Keep up the good work and I look forward to reading some kick ass reviews in the future.
(I wrote a longer post but friggin FFox crashed on my laptop. doh)
@Jeremy – i think it got your post. Akismet just loves to flag your comments as spam for some reason though. regardless I saved them both.
@Arjun: If loading time is important to you, I can recommend my own slicing service; I always put attention into optimizing the images I slice. Just click on my name and it’s the first link there.
Here’s a followup for XHTML Slicer. Funny enough, after my scathing review of Paul’s review, the company I work at needed to outsource a project to someone and we actually ended up using the service.
The requirements were: 1) Quick turnaround 2) compatibility with our main website’s namespace conventions 3) decently clean CSS for a fairly graphic-heavy layout.
We gave them some instructions and some PSD’s and they did awesome. Quick turnaround and great approach in their CSS and layout techniques. They deviated very slightly from our namespace conventions and did not follow our font-size technique (we use YUI’s font sizing technique)…. but that was not TOO big of a deal. Maybe 10 lines of code I have to change. The big things (browser compatibility, optimized graphics, and pretty “bulletproof” CSS) were all in line. They weren’t the cheapest, but it’s hard to think of how the service could improve much.
So… mark one happy company that’s used this service for a fairly complex layout. And we heard about it here folks. Rock on!
To follow up on Jeremy’s review, I’ve also sent in a project to XHTMLSlicer. I went for the three day turnaround option but was given a further discount due to a previous agreement with Prashant.
I was quite pleased that the site was completed much earlier (despite some complex graphics) although I ran into a few problems a few days later which their support guys were able to fix quite easily.
Considering I’ve had problems outsourcing XHTML/CSS conversion projects in the past, I’m quite pleased with the level of service from XHTMLSlicer, I’ve got a meatier project going their way in the next few days so perhaps I’ll be able to give a more comprehensive review when I get the results of that back.
But for now thumbs up.
I have a similar service on my site.