[thelist] legal questions

[Luther, Ron]

Brian Cummiskey asked:

>>I happened to go to an old client's site to see if anything was changed, 
>>and to my suprise, there was an entire new layout from a different firm 
>>or individual.  However, a lot of my old content and database structure 
>>were re-used, simply plugged into the new template so to speak.

>>Mainly, I want to use the site in my portfolio.  


Hi Brian,

First of all ... good luck with this!

Any chance you have screen shots of 'your' work laying about? I would 
either use those or double check with the client to make sure it would 
still be okay to use those.  (The downside, of course, is that they 
mostly convey the 'look' of your work ... they don't do as good a job 
getting across the wonderful usability that you built into the 
interface ... or how well you handled accessibility concerns ... on the 
plus side though, you get to 'snapshot' it in the browser it looks 
best in!)

I don't like portfolio links to live sites because of exactly what 
you've run into ... things change and people can't tell what you did 
or didn't do.  I think it's even worse for 'team players' ... how 
do you show off the clever db design work you did if it's hidden behind 
someone else's pink and puce ui? (Sure - creating a generic ERD 
reflecting your cleverness can help but that can also be almost like 
doing the work over again!)


HTH a wee bit,

RonL.
(Who, since he spends a lot of time designing reports using a 
specific report writer, has similar problems putting 'portfolio' 
pages together ... heck, clients even get persnickety over screen 
shots of reports ... sensitive info and all like that there ...)

;-)