It is fair to say that one of the most broadly interpreted and poorly perceived definitions in I.T. is the label 'Web Designer'. Website Design includes several distinctive facets, and an understanding of these can help anybody thinking of getting in the market. Fundamentally, there are 2 main sides to web design; the creative side and the 'technical' process. The average computer user thinks web designers are responsible for how a site 'looks' & feels. Many people may consider a 'web designer' a kind of artist. But in reality, in modern-day web-design it is becoming more and more difficult to split up the 'technical' side from the 'creative' element, as both of them are so intertwined. It will become a bit more evident just how things sit together if we break the job down in to its various roles.

To start with, we have the graphic-artists, that design & put together the graphic icons & pictures which we find on any website. They're not strictly web designers per-se, & in many cases are multi-media artists making use of graphic layout and animation software, (such as Adobe 'Photoshop' & Adobe 'Flash'.) Most graphic-artists have been to university or college, and have a background in art and design. Most importantly, this work demands a sound creative talent.

Web-designers are next - these people work with design software like Adobe 'Dreamweaver' to prepare & design the visual aspects and feel of the web-site. Through the use of graphics from the graphic-artist, they'll put together the 'navigational' framework of the site, working together with the clients to make sure the 'feel' meets their needs. A web designer with limited knowledge may well begin with the 'form' instead of the function of a website. However, you need to essentially start with a grasp of the 'functions' it's required to perform to build a truly effective website. It could be that its effectively a web based catalogue, or an e-commerce web-site where products are sold there and then. It's possible you'll want to accentuate products and solutions by way of video and a heavily graphical interface, or it could be its mostly an 'informational' web-site where the requirement is straightforward access to key text information (such as this particular website.) Regardless of what you need from a web site, it must - at it's simplest level - carry out the function for which it's designed. So many sites look amazing but they are a pain to get around and find what you'd like - and so users give up and never come back. The goal of any professional web designer is first and foremost to construct an event that visitors enjoy & feel comfortable with - so that they return again & again.

Further skill-sets which are very useful for commercial web-designers are a knowledge of project-management and e-commerce. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) know-how is very valuable for web experts - this is the skill of getting web-sites at or near to the top of the Search Engines for commonly used search phrases. And behind the scenes but very crucially we have the web-server administrators & installers that make sure that the whole thing operates smoothly. Technically they are network-administrator experts though.

The design environments utilised by web-designers are their key resources. 'Adobe Creative Suite' 4 is the most commercially popular in the market right now (as of '10). 'Dreamweaver' is the software program which builds web-sites, with Flash providing usage of animated & interactive graphical content material. In many ways we could view 'Dreamweaver' as a rather fancy Word-Processor. It lets you lay graphics & text in accordance with particular rules & parameters, and then produce basic inter-activity through page-linking. HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) program code is developed in the background with Dreamweaver, as with any web design environment. It's the 'language' of web browsers, and is a 'script' which effectively draws & controls the web page you're looking at. Layout tag 'languages' like CSS & XML are matched up with 'HTML'. As they are 'standardised', these tag languages can work on multiple-platforms to allow more stream-lined HTML code & more effective lay-out techniques. The concept is that the page will look exactly the same on any browser, whether it is Mozilla Firefox, 'Internet Explorer', 'Safari', Opera or whichever. Consequently the graphic-blocks you are laying and the text you're putting in is being turned into code behind the scenes by Dreamweaver. A comprehensive understanding of these languages is vital if you are to become a commercially viable web designer.

Web-developers are the most technically trained of all. In addition to being proficient in HTML, 'XML' & CSS, web developers will understand other highly regarded programming languages like VB, 'PHP', Java, C# & ASP.net for instance. Many also have a very good knowledge of 'SQL', the Database language - since the information on many sizable modern sites is stored in this 'language'. A regular E-commerce website does not have a bunch of web-designers who've developed its thousands of web-pages in lay-out format. Instead, a place holder 'template' will have been produced, & the details will be dynamically fed from a database. So as well as significantly greater efficiencies with the web site build, this process also allows for a much more consistent look & 'feel' as well.

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