No doubt just about one of the most misinterpreted and generalised labels within the IT market today must be the words 'Web Designer'? In reality, web design does include many distinctive aspects, and so it may help to clarify things when we go through each one. Web Design involves the 'technical' components of a successful website plus the 'creative' aspects. The typical laptop or computer user believes web-designers determine how a site 'looks' and 'feels'. A lot of people may consider a 'web-designer' a kind of 'artist'. Having said that, a professional web designer will in actual fact be as occupied with the 'technical' element of things as much as the 'creative' side. When you break down web design in to it's various tasks, then it becomes more apparent how each thing fits together.

To start with, we've got graphic-artists, who design and build the graphic symbols & pictures that you find on any web page. In real terms, graphic-artists aren't really web designers. More often they are multimedia artists who employ software like Adobe 'Photoshop' & 'Flash' to bring about their finished results. Many have come from higher-education, with typically a degree-level art qualification. This particular part is a lot more about creative ability than any other function.

Then come the web designers, who produce the lay-out & overall 'feel' of a web-site using a design-environment like Adobe 'Dreamweaver'. By using graphics from the graphic artist, they'll develop the navigational structure of the website, keeping in touch with the client to ensure that the 'feel' is right. A novice web designer often starts with the form of the web site, rather than the 'function'. Although, to really develop a useful website, you have to start with a clear understanding of what you require the web site to actually do. It could be an online inventory of products, or maybe it is an E-commerce web site which really needs to have the ability to sell directly from the page. It could be you want to highlight merchandise by way of video and a largely 'graphical' interface, or maybe it is largely an informational website where the necessity is straightforward access to key text data (like this website.) No matter what you require from a web site, it must - at its most elementary level - carry out the 'function' for which its designed. People will leave a web-site & not return if its too hard to navigate - however great it appears on the surface. The over-riding aim of all good web-site designers is for people to pay a visit to their web-site on a regular basis - so it really needs to be a happy and satisfying experience.

The key tools used by web-designers are the design-environments, with Adobe Creative Suite (currently in version 4 as of 2009/2010) being the most popular commercially. The software program that builds website pages is 'Adobe Dreamweaver', & 'Adobe Flash' gives access to graphical content material that can be animated and interactive. In some ways we may look at 'Dreamweaver' as a glorified Word Processor. Text and graphics can be displayed (within known rules) and then a basic interactivity can be created by means of page linking. 'HTML' ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program-coding is developed in the background with 'Dreamweaver', just like any web design-environment. This is the 'language' of web-browsers, & is a script that effectively draws & controls the web-page you are viewing. Layout 'tag' languages like XML & CSS are paired with 'HTML'. As they are 'standardised', these tag languages will work on multiple platforms to facilitate more streamlined HTML code & more effective lay-out techniques. So whatever web-browser somebody uses, (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and so on.) the web page will ideally look exactly the same. So although you lay the graphic-blocks and put in the text, 'Dreamweaver' is converting this in to coding in the background. A well-rounded understanding of these various languages is very important if you're to be a commercially viable website designer.

Many independent web designers can carry out a number of these roles themselves; in fact we come into contact with quite a few who are able to on a regular basis. But, it takes quite some time to develop that much knowledge. A web-design program therefore that will equip you to enter the work-place must contain the following - A briefing of the basic fundamentals of web design first, then straight into using 'Dreamweaver' to a professional level & the key nuances of Flash too. The languages of HTML & CSS should be covered next, with some E-commerce instruction built-in here. To construct 'dynamic' websites it's important to learn PHP, which is an easier programming language to start off in than ASP.Net. You also need a basic understanding of databases and 'SEO'. All of this is just to get to a standard of ability technically whereby you are able to deal with a diverse enough array of sites. The actual physical skill-sets have to come first of all, before you elevate them to a more natural flowing style - similar to when you learned to drive a car. Most trainees can get through a flexible course such as this within a yr - supposing part time study & practice of about 400 - 500 hours. As there are so many facts to consider, its worth finding the time to look carefully at any training programs that interest you. Talk to somebody with industry knowledge who can help you sort things out.

Web-developers are members of this equation, and the most technically apt. Not only will these people understand the languages mentioned above, they will also have studied other languages, for example 'C#', 'VB', PHP, Java, ASP.Net etc. A large number also have a solid understanding of 'SQL', the database-language - since the data on many large modern web-sites is stored in this particular 'language'. The majority of e-commerce web-sites are not the result of a big group of web designers who have created many hundreds of pages in layout form. Instead, a place holder 'template' will have been built, & the details will be 'dynamically' inserted from a database. This process makes not only the building, management & updates massively more straighforward, it also creates a far more consistent site.

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