Surely one of the most mis-interpreted & over-worked labels within the I.T. market today must be the term Web-Designer? For anyone looking to get into the marketplace, an explanation of the diverse facets ought to help to make things clear. Web Design involves the 'technical' elements of a website plus the 'creative' aspects. The majority of people think a web designer is someone who creates the visual areas of the site. A lot of people might consider a 'web-designer' a sort of artist. In fact the present day web designer's work is an 'inter-related' mix of 'technical' know-how & design creativity - and the two have become very hard to separate. When you break web design down into it's component functions, then it becomes much more evident how each thing fits together.

The people who design and build the pictures & graphic icons to go on a web-page are generally known as graphic-artists. Most are not strictly web designers as such, & more often than not are multimedia artists utilising graphic layout & animation software, (for example Adobe 'Photoshop' and Adobe Flash.) Normally, they will have come from an art background, and might have undertaken studies at university or college level. Above all else, this kind of work involves a strong artistic ability.

Next we have the web-designers, who produce the layout and overall feel of a web-site using a design environment such as Dreamweaver. They take on the graphics created by the graphic-artist, and alongside their client produce an initial style and 'navigational' composition for the brand-new site. A web-designer with limited knowledge would probably start with the 'form' instead of the function of a site. And yet, you need to really begin with a grasp of the functions its required to carry out to create a truly successful web site. It's possible it is in effect an online inventory, or an e-commerce site where merchandise can be bought there and then. Quite possibly rather like this site the principle function is easy access to pertinent information, or maybe it will be a showcase for merchandise via video and a heavily 'graphical' inter-face. Regardless of what you want from a website, it must - at it's simplest level - carry out the 'function' for which it is designed. Most people will abandon a site and not go back if its too difficult to navigate - however attractive it looks at first glance. The aim of any professional web-designer is to first & foremost produce an event that individuals enjoy and are happy with - so that they will come back again and again.

The Adobe Creative Suite is the most commercially-popular design environment utilised by web-site designers right now. These valuable programs are now ('10) on Version 4. 'Dreamweaver' is the software program which builds websites, with Flash providing access to animated and interactive graphical content. In many ways we may view Dreamweaver as a glorified Word Processor. Text and graphics can be displayed (according to known rules) and then a basic interactivity can be created by way of page linking. 'HTML' ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program-coding is developed in the background with 'Dreamweaver', just like any other web design-environment. This is the language of web browsers, and is a script which in essence draws and controls the web-page you are viewing. Matched with 'HTML' are the layout 'tag' 'languages' like XML & CSS. Because these tag 'languages' are standardised, the smoother and rather more efficient results work effectively on a number of different platforms. The idea being that the web-page will appear identical on any web browser, be it Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, 'Safari', 'Opera' or whichever. So although you lay the graphic-blocks & put in the text, Dreamweaver is converting this in to coding behind the scenes. If you are going to be a commercially feasible website designer, you'll need an in-depth understanding of these types of languages.

Commercial web-designers may also improve their offering if they choose to branch-out into fields like project-management & e-commerce for example. 'SEO' ('Search Engine Optimisation') expertise is very useful for web experts - this deals with the art of getting web-sites to or near the top of the Search Engines for frequently used search terms. And behind the scenes but hugely important are the web server installers and administrators who make sure that everything works as it should. Technically speaking these people are network-administrator professionals though.

The one thing you have to grasp is absolutely no training course can in fact make a web designer out of you. The course will simply teach all the techniques and skills. Throughout your study and training, you need to spend time building & developing as many web sites as possible, to practice and build your portfolio. A hobby or interest can be an effective starting place, or maybe your favourite family pet, or a holiday-resort you particularly liked. Start interactive sites and generate traffic to them. Everything you do will enhance your CV, & illustrate much more to a company than just an Adobe certification.

Web developers are members of this equation, and the most technically minded. These people won't simply understand HTML, CSS & XML, but will have also learnt more official programming-languages like 'PHP', ASP.Net, 'VB', C#, Java among others. And since most modern internet sites of any size 'store' their data using SQL database-technology, they're likely to have got a firm handle on this also. Most e-commerce web-sites aren't the result of a big bunch of web-designers who have built thousands of pages in a layout form. What generally occurs is a place-holder template is produced, and the contents are automatically inserted from a Database to the site. So in addition to far better efficiencies with the web-site construct, this process also provides for a much more uniform look & feel as well.

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