Probably just about one of the most misunderstood and over-worked titles within the IT market nowadays has to be the words Web-Designer? In actual fact, web-design does include a variety of different aspects, & so it might help to clarify things when we break it down. You'll find there are essentially two sides to web-design - the technical side and the creative 'design' side. The typical laptop or computer user thinks web designers determine how a website looks and feels. Meaning a web-designer is basically an artist who has had some technical instruction. But in fact, in modern day web design it is turning out to be more and more difficult to separate the 'technical' side from the creative element, as both of them are so intertwined. It becomes a bit more evident how things sit together when we split the profession up into it's component roles.

People who design & assemble the pictures and graphic icons to go on a web page are called graphic-artists. They are not exactly site designers as such, and usually are multimedia artists utilising graphic layout and animation software, (for instance Adobe 'Photoshop' and Adobe Flash.) The majority attended further education, typically with a degree standard art qualification. Most importantly, this work calls for a sound artistic talent.

Web designers come second - they employ design software such as Dreamweaver to plan & design the appearance & 'feel' of the site. They take the graphics completed by the artist, & along with their client deliver an initial style and 'navigational' structure for the new web-site. A novice web designer tends to start with the 'form' of the website, rather than the 'function'. In order to construct a successful internet site however, its vital that you first of all look at what you essentially would like the web-site to do. This may be a web based catalogue of products and services, or maybe it is an e-commerce web site which really needs to be ready to sell directly from the web page. Maybe rather like this web-site the primary purpose is straightforward access to pertinent information, or perhaps it'll be a showcase for items via video and a heavily 'graphical' interface. Basically the web site must have the facility to meet its required needs - whatever those particular requirements are. Most people will leave a site & not come back if it's too complicated to 'navigate' - however attractive it appears on the surface. The aim of any good web designer is first and foremost to build an experience that visitors enjoy & feel relaxed with - so that they come back again & again.

Web developers are members of this group, and also the most technically-trained. Not only will web-developers know the languages above, they will also have had training in additional languages, for example 'C#', VB, 'PHP', 'Java', 'ASP.Net' etc. Many also have got a good understanding of SQL, the database language - as the data on most sizable modern web sites is stored in this particular language. In reality, it's unlikely that a big E-commerce web site has been put together in layout format by a bunch of web-site designers. Rather, a place holder 'template' will have been developed, and the contents will be 'dynamically' loaded from a Database. So as well as far greater efficiency with the web site construct, using this method also allows for a more uniform look and 'feel' as well.

Needless to say there are cross-overs with a lot of these functions - we ourselves have interactions with quite a few web-designers who are skilled in a lot of them. Nevertheless, it takes time to develop that level of expertise. You have to be trained in a number of things on a commercially feasible web-design training program: A synopsis of the basic fundamentals of web-design first, then straight into using Dreamweaver to a commercial level & the main nuances of Flash as well. Next you must learn the coding languages 'HTML' and 'CSS', & then be trained in a synopsis of just how E-commerce works. To construct dynamic websites it's important to gain knowledge of PHP, which is a simpler programming language to start off in than ASP.NET. In addition , you need a rudimentary grasp of databases & 'SEO'. Grasping these skillsets will provide you with the ability to begin working on a decent cross-section of sites. As with anything, we need to learn how to do the physical skills initially, and then establish more 'finesse' by means of experience & practice. You would need to give yourself somewhere around four hundred to five hundred hours to study & competently learn a broad-ranging training-program such as this - therefore if your aim is to do this along with employment it could be completed within 12 months. As there are plenty of points to consider, it's well worth making the effort to look closely at any training-programs that interest you. Talk to somebody with industry knowledge who can help you sort things out.

The most important resources utilised by web-site designers are the design environments, with 'Adobe Creative Suite' (currently in version 4 as of '09/10) staying the most commercially popular. The software which builds website pages is 'Adobe Dreamweaver', and 'Adobe Flash' accesses 'graphical' content material which can be animated & interactive. You could say that Dreamweaver is the Word-Processor of the Adobe CS range. Graphics & text can be placed (according to certain limits) and then a basic interactivity can be produced by way of page linking. Just like other web design-environments, Dreamweaver produces the program code 'HTML' in the background ('HTML' is short for Hyper Text Markup Language). Essentially, this language of web browsers' is a script which draws and controls the web-page being watched. Along with HTML are the lay-out tag languages - for instance CSS and XML. These tag languages allow more stream-lined HTML code and more efficient lay-out techniques, which will work on multiple platforms (as they are standardised). The concept is that the web page will appear exactly the same on any browser, whether it's Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, 'Safari', 'Opera' or anything else. Consequently the graphic blocks you are placing & the text you're including is being converted into 'code' in the background by Dreamweaver. It's vitally important to have an in depth understanding of these various 'languages' if you wish to be a web designer at the commercial standard.

Commercial web-designers can also upgrade their offering if they branch out into fields like project-management & E-commerce for example. 'SEO' (Search Engine Optimisation) know-how is also extremely valuable for web-experts - this concerns the skill of getting websites at or near to the top of the search engines for commonly used search phrases. And whilst they strictly speaking come from a network administration background, we mustn't forget the valuable function of the web-server administrators and installers, who keep the whole thing working in the background.

It's important to understand that even the very best web-design courses can only show you the techniques & processes - none of them will be able to convert you into a professional web designer. Put together as many web-sites as possible whilst you go through your studies - the process will be invaluable & you will have something to show just what you can do. A sport or other interest can be a very good place to start, or perhaps your favourite animal, or a holiday resort you particularly enjoyed. Start to build inter-active websites & generate 'traffic' to them. All this will appear more favourable on your CV, and in your portfolio, than a qualification from Adobe will!

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