It's reasonable to say that one of the more broadly interpreted and badly perceived definitions in IT is the label 'Web Designer'. Web-Design incorporates many different facets, & a good understanding of these could help anyone seeking to get into the marketplace. Web Design incorporates the technical components of a successful website in addition to the creative elements. The majority of people believe a 'web designer' is somebody who creates the visible areas of the website. Basically, they think of web-site designers as artists in the main. The truth is the present day web-designer's job is an inter-related mix of 'technical' know-how & design creativity - & the two are becoming quite hard to split up. We'll illustrate this with more clarity when we separate web-design up in to it's various parts.

Individuals who design & assemble the images & graphic symbols which go on a web-page are generally known as graphic-artists. Strictly speaking, graphic artists usually aren't really web-designers. More often they're multi-media artists who utilise software such as Adobe Photoshop and 'Flash' to bring about their end results. Virtually all graphic artists attended university or college, and have a background in art & design. Most importantly, this specific role involves sound artistic skill.

Site designers come next - these people employ design software such as Dreamweaver to prepare and design the look & 'feel' of the site. They work with the graphics that are produced by the graphic artist, and work with their clients to initially create the 'feel' and 'navigational' composition of the web site. A web-designer with limited understanding would probably begin with the 'form' rather than the function of a web-site. And yet, you must actually begin with a grasp of the 'functions' its required to do to create a truly productive site. Is it mainly an E-commerce web-site, that needs to have the facility take payments securely, or is it perhaps an on-line product or service brochure listing? Maybe much like this web-site the chief purpose is easy access to relevant info, or perhaps it will be a show-case for products and services by way of video and a heavily graphical inter-face. Quite simply the website must be able to meet its needs - whatever those particular needs are. There is no value in building a visually interesting web site that's hopeless for anyone to get to where they want! The aim of any reputable web designer is first & foremost to come up with an experience that individuals enjoy & are comfortable with - so that they will come back again and again.

Professional web designers may also up-grade their offering if they branch out in to areas like project-management & E-commerce for example. 'Search Engine Optimisation' ('SEO') is another field which handles how the web-site is listed with search engines like google - to ensure that it can be found more easily (this is almost a whole job by itself.) And behind the scenes but very crucially are the web-server installers and administrators who make sure that everything runs as it should. Strictly speaking these people are network administrator specialists though.

Web 'developers' are the most technically apt of all. Not only will web-developers understand the languages mentioned above, they will also have mastered other languages, for instance 'C#', Visual Basic, 'PHP', Java, ASP.net and so on. They'll also generally have got a strong understanding of 'SQL' Database technology, since this is how the majority of substantial sites store their information. Most e-commerce web sites aren't actually the result of a large bunch of designers who've constructed many hundreds of web pages in a lay-out format. More often, following the formation of a place-holder 'template', the material will be extracted from a Database and 'dynamically' inserted. So along with much better efficiencies with the site build, this process also enables an infinitely more uniform look and feel as well.

Several of these roles can and certainly do cross-over obviously, we are involved with a number of independent web-designers who each cover almost all of the previously mentioned functions. But, you will need quite some time to develop that much expertise. The ideal professional web design training-program then needs to teach several things: A basic introduction to web-design, followed by how to utilise Adobe 'Dreamweaver' and have a fundamental knowledge of Adobe Flash. This would then lead on to a comprehension of 'HTML' & 'CSS', and then some coaching in the area of E-commerce. To construct 'dynamic' sites it's important to learn 'PHP', which is a less arduous programming-language to start off in than ASP.NET. In addition , you need a rudimentary grasp of databases & 'SEO'. Accomplishing these skills will provide you with a chance to start working on a decent cross section of websites. Just like taking driving lessons, you have to first learn the physical competencies, before you effectively push beyond them & accomplish an element of 'finesse'. You'd probably need to give yourself approximately four hundred to five hundred hours to study & competently master a broad ranging training-program of this nature - so if your aim is to achieve this alongside employment it could be completed within a year. As there are plenty of facts to consider, it's well worth taking the time to look carefully at any training-programs that interest you. Speak to someone with industry knowledge to help you put things together.

The design environments utilised by web designers are their key tools. 'Adobe Creative Suite' 4 is the most commercially popular in the industry these days (as of '10). Whilst 'Adobe Flash' gives access to interactive & animated graphical content material, 'Dreamweaver' is the software that builds web pages. 'Dreamweaver' might be looked at as a 'glorified' Word Processor in a great many ways. Within specific rules & parameters, it helps you display graphics and text, and then through a procedure called 'page linking' you can create basic inter-activity within the website. 'HTML' (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) program coding is developed behind the scenes with 'Dreamweaver', much like any web design environment. It's the 'language' of web-browsers, & is a script that basically 'draws' and controls the web-page you're seeing. Lay-out 'tag' languages like XML & CSS are associated with 'HTML'. As they are 'standardised', these can work on multiple platforms to enable more streamlined HTML coding & more efficient lay-out techniques. So no matter which web browser a person uses, ('Internet Explorer', Mozilla Firefox, Opera or anything else.) the web-page will hopefully look the same. And so though you're laying graphic-blocks & text, in the background, Dreamweaver is turning this in to 'code'. A thorough knowledge of these types of languages is essential if you're to be a commercially viable web-designer.

The most important thing to emphasise is that the training alone will not make you a web-designer; it will simply provide you with the techniques. Build as many sites as you can as you go through your studies - the practice will be invaluable and you'll have a portfolio to show just what you can do. Your websites should be about anything you like - your local music-scene, horses, an author you like or cars. Create an interactive web-site, and start building 'traffic' towards it. This will all look more constructive on your Curriculum Vitae, and in your Portfolio, than a qualification from 'Adobe' will!

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