No doubt just about one of the most misinterpreted & generalised labels in the I.T. sector nowadays has to be the term 'Web Designer'? In actual fact, web-design does consist of a variety of diverse aspects, and so it may help to explain things a little when we break it down. In essence, there are 2 main areas to web-design; the 'creative' side & the 'technical' process. Most people believe a web designer is someone who is responsible for the visual areas of the web-site. Quite simply, they think of web-designers because artists in the main. In reality the present day web-designer's work is an inter-related mix of technical knowledge and design-creativity - & the two things have become quite difficult to separate. We can illustrate this with more clarity when we separate web design down in to its different parts.

The people that design and assemble the images & graphic symbols which go on a web-page are generally known as graphic artists. They most often do this by making use of graphic layout and 'animation' software (like Adobe 'Flash' and Photoshop), & are not actually web-designers as such. Generally, they will have an artistic background, & may have studied at university level. Plainly, this job requires a strong artistic ability.

Site designers come second - these people use design-software like Adobe Dreamweaver to create and design the look and feel of the website. They use the work created by the graphic artist, & in conjunction with their clients develop an initial look and navigational framework for the brand new site. A web designer with fairly limited understanding might start with the form rather than the function of a website. In order to develop a good web site though, it's crucial that you first of all look at what you essentially want the web-site to accomplish. This might be a web based catalogue of products, or possibly it is an E-commerce website which would need to be able to sell directly from the web page. It's possible you need to highlight products and solutions via video & a heavily 'graphical' inter-face, or it could be it is mainly an informational website where the necessity is easy access to key text information (like this site.) Whatever you need from a website, it must - at it's simplest level - carry out the function for which it's designed. Visitors will leave a web site and not go back if it is too complicated to get around - however attractive it looks on the surface. The over-riding goal of every professional web-site designers is for people to visit their site regularly - so it really needs to be a relaxed & pleasurable experience.

Further skills which are important to professional web-site designers are an understanding of project-management & E-commerce. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is another field that deals with how a web-site is indexed with Search Engines - in order that it can be found more easily (this really is almost an entire job in itself.) And although they generally come from a network administration background, we should remember the valuable work of the web-server administrators & installers, who keep the whole thing working in the background.

The most technically trained web experts are generally the web developers. Not only will web-developers understand the languages above, they will also have studied additional languages, such as C#, Visual Basic, PHP, Java, 'ASP.Net' and others. They'll generally also have a solid knowledge of 'SQL' Database technology, as this is how the majority of large web-sites store their information. The majority of E-commerce internet sites are not the result of a big group of designers who've constructed many hundreds of web-pages in a lay-out form. Instead, a place-holder 'template' will have been developed, and the material will be 'dynamically' fed from a Database. In addition to being hugely more efficient to construct, manage and up-date, it also aids in the feel of the site being consistent.

The main factor to emphasise is the fact that training program itself will not make you a web-designer; it will merely teach you the methods. Build as many web-sites as you possibly can whilst you work through your course - the exercise will be invaluable and you'll have a portfolio to show just what you can do. Make sites about a special interest, your family dog, your favourite music group or even TV show. Create an interactive website, & start building traffic towards it. This will all appear more favourable on your CV, and in your Portfolio, than a qualification from Adobe will!

Many of these roles can & do cross-over obviously, we are involved with several freelance website designers who all can handle most of the above tasks. However, it takes time to develop that much expertise. An ideal commercial web-design training program therefore has to instruct on several things: First of all, an introductory tutorial to basic web-design, followed by teaching in Adobe 'Dreamweaver' & an understanding of the principal aspects of Adobe 'Flash'. Next you must understand the 'coding' languages 'HTML' & 'CSS', and then be taught a synopsis of how e-commerce operates. To build dynamic websites you'll need to have a grasp of 'PHP', which is a simpler programming-language to start off in than ASP.NET. In addition , you need a basic understanding of databases and 'SEO'. All of this is basically to get to a standard of technical ability whereby you're able to deal with a wide enough array of sites. The actual physical competencies must come first, before you can fine-tune them to a natural and flowing style - a lot like the time you were learning to drive your car. Most candidates can get through a versatile course like this within a yr - supposing part time study and practice of close to 400-500 hours. An industry advisor will be able to assist you to plan your path through this labyrinth of commercial-learning, and we recommend that you plan your path with care before you begin your web design training.

The design environments utilised by web site designers are their key tools. Adobe Creative Suite 4 is really the most commercially popular in the industry now (as of '10). The software program which builds websites is Adobe Dreamweaver, and 'Adobe Flash' gives access to 'graphical' content material that can be interactive and animated. 'Dreamweaver' could be considered a rather fancy Word-Processor in a great many ways. Graphics and text can be layed (according to certain limits) & then a basic inter-activity can be created by page-linking. HTML ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program code is created in the background with 'Dreamweaver', just like any web design environment. In essence, this language of web browsers' is a script that 'draws' and controls the page being viewed. Lay-out tag languages like CSS & XML are associated with 'HTML'. Because these 'tag' languages are 'standardised', the smoother and rather more efficient outcomes work successfully on a number of different platforms. So regardless of what web-browser someone uses, ('Internet Explorer', Firefox, Opera etc.) the page will ideally look the same. As a result the graphic-blocks you are laying & the text you are including is being turned into code behind the scenes by 'Dreamweaver'. If you're planning to be a commercially feasible website designer, you will need an in-depth knowledge of these 'languages'.

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