It is fair to state that perhaps one of the most widely interpreted & badly defined terms within I.T. is the label 'Web Designer'. If you're looking to get in to the marketplace, an explanation of the distinct facets ought to help to de-mystify things. There are fundamentally two elements to web design - the technical side & the 'creative' 'design' part. To the person in the street, a 'web-designer' is someone that designs the look & 'feel' of a web-site. To put it differently, they view web-designers because artists on the whole. In reality every web designer's work is an 'inter-related' blend of technical know-how and design-creativity - & the two things have become very difficult to split up. When you break web-design down into it's different roles, then it becomes more evident how everything fits together.

Individuals that design and put together the images and graphic icons to go on a website are known as graphic-artists. They are not strictly site designers as such, & most of the time are multi-media artists utilising graphic lay-out and animation software, (for example Adobe 'Photoshop' & Adobe 'Flash'.) Many have been through higher-education, with typically a degree level art qualification. Above all else, this kind of job involves a sound creative ability.

Then come the web-designers, who create the lay-out & overall 'feel' of a web site by using a design-environment like Adobe 'Dreamweaver'. They work with the images which are supplied by the graphic-artist, & work with their client to start to create the feel & 'navigational' composition of the web-site. A novice web designer often starts with the form of a site, rather than the function. But, you should really begin with an understanding of the 'functions' it's required to carry out to create a truly productive web site. Is it for the most part an E-commerce web site, that would need to be ready to take payments securely, or is it an online product brochure listing? Maybe you'll want to accentuate merchandise through video and a heavily 'graphical' interface, or perhaps its predominantly an informational web site where the requirement is straightforward access to key text information (like this particular web-site.) Essentially the site must be able to meet it's requirements - whatever those particular requirements are. There is no point creating a visually inspiring web site that's hopeless for anyone to find their way around! A professional web-designer must basically produce an on-line experience that's both satisfying & intuitive for the people coming to the site - then they will visit again and again.

Some other skill sets which are relevant to web-designers in the commercial market are a good grasp of e-commerce & project-management. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) expertise is also very valuable for web experts - this deals with the skill of getting websites to or near the top of the search engines for frequently used search terms. And behind the scenes but vitally important are the web server administrators and installers that make sure that the whole thing operates as it should. Officially speaking they are network administrator specialists though.

The most important tools employed by web site designers are the design environments, with Adobe Creative Suite (now in Version 4 as of '09/10) being the most popular commercially. The software that builds website pages is Adobe Dreamweaver, and Adobe Flash accesses graphical content material which can be animated & interactive. In some ways we could see Dreamweaver as a rather fancy Word-Processor. Within certain rules and parameters, it lets you place graphics and text, and then via a process called page-linking you can create basic interactivity inside the site. Just like other web design-environments, Dreamweaver produces the program code HTML behind the scenes ('HTML' is short for Hyper Text Markup Language). Effectively, this 'language of web browsers' is a script which draws & controls the web page being looked at. Alongside HTML are the lay-out 'tag' 'languages' - for instance XML and CSS. As they are standardised, these can work on multiple platforms to allow more stream-lined HTML code & more effective lay-out techniques. So which-ever web-browser someone uses, (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, 'Opera' or anything else.) the web-page will ideally appear exactly the same. Consequently the graphic blocks you're laying & the text you're adding is being converted into code in the background by 'Dreamweaver'. If you're going to be a commercially feasible web designer, you'll have to have a thorough understanding of these types of 'languages'.

Web developers are members of the group, and the most technically-minded. Not only will these people understand the languages mentioned above, they will also have had training in additional languages, for instance 'C#', Visual Basic, 'PHP', 'Java', 'ASP.Net' and so on. They'll generally also possess a solid understanding of SQL Database technology, because this is one way most contemporary large sites store their data. In reality, it is un-likely that a large e-commerce site has been created in lay-out format by a bunch of web-designers. Rather, a place holder template will have been produced, and the contents will be 'dynamically' fed from a Database. This makes not only the building, management and updates hugely more efficient, it also makes for a far more consistent site.

Several of these roles can & do crossover of course, we are involved with various freelance web-designers who all can handle the majority of the previously mentioned functions. But, you will need quite some time to acquire that level of expertise. You need to be taught several things on a professionally viable web design training program: First, an introduction to basic web design, followed by teaching in Adobe Dreamweaver & a synopsis of the primary components of Adobe 'Flash'. This should then lead on to a comprehension of HTML & CSS, with vital insights within the field of E-commerce. To construct dynamic websites you'll need to learn 'PHP', which is an easier programming language to start off in than ASP.NET. You also need a rudimentary understanding of databases and 'SEO'. All of this is basically to reach a standard of technical ability where you can work with a wide enough array of websites. The actual physical competencies have got to be learned first of all, before you fine-tune them to a natural and flowing style - just like the time you learned to drive your first car. A thorough training program of this sort would possibly involve approximately four to five hundred hrs of part time study and practice & therefore can be successfully finished part-time over a year. A professional advisor will be able to help you prepare your path through this quagmire of commercial learning, and we highly recommend that you allow time to plan your route with care before you begin your web design training.

Career PC Interactive Self-Paced Courses In Microsoft Office & Systems >>