Are you unsure about the difference between web design and web development? Web designers arrange the front-end visual layout of a website. Web developers build the back-end code that determines how a website functions. If you’ve ever used these two terms interchangeably, it is important that you learn the difference before you hire someone to build your website.
Web Designers
Have certain colors, fonts or graphics ever drawn you to a certain portion of a website? Chances are a web designer planned that attraction. Web designers construct the portions of a website that visitors see. Determining how visitors interact with a website and how that website should look is a web designers primary goal. A web designers job can be a simple as determining a website’s color scheme to as complex as creating markup for a website.
Creating website aesthetics may not seem as involved as coding a website’s functionality, but web design is a process that requires creativity and a bit of technical skill. Web design is extremely fluid. Design grows and evolves along with the preferences of internet users, thus requiring web designers to stay abreast of industry standards and design trends. Additionally, the best web designers could not do their job effectively without some basic coding skills. Ultimately, it is code defines where text, images and video elements are placed on a web page.
Web Developers
Have you ever wondered how your favorite pizza company’s website has the ability to take your order online? More than likely that ability was the work of a web developer. Web developers, also known as programmers, program the parts of a website that users do not see. Web developers code forms and scripts that ensure a website behaves the same each time.
Web development contains several tiers, with the most basic being a presentation, logic and data three-tier architecture. Most web developers specialize in one tier, but a growing number of web developers work in two or more tiers. For example, a team of programmers may focus on completely different aspects of web development to build a website for a pizza company. One web developer may work on the data tier of the website that recalls your most recent pizza order. Another developer may focus on the logic tier of the website that asks if you’d like to repeat your most recent order.
Overlapping Roles
In smaller companies, it is not uncommon to find one person performing the role of a web designer and web developer. In the future, this trend may be found in all companies, but for now, web designer and web developer roles are increasingly overlapping as the web browsing experience becomes more responsive. More and more people are browsing websites from phones and tablets, and websites need to present the same layout across all devices. As the internet transforms into a space where user interfaces and back-end services are more closely tied together, website creation and management will require a unified take on web design and web development.
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