What is Web Design?

Web Design as defined by Wikipedia is “the skill of designing presentations of content (usually hypertext or hypermedia) that is delivered to an end-user through the World Wide Web, by way of a Web browser or other Web-enabled software like Internet television clients, microblogging clients and RSS readers.”

I like to think of web design as building an entire website from the ground up. It generally starts with a layout or wire frame of what the finished website should look like. This can be accomplished by using Photoshop or another graphics program or by describing what the website should look like. Ideally the later would include sample images along with descriptive text that helps understand were elements should be placed.

When I design a website I generally use two types of programs: an HTML editor and a graphics/image editors. An HTML editor is used to create the code that displays a website. A graphics/image editor (such as Photoshop or GIMP) is used for creating & editing images used on the site.

I prefer to use text based HTML editors as opposed to graphical or WYSIWYG. I feel this gives me more control over the creation of a webpage than using a graphical web editing programs. Some graphical web page editors will sometimes include redundant code in the web site pages which increases the file size of the resulting pages.

Graphic/image editors are used to create buttons, backgrounds, and heading images. Often times they are used to design an image for the initial layout and positioning of elements for the webpage. Providing an image of the layout for the website helps to clarify how the website should look and can also help in acquiring a better understanding of how the site should look, as well as providing the images needed for the site.

Web Technologies

There are many different technologies used for creating webpages other than just HTML and images. While you can create simple static HTML web pages it is more common to have dynamic webpages. These webpages use various technologies to change the content or layout of the pages. Some of these technologies are ASP, PHP, Javascript and SQL.

ASP and PHP are known as server side scripting languages. What this means is they are a set of instructions that reside on a web server that, when executed by a remote user through a web browser, serves up or displays a generated webpage based on certain conditions. They are also capable of retrieving data from a SQL database and displaying that information. An example would be on a retail website when a user chooses to narrow a search result for a DVD, movie or gift item by price.

Javascript is a client side scripting language. Like ASP and PHP javascript can generate and change a webpage depending on user input. The difference with javascript is that it functions on the client side, or with in the web browser. An example would be hiding information on a webpage with out reloading the page. It can also be used to create some interactivity such as having a user controllable slideshow.

CSS is another common web technology in use. CSS is generally what provides style and layout to a webpage. It can be used to set font styles and colors as well as the positioning of images and other elements. CSS is used to separate content from presentation. It can also help reduce the amount of code needed for a web page. For example if you have paragraphs of text on different pages that need to be the same color, font type and font size. Instead of having to list those font specifications on each page you only need to declare it once in a CSS style, then reference that style when needed.