php-developer wrote:

This is very complicated words.. some people have different opinion about it.

I don't think that they are complicated; people just have different opinions as to what they mean.

When I think of "web designing", I tend to think of aspects of the website which makes the website look good to the user: layout, colour scheme, fonts, images and even clientside scripting that is used to enhance aesthetics.

When I think of "web programming", I tend to think of the programming that makes the website work: clientside scripting (especially of the AJAXy variety), serverside scripting, interaction with a database/sessions/files, that sort of thing.

To me, "web development" encompasses both web designing and web programming.

    I am a qualified graphic designer but moved into the production side many, many years ago.
    I then moved into what was new media, which became 'www'.
    I now do web development only - so while my design background is important I usually build sites that other people have designed - so they give me a photoshop layout and I make it work. It helps that I understand grids, fonts, corporate identity etc etc.. but all that means is that I check the fine detail.

    To be the designer and the coder is not always so good - conflicts of interest - but it's good if they work together closely.
    There is also the person who gets an overview of what is possible, and they might not design or code.

    There are also the differences between a clean simple page layout and a fancy high concept wizzy graphics site - each has their place. The second one needs to be designed by a specialist and built by a web coder.
    It comes down to practice - whatever you do a lot of, you get better at (usually).
    But most companies split the roles fairly strictly between designer and developer.

      i don't satisfies with your answer.. can you please explain me again?

        php-developer wrote:

        i don't satisfies with your answer.

        As in you don't agree? If so, what do you not agree with and hence would like further explanation? Or, as in you don't understand? If so, what do you not understand?

          the answers mean it is not a clear cut distinction

          for example:
          design can cover interface design - which can also be under development
          development might include design, but design can also be a separate process

          designers study at art college (here in the UK)
          programmers study a computer course

          What is the context where you are seeing the phrases being used?

            Here's how I generally list things(see below). Web designing to me is making sure the site looks as pretty as possible and is geared more towards the artistic sides of things. Web programming is more about making a site function properly and is more geared towards being analytical. People tend to be good at one or the other and learn enough of the other to make it work.

            I will say a "web designer" is often used to lump anybody who works on websites into one catch all phrase. If somebody says they design websites, I ask for clarification.

            Web Designing

            Organizational: HTML, XHTML, XML
            Presentation: CSS, Images, Typography, color schemes, spacing, etc.

            Web Development/Programming

            Behavioral: JavaScript, jQuery, Ajax
            Data Handling(Server side scripting): Perl, PHP, Python, .NET
            Data Handling(Databases): MySQL, MSSQL

              spufi;10997201 wrote:

              Here's how I generally list things(see below). Web designing to me is making sure the site looks as pretty as possible and is geared more towards the artistic sides of things. Web programming is more about making a site function properly and is more geared towards being analytical. People tend to be good at one or the other and learn enough of the other to make it work.

              I will say a "web designer" is often used to lump anybody who works on websites into one catch all phrase. If somebody says they design websites, I ask for clarification.

              Web Designing

              Organizational: HTML, XHTML, XML
              Presentation: CSS, Images, Typography, color schemes, spacing, etc.

              Web Development/Programming

              Behavioral: JavaScript, jQuery, Ajax
              Data Handling(Server side scripting): Perl, PHP, Python, .NET
              Data Handling(Databases): MySQL, MSSQL

              this one is the perfect answer.. i understand all the things you want explain...

              thanks a lot

                I personally see "web design" as Photoshop work and nothing more. They are essentially graphic designers for the web, hence web designers. They design the website. The moment they start working with HTML, CSS or JavaScript they become web developers. At that point you're developing the website; design has already been completed. Someone who starts building the foundation or frame of a house isn't an architect; they're a construction worker.

                Sometimes it frustrates me when our web designer does the basic HTML/CSS of a website (before handing it off to us developers) because us developers are much more experienced in those realms and truthfully (and bluntly), our HTML/CSS is better.

                This doesn't mean someone can't be skilled in both, but usually people have their "specialty". I can do very, very basic Photoshop work, but 99% of the time I leave it up to a designer.

                  9 days later

                  Software is, these days, often written in teams. Team member have different strengths and weaknesses, generally, but they also have overlapping areas of expertise (for example, both my "production designer" and myself can create and/or mangle graphics). So, the line between development and design is a tad fuzzy.

                  bonesnap wrote:

                  Sometimes it frustrates me when our web designer does the basic HTML/CSS of a website (before handing it off to us developers) because us developers are much more experienced in those realms and truthfully (and bluntly), our HTML/CSS is better.

                  Lol, how I passionately hate GoLive! 😃

                    The basic problem with most definitions I see about web designing and developing on this post is that there is this basic assumption of this waterfall method of development where "designers" make the site pretty, (some code the html) while the developer makes it function with javascript and backend code. This is fundamentally wrong because it assumes both designers and developers are part of the website team. If you think of the software life cycle in a proper project/product/development team, the design team is not part o the development, but part of the product team.

                    Designing a website is ALOT more than making it look pretty, its about understanding user behavior as it support product business goals and specifications. A website design determines how a user interacts with the website and ultimately whether the features/functions/purpose of the website is serviced by the design or not. So alot of UIX development, a/b testing, product is discussed because you cant talk about design without talking about product. This impact is not felt on small websites with little traffic, but on larger websites every and any change is tracked and analyzed for performance impact on the product and ultimately how it impacts returns on finances.

                    On the other hand, one thing I dont like about "programmers" is this design is a byproduct of functionality attitude they take towards design, and saying that 'web designers' are front end programmers reponsible for the markup that "real programmers" dont want to be bothered with.

                    Bottom line, if your writing code you are programming and thus a programmer not a designer. You can certainly wear both hats, and I often do, but I dont consider designer and programming the same thing. Programmers who dismiss html/css/flash/javascript and front end developing as a simply makeup of the program they built are fundamentally missing the point of what they are making. There is 0 point to making applications that users cannot user easily and do not serve the purpose of the application's creation.

                    the design of the website is the consumer facing side of your application and if you pay no attention to that part of the application then the rest is irrelevant, there's a reason why no matter how smart you are or good at what you do, you clean up and wear formal clothing to a job interview, its about presentation.

                    The perfect examples of this is companies like Apple, imagine if apple's product designers said "ehh who care about touchscreen and scroll wheels.. up/down buttons and an enter button work just as well"

                    Alot of the decisions you make day to day with products you use subconciously have more to do with the product design that delivers the functionality you want in its easiest way to consume. And believe me that was not achieved by accident.

                      programs need to be designed, too.

                        rulian wrote:

                        Bottom line, if your writing code you are programming and thus a programmer not a designer. You can certainly wear both hats, and I often do, but I dont consider designer and programming the same thing. Programmers who dismiss html/css/flash/javascript and front end developing as a simply makeup of the program they built are fundamentally missing the point of what they are making. There is 0 point to making applications that users cannot user easily and do not serve the purpose of the application's creation.

                        When I've been in situations where there is serious thought given to how a site/application presents itself to users (the so-called design side) the designers are in there with the developers right from the beginning (you can tell the two groups apart because the designers are the ones with the Macs).

                        As I (as an outsider) tend to picture the design process, the designers develop a kind of grammar for the site - a mini-language that is used to express the site's functionality in terms that a user can understand and converse with the site in. Building on the sort of things that are covered by Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, Microsoft's User Experience Guide and Yahoo!'s Design Pattern Library; and expressing the purpose and identity of the site within it.

                        To echo rulian, saying that doing that is a mere byproduct of the functionality is like saying that John Lennon's work was a mere byproduct of English's functionality.

                        That language ultimately needs to be expressed in code - a framework, basically. Again, an existing generic framework may be present, but it's still generic. All the widgets designed for the site have to be crafted and encapsulated so that the designers can assemble and reassemble them. (It may look like they're just playing with Lego blocks, but you can do some pretty impressive things with Lego if you know what you're doing.)

                        That expression involves constant back-and-forth between designers and developers to ... well, develop a library of design components that serves the needs of both.

                          ohh without a doubt, i didnt mean to imply the proccess was linear and designers/developers do not talk. I'm just illustrating that design is a product responsibility, not a development one. The product as a whole, concept, purpose,design and development needs to be evolved thru a balancing act between the product / design / and development group.

                          There is a school of thought that is very predominant that treats the final presentation of a product as the cultivation of the functionality presented by the development of the product,
                          I on the other handle am called horrible things when I say that I actually preffer to completely free the designer from the development and preffer to ask as enablers of technology.

                          To be more direct, at my company I try to never start a concept of a new product with the question "what is technically possible" But that's my opinion.

                          One final distinction I like to make however, is I dont consider the creation of the front end / html as the "design" process. That development is part of the regular development process, designing is not coding. As I like to remind everyone in my company from time to time, graphic design existed back in ancient greece, china and japan long before photoshop, and I hate to say this because it breaks people's heart, but knowing photoshop does not make you a graphic artist, it makes you a photoshop artist, just like knowing how to create posts in wordpress does not make you a web developer. But yet people make that mistake all the time.

                            rulian wrote:

                            This is fundamentally wrong because it assumes both designers and developers are part of the website team. If you think of the software life cycle in a proper project/product/development team, the design team is not part o the development, but part of the product team.

                            A matter of terminology: what you call "development" is more precisely the "implementation". While I also do use "development" to mean "implementation", the term is more of an umbrella, i.e., if you really want to consider realistic software development life cycles, then development is not something that happens only after the design is done (which is precisely the waterfall model), but rather design and implementation work in tandem to develop the product.

                            rulian wrote:

                            As I like to remind everyone in my company from time to time, graphic design existed back in ancient greece, china and japan long before photoshop, and I hate to say this because it breaks people's heart, but knowing photoshop does not make you a graphic artist, it makes you a photoshop artist,

                            I think "art" and "design" are yet another pair of different skills that get mixed up all the time. Unless you are already an artist, knowing photoshop does not make you a photoshop artist; it makes you a photoshop user.

                              laserlight;10998299 wrote:

                              Unless you are already an artist, knowing photoshop does not make you a photoshop artist; it makes you a photoshop user.

                              Exactly! Which is why my brother is a Photoshop artist, and I'm merely a user. Because while I can make things in Photoshop he can CREATE things. Two completely different things if you ask me.

                                Painting a landscape or painting the back deck.

                                  laserlight;10998299 wrote:

                                  I think "art" and "design" are yet another pair of different skills that get mixed up all the time. Unless you are already an artist, knowing photoshop does not make you a photoshop artist; it makes you a photoshop user.

                                  Yes, if art school taught me anything, is that creativity cannot be taught, thus my money was not well spent

                                    Yes, if art school taught me anything, is that creativity cannot be taught, thus my money was not well spent

                                    No, not true !
                                    Creativity can be taught and it can be learnt
                                    Drawing is a learnt skill just as playing guitar is a learnt skill - so the mechanical component is learnable to start with.

                                    Creativity can be applied to anything anyway - a top chef, a poet, someone who thinks of the new software paradigm..
                                    Creativity is simply considering things from a different direction or putting them together in unusual ways

                                    I hadn't done art before I went to art college (to do graphic design) but at least my mind set was in the right place, in that I consider myself creative.
                                    Maybe it's just your mind telling you that you are not creative.

                                      5 days later

                                      but that's just the point. You can teach the skills but the act of teaching is counter intuitive to creativity. Process is the opposite of creativity, anything achieved by method is by definition deterministic and therefore not creative. I've spent 2 years of college discussing this very topic so my opinions on it go very deep. In the beginning I had the same opinion, that creativity can be taught because I fundamentally misunderstood what creativity was. As I thought and debated more on the subject I slowly realized the opposite was true. You can tap into the creativity you have, and you can explore and expand your own horizons. But you cannot take somebody who is very creative, pair them with someone who has no imagination, and have them transfer that knowledge. The most you can do is teach someone to tap into their own creativity, because if that same person was to just learn from the more creative one, that lamer person would be a mimic not a creative person.

                                        Interesting take on it - but I don't agree with your point that putting a lesser talent next to a greater talent will mean the lesser will plagiarise the greater - that implies that all students cannot learn or improve.

                                        It seems that you believe one is are born with a fixed quota of talent and it can't be changed much. I wonder if you are looking at creativity as something that strikes out of nowhere like divine inspiration - Edison had it right with his 1 per cent comment.

                                        I would say the more you practice being creative the easier it is
                                        It's just another brain muscle and it needs exercising

                                        NLP used to run courses on learning creativity.. or one can always try pharmaceutical means to unlock the gates

                                        .. also Brian Eno (non-musician and record producer) came up with techniques (oblique strategies he named them) to break rock bands/musicians out of their routines and force them into a situation where they had no choice but to create something new