Re: what is a web designer?

>>>what exactly does a web designer do?  meaning, what are the realms of
his/her services?  what are the "must things" a designer should to be called
such? and what are the optional things he may not do?<<<

I use these guidelines (developed from observation of peers):

============

Web Developer:

-- Design Site Structures
-- CGI and Backend competancy
-- Graphics competancy
-- HTML competancy
-- JavaScript competancy
-- Editorial competancy
============

Web Designer:

-- HTML
-- Javascript
-- some graphics possible
-- some structure design possible
-- some programming possible
============

Graphics Artist:

-- Graphics
-- some HTML
-- some JavaScript possible
============

Programmer:

-- CGI and Back End
-- some HTML possible
============

Copy Editor/Developer

-- Develop and proof text copy
-- some HTML possible
============


Needless to say, a Developer would have to be superhuman to be a perfect
representative of all catagories.  One of the most common issues I deal with
is the common misconception that a given technician is required to be an
expert in all fields.  Once true, this concept has been dated by the growth
of the Web.  Note that XML and WAP weren't even put into the above list!

Put simply, a Web Designer does Markup Languages, a Programmer does
programming, a Graphic Artisit works with graphics, a copy expert handles
text copy....etc.

I call a Web Developer a person who has *achieved proficiancy* in enough
cross-set skills to have a good technical understanding of everything that
is installed on a site.  Oviously a rare individual, this person may
specialize in ASP and HTML 4.01 and use Photoshop, or perhaps combines Perl
and XHTML and Fireworks...as you may be able to see, the list is endless.

Personally, I focus on these:

* Perl
* HTML 4.01 and XHTML
* JavaScript
* SQL (with MySQL)
* JPEG and GIF in Fireworks
* XML

My future studies include WAP (a potocol), GIMP (a graphics tool) and PNG
(an image file format).  After that, there's bound to be more...

That was today's outline...tomorrow's will be different...YMMV.


D

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