The terms web design and web development are often mixed up. But, they mean two very different things. We’ll explain the differences between web design and web development in the following text.
Web Designer
First let us talk about Web Design. Web Design could be best described as the part of the website that faces and is for the customers. A person who is a web designer by profession and who deals in web design is someone who is concerned with the look of the website and the interaction of people with the website. So basically a web designer is a person who takes care of how the website looks and makes sure the users are able to navigate successfully through the website. They take care of the interaction and the looks. But, they don’t really have a huge part in creating the interaction of the website, they leave that to the people we are going to talk about next. They are the Web Programmers, or Web Developers as they are sometimes called. What do they really do on a website?
Web Developer
A Web Programmer, or a Web Developer does something different. The biggest difference between web designing and web programming is that, while web designing determines how a website looks, web programming determines how a website works. The web programmer is in charge of making the website do things. Although web designers have a little to do with the interactivity of the website, the web programmers are those who are actually making it happen. They are in charge of the programming of the website, as the name implies. Most of the things that happen in a website, that move, is the work of these programmers. Although web designers take care of some animations, they are not really functional elements. And developers are the ones who take care of the real functionality of a website.
In the end, nobody is really only a web designer or only a web programmer. People who are serious about what they do tend to branch out and learn a lot. Programmers are certainly almost always aware of how important design is for a website, and designers most often know at least something about PHP, HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. But, although these lines are often blurred, it is important to define what you actually do. That means that you’re either a web designer or a web programmer. And although a web designer might know something about programming, his area of focus, and basically his job, is web design. When an employer goes out to hire a web designer, he is looking for someone to actually do work that a web programmer is supposed to do. So it is important that you define the lines of what you actually do. So the question arises. A question that is very important for your future as somebody who works and will work on websites. The question is the following. Are you a web designer or a web programmer?
