So you want to be a web designer?

Posted on Tuesday, January 3rd

 I meet a lot of people who are interested in becoming web designers, and usually their path begins by purchasing a piece of web development software. This is a great way to get your feet wet in the web design world, and hearing their stories takes me back to the previous century when I myself was that person who thought it would be glamorous to become a web designer. I came from an art background so it seemed to make sense as a career choice.

First Baby Steps

I myself started with a program called Frontpage, which is a Microsoft product. At the time, it seemed suitable. I was able to make page in a Microsoft Word style interface, upload my pages to a web server, and everything seemed great! I could even create fancy web buttons and more.

Step One - Realization

Then reality kicked in. There was a little layout problem that I was unable to repair using the visual aids in the program. I was furious! Frontpage had betrayed me and I realized for the first time that their was more to this than simple creativity. I clicked on the HTML tab which showed me all this strange looking code in the background. What the heck is that? Well, it was what was really going on behind the scenes. I suddenly became aware that the function of the program was not to “make pages” per say, but to write HTML for me the best it could.

Unfortunately, no program exists that writes perfect code, though some are able to come close. More so, the programs write superfluous amounts of code for the simplest things, plus they throw it all over the place, making it difficult to look through and make sense of. That took me to the second step.

Step Two – Learning the Basic Standards

I now realized that I need to actually learn something that was more than sticking photos on a page and typing some text. I had to learn HTML. Fortunately, HTML is very easy, and after purchasing Sam's HTML in 24 Hours and reading through voraciously, I had a good understanding of the markup language.

It was at that point that I took it upon myself to start looking at the source code of other pages to see what “the other guys” were doing. Sadly, at the time, most designers were using the same tools I started with and so the code I was looking through was messy and confusing. It was then that I discovered this thing called Javascript. Javascript? With no programming background whatsoever, I had a tough time absorbing the simplest of codes. I had no choice though. I had to absorb it, however painful.

Now that these most basic skills were under my belt under my belt, my thinking and questions about web design started to become more elaborate. I began to wonder how these big sites kept their information updated. Did they have a room full of monkeys update stock quotes every ten seconds and adding news stories, retyping links and more? No. These types of sites used a database to store their information and the pages on these sites were created on the fly as requested with the latest information in the database. Great, I thought. Now I have to learn database programming too? I just wanted to make cute little web pages!

Step Three – The Dynamics

Beginning to play with databases forced me to begin visualizing the client-server relationship. Its explanation is outside the scope of this article, but the quick sentence to sum it all up is:

You, the person surfing the web, are the client. You type in a web address, that is the client request. That request is sent to a web server, the server. The server processes your request and sends it back to your browser. A typical web page is written and stored on the server, waiting to be requested. A data-driven page on the other hand, is created the moment it is requested, put together with the data by the server, then sent back. There are a variety of languages that tell the server how to do this, and a variety of servers to boot. I started with Classic ASP, and find myself using it more often than anything else still to this day, though I do use PHP as well, and am beginning to use it more and more.

Step Four – Visualizing the Bigger Picture

Now, I can write HTML, code up some Javascript, write some server-side code in ASP or PHP. Now what? My god, there is so much more waiting to be learned. More important than that are the existing variables in today's internet. Items such as browsers. Most people use Internet Explorer, but more and more people are finally realizing that it is the worst browser on the market today and switching to something else. To make matters worse, each browser renders pages slightly differently. Javascript can be turned off, and in many Windows installations, it already is. Basically what this means is that everything I've learned so far only partially applies to real world development.

Viewing the big picture, I am forced to acknowledge that there is in existence best practice for building pages, and that everything I've learned so far is outdated, soon to be deprecated. HTML is working it's way towards being XML (another subject altogether), so I now code in the hybrid format, XHTML. Not too different than HTML, in fact its much better. DOM scripting has replaced the old Javascript, so all those old junkie scripts I wrote now need to be gone over since earlier scripts don't work on all browsers. Then I discovered CSS, which changed my world forever and finally let me separate my designs from the information, but at the same time opened a can of worms due to browser rendering issues.

The issue of the day for me personally is graceful degradation and accessibility. That means in the event javascript is turned of, or people cannot view images, or are using WebTV, or are completely blind that they can still use and get information from sites I build.

Step Five – Going with the Flow

In hind sight, and looking forward, I see that web design is a lot like playing a musical instrument. Only as you learn more do you realize how much more needs to be learned. I once read that if I learned a new guitar chord every second, it would take me 11,000 years to learn them all. I believe the same applies to web design. A million people are taking the technologies in a million directions. In both roles, I strive to do the very best I can, and always make time to learn something new. This does not mean we give up, it means that there is enough room for everyone to do something great.

As a web designer, my journey is never over, nor will yours be. I still have yet to build the greatest site I'll ever make, though I feel I come a little closer each time. Concentrate on learning the standards, concentrate on learning all you can, and may the force be with you.

Some resources you may enjoy:

Web Standards Links

More Web Languages

Web Development Software

 

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