How to become a REAL web developer

[legendphil]

hao!

I think the other problem is that people say 'I designed a website, therefor I am a web designer'. Those are the ones that I feel (rightly or wrongly) that the main thrust of your rant is aimed at. That's like saying 'I wired a battery to a lightbulb, therefor I'm an electrician'.

you may take this wrong, but not calling people who design their webbies using the method you call poor (using wsysiwyg) designers is unfair. there's the effort problem, the aesthetic problem... It's just the coding they missed huh?

There's just this tiny differrence between professionals and amateurs. amateurs have knowledge and experience less than that of the pros. it's like asking a new born baby to derive einstein's theory of relativity. so I guess it's just up to professionals to understand that, after all they know all too well.

PEACE!

 

[faolan]

you may take this wrong, but not calling people who design their webbies using the method you call poor (using wsysiwyg) designers is unfair. there's the effort problem, the aesthetic problem... It's just the coding they missed huh?

Actually, I do see what you are saying. I do, however, still stand by what I said. A web designer is a professional, just as an electrician or a graphic artist is a professional.

An amateur can say 'I designed my website', just as they can say 'I wired my house electrically'. Neither case makes them a professional. Yes, they made the effort, and perhaps even got the asthetics correct when it comes to what they see. A professional, however, is the one that not only has the proper knowledge and the proper level of usage within said knowledge, but also is the one that minds the asthetics behind the scenes where only another professional would think to look (the clean code issue).

All of that said, I did not mean to insult anyone with my post. I just believe that certain 'titles' should be held by a professional who has the time and the knowledge. It's a personal quirk, I guess. Of course, YMMV.

 

[legendphil]

hao!

A web designer is a professional, just as an electrician or a graphic artist is a professional.

I guess I'm beat, nice point! why is it all about titles... tsk.. after I get java certified, I have to be zend certified... etc.. I mean the list is endless if I am to be called a designer.

design nowadays is not just how a site looks on a browser...

PEACE!

 

[faolan]

-snip- after I get java certified, I have to be zend certified... etc.. I mean the list is endless if I am to be called a designer. -snip-

Well, I'm not so sure it's endless. After all, an electrician has a basic amount of knowledge and skills they must have to be called an 'electrician'. Does that mean they know everything there is about the job? No, not at all. There are multiple specialties that require more schooling and skills before one can be 'certified' for that particular type of job.

Maybe one thing we need to do is to define the 'minimum skillset' for a web designer. What knowledge levels and skills should a web designer have to be able to validly call themselves a 'Web Designer'? I know I'm not one to answer that question, mostly because I know I don't have the knowledge... but maybe others that read this thread do have the knowledge and can make that definition.

 

[naynesh]

The design is a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media delivery via Internet in the form of Markup language suitable for interpretation by Web browser and display as Graphical user interface (GUI).

The intent of web design is to create a web site -- a collection of electronic files that reside on a web server/servers and present content and interactive features/interfaces to the end user in form of Web pages once requested. Such elements as text, bit-mapped images (GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs), forms can be placed on the page using HTML/XHTML/XML tags. Displaying more complex media (vector graphics, animations, videos, sounds) requires plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, Java run-time environment, etc. Plug-ins are also embedded into web page by using HTML/XHTML tags.

Improvements in browsers' compliance with W3C standards prompted a widespread acceptance and usage of XHTML/XML in conjunction with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to position and manipulate web page elements and objects. Latest standards and proposals aim at leading to browsers' ability to deliver a wide variety of media and accessibility options to the client possibly without employing plug-ins.

Typically web pages are classified as static or dynamic.
Also puctuation in critical on web pages because people dont want spelling mistakes all the time!!
Static pages don’t change content and layout with every request unless a human (web master/programmer) manually updates the page.

Dynamic pages adapt their content and/or appearance depending on end-user’s input/interaction or changes in the computing environment (user, time, database modifications, etc.) Content can be changed on the client side (end-user's computer) by using client-side scripting languages (JavaScript, JScript, Actionscript, etc.) to alter DOM elements (DHTML). Dynamic content is often compiled on the server utilizing server-side scripting languages (Perl, PHP, ASP, JSP, ColdFusion, etc.). Both approaches are usually used in complex applications.
To become a web developer you will mainly have to take html classes(i hope to do).
With growing specialization in the information technology field there is a strong tendency to draw a clear line between web design and web development.

 

[faolan]

Well that was certainly a clear definition! :biggrin:

Okay, with that definition in mind: can we say that a web designer can be an amateur, and thus have limited knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP, etc. and thus be able to come up with a decent website of their own creation? If so, on the other side we could then say that the web developer is the professional with a professional level of knowledge and skills through training and experience.

If we use those two definitions, I could (not that I would) call myself a web 'designer' simply because I conceptualized and executed my own website in XHTML and CSS. I could not, however, call myself a web 'developer' because I definitely don't have a professional's level of knowledge or expertise.

Of course, most laypeople don't have a detailed understanding between the two designations. The would use 'designer' and 'developer' interchangably, especially when you're dealing with a small business. That problem would ultimately undermine the reputation and viability of a true web developer due to all the non-professional web designers going out and designing websites that don't look good or act as promised.

That, I think, is a good reason for professional certification. Much like the A+ and Network+ certifications that people can earn, a 'web designer certification' or 'web developer' certification would be a boon to the profession as a whole.

Again, just my $0.02 (adjusted for inflation).

 

[mattura]

3d calculus isn't that bad!

I mostly agree, I'd never touch frontpage or word with any of my html. I recently made a newsletter page for a school which had previously been done in frontpage (what a mess!), hand wrote html/css with the same content, and the page went from 13kb to 3kb!

 

[sclewin]

I 100% agree that WYSIWYG editors are the bane of web development. They are not even good for novice developers as it is best they learn simple HTML in a good editor like Kate instead.

I started out in the 90's developing with a basic editor then when the WYSIWYG editors came out I loved them and switched to using only them. I ended up forgetting everything and then started noticing how crappy my web pages where. Once, after a small update everyone using IE was not able to see my page anymore, this was because the WYSIWYG editor I was using put so many blank lines it confused IE. After that I swore off WYSIWYG editors and it took me a month to re-learn what I knew before starting to use the WYSIWYG editors. It took me another month to fix the site that the WYSIWYG editor screwed up.

The one thing I find interesting about this thread is the pressure to not use tables to design your site layout. I have always used tables. I'm going to check out some of the provided links and see if I can stop using tables. Is the choice not to use tables for layout a general consensus amongst professionals? Or just the personal opinions of the people on this list?

Your friend,
Scott

 

[legendphil]

hao!

I thought this thread was dead some long time ago... anyways it's good this topic is being discussed again I guess. I need more learning.

Divs are similar to tables, I just don't get how far different they are from each other (divs and tables have the same function in classifying, defining uniqueness of its contents and stuff)... but divs are much easier to customize (I don't know if learning CSS first affected my skills). My question is how different are they? do they have the same size in bytes or something?

 

[porky101]

Nice tips I agree with all of them nice job

 

[nonsensep]

I had no clue that using <table> to structure your document was "frowned upon." I don't see anything wrong with it, how else would I accomplish structures such as: on the left a menu, on the right the page content. Don't say frames because I find those frowned upon if anything.

 

[sclewin]

I had no clue that using <table> to structure your document was "frowned upon." I don't see anything wrong with it, how else would I accomplish structures such as: on the left a menu, on the right the page content. Don't say frames because I find those frowned upon if anything.

From what I have read tables slow down loading of the page, take up a little more web space, and hinder search engine results. Yea, frames are frowned upon even more than tables from what I have read.

You are suppose to use <div></div> with CSS instead of tables. I was able to do this for my page. The bad is that it took me much longer than using tables, but I was able to do more than what I could do with tables to layout my page.

The thing I could not do was have a <div> within a <div> work. I needed to put text beside a picture inside a <div> block. I tried using two <div> blocks to split them up and I could not make it work. I gave up and went to using a simple single row table to do it, but, I would prefer to use the <div> if that is what is proper and professional.

 

[flinx]

Using tables to create the page layout (header, left column, content area, right column, footer, etc) is frowned upon. You should use div's and CSS for that. There are lots of examples out there, no need to invent it all.

Using tables for what they are meant for is not frowned upon. If you want to show a list of images with text to the right, then using a frame with 2 columns (one for the image, and one for the text) is the right thing to do.

 

[sclewin]

If you want to show a list of images with text to the right, then using a frame with 2 columns (one for the image, and one for the text) is the right thing to do.

Is this okay? I needed to put a creative commons image on the left and beside that I wanted the creative commons licence info. Is it okay to put them in a single row, two column table to have them beside each other?

You can see what I did at http://candiandragon.exofire.net. The creative commons stuff is on the footer.

 

[flinx]

I guess that's canAdiandragon

Well, I don't think that's a problem. But I'm no expert. I don't even know if there's another way to get then text next to the pic. I wouldn't worry too much about it if I were you.

EDIT
Read here: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=489900
They're talking about 2 images, but the principle is the same.

 

[sclewin]

I guess that's canAdiandragon

Well, I don't think that's a problem. But I'm no expert. I don't even know if there's another way to get then text next to the pic. I wouldn't worry too much about it if I were you.

Thanks for the advice, I would give you more reputation, but I can only give you one

 

[flinx]

I edited my post. Check out the link, it might be interesting.

 

[sclewin]

I edited my post. Check out the link, it might be interesting.

Thank you for your help, but that did not work for me. When I tried the float it did put them beside each other, but it put the image and text below my footer <DIV> block.

 

[alfren]

Don't use tables to layout your content

I cannot stress this enough. Tables are used for tabular data, like data spreadsheets. Not for structuring websites. Using tables to organize your website content is probably the next worse thing to using a WYSIWYG editor for making your website. They are both frowned upon.

using the <div> tag is the best! and not just a simple div tag you can also add CSS code to dive tag.

 

[eyelet4u2]

I am completely new to web design so this was very informative! Thanks for all the input on this.