Web Designers...

Web design is the skill of creating presentations of content (usually hypertext or hypermedia) that is delivered to an end-user through the World Wide Web, by way of a Web browser or other Web-enabled software like Internet television clients, microblogging clients and RSS readers.

Web Designers design a website by creating a collection of electronic documents and applications that reside on a Web server/servers and present content and interactive features/interfaces to the end user in the form of Web pages once requested. Such elements as text, bit-mapped images (GIFs, JPEGs) and forms can be placed on the page using HTML/XHTML/XML tags or web programming languages.

Displaying more complex media (vector graphics, animations, videos, sounds) requires plug-ins such as Adobe Flash, QuickTime, Java run-time environment, etc. Plug-ins are also embedded into web page by using HTML/XHTML tags.

Typically Web pages are classified as static or dynamic:

• Static pages don’t change content and layout with every request unless a human (web master/programmer) manually updates the page. A simple HTML page is an example of static content.
• 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.

With growing specialization in the information technology field there is a strong tendency to draw a clear line between web design and Web development.

Web design is a kind of graphic design intended for development and styling of objects of the Internet's information environment to provide them with high-end consumer features and aesthetic qualities. The offered definition separates Web design from web programming, emphasizing the functional features of a web site, as well as positioning web design as a kind of graphic design.[2]

Roles of a Web Developer
Web Designers design and create web pages, web sites, web applications or multimedia for the Web utilizing multiple disciplines, such as animation, authoring, communication design, corporate identity, graphic design, human-computer interaction, information architecture, interaction design, marketing, photography, search engine optimization and typography.

The Web Designer is responsible for following things:

• Designing the look and feel and media to be used
• Providing page layouts that the programmer of the websites will create
• Creating the website's menuing structure on the web pages
• Creating and maintaining the media

What is so special about a web designer?
Web designers often are artists and marketing people. They must understand what the goals of the business are, its target audience, how it is trying to position itself against the competition, and what effective means of conveying their message to the public should be used.

A website that looks unappealing will not keep a customers' attention. Likewise, a poor design might not be user friendly and difficult to navigate. User friendliness is one of the key components to good web design.