subject: Difference between Web Designer and Web Developer [print this page] More often than not we get confused when we hear the terms web designer and web developer being used interchangeably. But once you are done reading this, all your confusions will disappear. Poof!
To begin with, both designer and developer are needed to undertake web site design projects but have different roles. The departure in role can be understood by considering the two most important facets of a website: Visual aspect or the part that is visible to the end user and programming aspect which includes the hidden codes. Let's take a detailed look at the differences.
Web Designer - Any online web designing projects involving a person looking after the visual aspect of the website is a web designer. The job includes the understanding of what colors, fonts, pictures, and page setup are the most esthetically gratifying, and using both their esthetic virtues and aesthetic knowledge to make the web site design projects as inviting and irresistible as possible.
The tools employed by the web designer in his quest of aesthetic excellence are flash, animation (job requiring both 2D & 3D animation), Photoshop, Corel, CSS & HTML.
A good web designer must have the following pre-requisites:
Understanding of color theory,
Marketing aspect of designing, and
Fundamentals of optical stimulation.
Web Developer - As the name vocalizes, a web developer is somebody who basically builds or develops the site from scratch and is interested in making the website work effectively. Unlike online web designing projects, such development based projects are all about formulating and coding server side applications. Some of the tools required by developer are sound knowledge of ASP, PHP, .NET, Java server pages, XHTML,HTML, AJAX, PERL.
The real magic happens and sparks fly when both, web designer and web developer act in concert with a common aim of influencing the visitor.
