Submitted by: Lorabella
With the ever-changing internet technology, it is really difficult to say what would be the right set of skills that you should possess as a web designer. However, here is a quick list of basic skills that you need as a web designer (this list hasn t changed too much with time and isn t expected to change either):
1.HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language): This is one skill which you cannot do without. HTML is the language that is understood by the web browsers and that is what gets transmitted over the internet to be displayed as web pages to the users. Web designers, web developers and to an extent graphic designers too need to have a good grasp of HTML. This is one reason why WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors for HTML are so popular today. Note that the specifications or standard for HTML are defined by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and implemented by web browsers.
2.CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): As the name suggests, CSS is what defines the style for a web page. Cascading style sheets carry information about the fonts, colours, styles for various HTML elements and tags. The advantage with style sheets is that they separate out the style-related properties of HTML elements there by allowing you to control the style / look-and-feel in a central manner. So, if you need to change the colour theme for your website, you can just make changes in your CSS without changing any other files. So, a good web design will always use CSS.
3.Scripting and Ajax: Though a lot of people suggest that scripting and Ajax are the skills that are expected more from a web developer than a web designer, the fact is that there is little distinction left between web developer / designer and in any case some bit of scripting (especially java scripting) is expected from even hard core web designers. And Ajax is the next level.
4.Productivity Tools: With technological advancements, we now have various tools that help enhance the productivity of web designers in particular and programmers in general. This includes tools like Dreamweaver, Microsoft expression, Photoshop and several WYSIWYG editors. These tools can really pace up the web design process and make the things really easy for the web/ graphic designers. In today s context, you can t really think of web design and development without these tools.
5.Design principles: This is another important skill that you should possess as a web design expert. The design principles will include things related to layout, colour combinations, site navigation, compliance to standards, security, accessibility and fonts. There might be other factors that you will have to bring under consideration based on the specific requirements for the website you are designing.
Once you have developed your expertise on these 5 basic skills, you can move on to acquire advanced skills based on the needs of your job and your own personal interest. The advanced skills range from high-end programming/ scripting languages like Java, Perl, ASP, PHP to graphic oriented skills like Flash. You could even venture further into learning more about web servers and their administration. And as you add more skills to your portfolio, you can be sure of better career prospects in the field of website design.
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