One of the most inaccurate statements within the web creation world is that web design and web development are essentially the same thing. In actuality, web design is one subsection of web development. Web development encompasses many different activities that culminates in the creation of an online web site.
Web Design
According to Wikipedia, web design is “the skill of creating presentations of content (usually hypertext of hypermedia) that is delivered to an end-user through the World Wide Web”. Web design tasks include animation creation and implementation, content creation for web pages, style sheet creation, and working within the HTML/XHTML/XML of web pages.
Good web design requires great planning. Not only does a web designer actually create the pages that go into an online site but he or she also needs to plan out the web site prior to the actual creation. This involves brainstorming the context, audience, purpose, content and compatibility issues. Once these essential needs are fleshed out, the fun of web design can commence.
The simplest way to look at what exactly web design means is to think of the overall creation of a web site. The planning and page creation are the end results of what a web designer must accomplish.
Web Development
Web development is a much broader term than web design and covers all the aspects of creating a web site. E-commerce, web design, content creation, scripting and server configuration are all pieces of the larger web development puzzle.
A new web site about to be launched on the World Wide Web may entail not only informational pages but also product or service pages, a means for customers or clients to be able to purchase those goods, a merchant solution to process payments, support methods and even software or programs that allow online interaction with customers and clients. Even more detailed web sites may include social networking and media widgets or animation and graphic-centric information.
All of the different needs and web technologies that can be part of the creation of a web site can be neatly placed under the umbrella of web development. When a business desiring to place their web site on the internet looks for assistance in this matter, often a web development teamed is hired. This team will have e-commerce experts, designers, server administrators, hosting companies or personnel, and may also include social media gurus and other technology-specific experts.
Conclusion
What it all comes down to is knowing the difference between a designer or a development team. If a business already has a web site up and running on the internet and simply needs some minor modifications or additions made, hiring a web designer is the ticket. However, if the business in question is not already on the internet and needs to create an entire web site, the business then needs to look for a web development team that may include a web designer. The former is just one piece of the later.
November 8th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Oh, now I understand what’s the difference between Web Development and Web Design. Thanks for this article, very informative!
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November 9th, 2009 at 12:36 am
Thank you for clarifying the difference. It was what I have been thinking but I was not sure. We are thiking of renewing our website which has been modifying for a while. The original design was made more than 5 years ago. So it is time to refresh it but the cost at once is more than our budget… We have to decide sometime next year, meantime we keep updateing what we have now. Cheers.
November 18th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Yes web designing and web development are not the same thing. web designing relates to UI designing and development relates to controlling that how it works.
November 25th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Web design is the skill of creating presentations of content 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 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 and Web development is a broad term for any activity to developing a web site for the World Wide Web or an internet. This can include e-commerce business development, web design, web content development, client-side/server-side scripting, and web server configuration. However, among web professionals, “web development” usually refers only to the non-design aspects of building web sites, e.g. writing markup and coding. Web development can range from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex web-based internet applications, electronic businesses, or social network services.So there is difference between
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