Welcome to our next article. Most of the users find the terms “Web Designing” and “Web Development have” much confusing when it comes to their professional implementation. After reading this article, you will never be confused about these terms. Some people think both the terms mean the same and they are interchangeable – but they are not!
Website Design and Development – A Brief Difference
Let’s take the terms at their face value; the word “design” reflects something like an interface, looks, appearance or how something looks like. It means web designing is all about the look-and-feel, color scheme, balance, location of objects on a website and division of screen. It means you can see all the objects like Home Button, About Us or Contact Us on the website without any functionality.
But the word “development” brings up an idea about some construction, functionality or building something. Web Development assigns functionality behind the objects that we can see on the screen. To put it simply, Web Development is all about the collective working taking place behind the tools that are shown on the website.
In short, a web designer places a “Home Button” on the website, and a web developer programs the functionality behind this button; for example, where this page should land when “Home Button” is clicked.
Like we promised earlier, now the difference is crystal clear between “Web Designing” and “Web Development”; let’s see how it works, and don’t worry about the details because you will find it easier than you can think – yes, that’s the promise.
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Web Designing
Just relax and get ready for the easiest approach to understanding a difference between these two expressions. Now we are going to answer all the questions regarding “Web Designing” one by one and answer them to make you clear on that.
What is “Web Designing”?
This is what you can see on the website. Web designing is a process and a decision about the look-and-feel of the website. During design phase, a designer makes a suitable choice about different objects to be used on the website. These objects include color scheme, images, tables, buttons, etc. He chooses all these items according to the requirement of the website. These items could be different for different type of websites for example business website, telemarketing website, pets, mobile phones, books, schools, etc.
Who is a Web Designer?
A web designer is a professional who turns an idea into reality which is visually eye-catching. He builds a layout and maintains the symmetry of colors, images, buttons and apparent structure.
He provides a flow of a website, and the developer puts functionality into this flow later.
What tools are used to design a website?
To give an attractive and charismatic look to the front end of the website, the professional designers use different tools available in the market. Some of the popular tools are Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Panic Coda, Photoshop, etc.
Look at the following image – it shows some links, buttons, and pictures on a website page. They look fantastic and catchy, but there is no functionality behind these objects – means by clicking on any of the object will not lead you to anywhere. It means there must be a professional who is supposed to make all these objects clickable, and here comes the Web Developer who will take care of Web Development.
Web Development
Now we are very clear on Web Designing – it’s time to move on to Web Development. Once again, we will take you through the questions that usually confuse the readers and beginners.
What is “Web Development”?
Web development is all about the functioning of a website. During development phase, a developer assigns the active working behind buttons, images, hyperlinks etc. For instance, a developer writes a piece of code behind a button to land at a certain page when this button is clicked. So we can say that design of a website is that you look at and the development of a website is what you do by clicking on different objects on the webpage.
Who is a Web Developer?
A web developer is a professional who builds a dynamic interface which allows a user to interact with the website by clicking on buttons, images and links. In short a developer puts functionality into the design of a website.
What are different types of a Web Developer?
There are two main types of Web Developers that are considered to be essential in order to make a website execute its functions. The first one is Front-End Developer and the second one is Back-End Developer.
1 – Front-end Developer OR Client-Side Developer
This is a developer who specializes in the programming of visual user interfaces, including its aesthetics and layouts. A front-end developer code runs on a web browser of a client. So we can say a Front-end Developer codes to facilitate from user side. This developer takes care of visual presentation of a user interface (UI), what a client can see and manipulate.
HTML, CSS, JS, JQUERY are the most commonly used languages to cater for the requirement of front-end interaction that provides information to the back-end developer how to handle that information on server side.
2 – Backend Developer OR Server-Side Developer
This is a developer who implements the structure that a user or client cannot see. The input received from the front end of the website is treated in this phase in terms of functional logic and scalability of software running on machines that are remote form the end user. Back-end coding system is very complex but it is not visible to the users. This can be understood from Google website. The front end of this website is the simplest possible only with a search bar and a couple of buttons but the code and architecture running behind this search page is extremely complex.
Back-end developer integrates a vast array of services like email management, database, data storage, logging system by using different languages for example Scala, Python, Perl, C, C++, Ruby, etc.
Look at the following simple Google webpage – it is a fully functional page (designed and developed). You can see its search bar, type in your keywords to make a search and it will show the desired results. It means it is active from user-end and back-end at the same time.
It is about personal choice which end of the software a professional chooses for his career. Some individuals prefer to start their career from designing and some like to start development as their specialty. It is also possible to switch sides later in future, and some experts have a grip on both front and back end experience.
Full Stack Developer
Now what is Full Stack Developer or Development? It is a derivative of both Web Designing and Web Development. A Full Stack Developer is a professional who can maintain and manage frontend and backend simultaneously.
Full stack development: It is a type of development which includes both front end, used by client, and back end, controlled by server, portions of web application. The word “Stack” means a collection of sub-modules.
Full stack web Developers: Full stack web developers are qualified to design complete web application and websites. They are able to work from frontend, backend to database and debugging of websites. Their expertise may be about mobile stack, a Web stack, or a native application stack.
We hope it helps and you find our article informative and easy to understand difference between two terminologies. We will keep writing such articles for your convenience as we receive a lot of queries on different topics. Thanks for reading this write-up – waiting for your feedback.