Castolon LLC — Web Stuff Made Fresh Daily

Many people are confused about the difference between "Web Development" and "Web Design". The difference is one of emphasis. A web designer focuses on the appearance of the website, often to the exclusion of functionality.

Think of it as the difference between an architect and a structural engineer. Architects draw pretty pictures of buildings. Structural engineers take the pretty picture from the architect and calculate ways of creating a building economically that won't fall down.

Design is subjective and usually trivial. Since it's subjective, it's best left to the client, since that's who we intend to satisfy. All that is really required is to browse the web, consider the general appearance of aesthetically pleasing sites, and perhaps draw some sketches to communicate the desired layout.

Development is the act of transforming a given design into a functional web page. If done correctly, this is non-trivial. There are standards to be considered, maintenance costs to minimize, page structures to be optimized for best possible positions in search engines, and so on. And, if eCommerce is involved, significant additional programming is required, and intense attention must be paid to security.

Certainly, any sixth-grader can start FrontPage or click "Save As HTML" in a word processor. If you create your company's website that way, pages will probably appear further down lists of Google search results, making your company more obscure than it needs to be. And, as your website grows, you'll find it increasingly difficult to maintain a consistent style, and it will be very difficult to change that style should the need arise. Also, as web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome evolve, the appearance of your site may change.

That's where standards conformance comes in. If your website conforms to existing standards, you'll find that it changes less in appearance over time, and is easier to update and enhance. It's easy to check your site's standards conformance: Just go to the World Wide Web Consortium's Markup Validator and enter the URL of your website.

That will give you a start, but it's not the complete story. Did you know that you can be sued for failing to comply with web standards for accessibility? At present it's a rare occurrence, but, if you want to build a website properly, and if you want to feel good about yourself and your contribution to society, you should also consider Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as your website is developed. Conformance to these guidelines usually consists of a few basic additions to standards-conformant markup. With a few simple additions, and attention to a few basic details you can do a lot to help people whose vision is impaired or who have physical impairments that make navigating non-conformant websites.