Web design is a process of conceptualization,
planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media
content delivery via Internet in the form of technologies
(such as markup languages) suitable for interpretation
and display by a web browser or other web-based graphical
user interfaces (GUIs).
The intent of web design is to create a web site (a
collection of electronic files residing on one or more
web servers) that presents content (including interactive
features or interfaces) to the end user in the form of
web pages once requested. Such elements as text, forms,
and bit-mapped images (GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs) can be placed
on the page using HTML, XHTML, or XML tags. Displaying
more complex media (vector graphics, animations, videos,
sounds) requires plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, Java
run-time environment, etc. Plug-ins are also embedded
into web pages by using HTML or XHTML tags.
Improvements in the various browsers' compliance with
W3C standards prompted a widespread acceptance of XHTML
and XML in conjunction with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
to position and manipulate web page elements. The latest
standards and proposals aim at leading to the various
browsers' ability to deliver a wide variety of media
and accessibility options to the client possibly without
employing plug-ins.
Typically web pages are classified as static or dynamic.
Static pages don’t change content and layout with every
request unless a human (web master or programmer) manually
updates the page.
Dynamic pages adapt their content and/or appearance
depending on the end-user’s input or interaction or changes
in the computing environment (user, time, database modifications,
etc.) Content can be changed on the client side (end-user's
computer) by using client-side scripting languages (JavaScript,
JScript, Actionscript, media players and PDF reader plug-ins,
etc.) to alter DOM elements (DHTML). Dynamic content
is often compiled on the server utilizing server-side
scripting languages (PHP, ASP, Perl, Coldfusion, JSP,
Python, etc.). Both approaches are usually used in complex
applications.
With growing specialization within communication design
and information technology fields, there is a strong
tendency to draw a clear line between web design specifically
for web pages and web development for the overall logistics
of all web-based services. |
