Slashdot Mirror
What Do You Call People Who "Do HTML"?
gilgongo writes "It's more than 10 years since people started making a living writing web page markup, yet the job title (and role) has yet to settle down. Not only that, but there are different types of people who write markup: those that approach the craft as essentially an integration task, and those that see it as part of UI design overall. The situation is further complicated by the existence of other roles in the workplace such as graphic designer and information architect. This is making recruitment for this role a real headache. So, how do you describe people who 'do HTML' (and CSS and maybe a bit of JavaScript and graphics manipulation)? Some job titles I've seen include: Design Technologist, Web Developer, Front-end Developer, HTML/CSS Developer, Client-side Developer and UI Engineer. Do you have any favourite job titles for this role?"
nt
Is this going to end up in a Sniglets book or something?
Who cares what you call them, just about any job has a number of titles that are commonly associated with it. I call them web developers but if this is a popularity contest you should have done a Slashdot Poll instead.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
There are two main groups that fall into this category: artists and engineers.
Artists (or graphic designers) will know HTML, CSS, maybe a little JS. But it will be to complement their 'real' skill set, which is photoshop, illustrator, maybe Flash, and the like. They will focus on making the page attractive to users, and if they are worth their salt, easy to navigate as well.
Engineers (or web application developers) will know HTML, JS, hopefully CSS (!), along with PHP, SQL, maybe Java or Ruby. Their natural environment is the backend, but they will know enough about page creation to get by, like for making proof of concept demos. Quite often their idea of an elegant and easy to use web interface is a bunch of text links and a button.
Of course, in real life, you find yourself doing a combination of these things.
Oh, and to answer the original question : what do you call someone that does HTML, CSS, JS and nothing else ?
A: an intern.
Using a CMS never stopped anyone from writing HTML. .psd without thinking or knowing about what can or can't be done with html (I think this round site would look better with a lot of shadows and fake-3d effects), and then a developper spends hours to write HTML/CSS that will make the site look like what the client asked for, only to be told "it does not look very good on my internet explorer 4.0".
In a production environnement, you can't just use the CMS default template or download one from some website. You must design your own template, unique for each website you develop.
It usually starts with a client who want something between impossible and just plain stupid (My site must be round. There a too many rectangle sites out there already), followed by a salesman who want his 3% (no problem sir, everything in your site will be round), then a designer who makes a
Then the developper commits suicide.
The term you're looking for is "Web Designer" - Someone with an understanding of visual design as well as the knowledge of HTML and CSS required to implement said designs. May not have any programming ability. Probably spends his/her time in Dreamweaver, with forays into Notepad++ or BBEdit.
Design Technologist - Nebulous. Anyone who can use software to create visual designs. May be a print graphic artist, web designer, Flash developer. Need not require programming ability, or even any knowledge HTML or CSS. Probably a big fan of Fireworks and Flash, but could also be a big Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign or Quark user.
Web Developer - Someone who can use a dynamic web technology (PHP, ASP.net, J2EE, ColdFusion, Google Web Toolkit) to create interactive web pages or web applications. Also requires a kowledge of HTML, CSS and possibly JavaScript, as well as at least some programming ability. May spend a lot of time in Eclipse, Visual Studio, or another IDE.
Front-end Developer - Someone who can implement a user interface for a computer system. Would include people who, for example, create GUI interfaces to command line tools. Requires programming ability, but does not necessarily require any knowledge of HTML at all. Spends most of the day in Visual Studio or Eclipse.
HTML/CSS Developer - A Web Designer with pretentions of technical skill. Probably used FrontPage. Once.
Client-side Developer - A Front-end Developer (see above) who exclusively works with client-server architecture. Again, does not necessarily require any knowledge of HTML at all. Spends most of his/her time in an IDE.
UI Engineer - Someone who has at least some background in both CHI and software development; may focus on one or the other extreme. Requires some programming skill. Does not necessarily require any knowledge of HTML. Probably uses several UI modeling tools you've never heard of, and spends a lot of time drawing on whiteboards before settling down into an IDE.
Long gone is the singular Webmaster. His/her job has been broken into these pieces:
System Administrator:
Installs and maintains web servers and associated technology back-end infrastructures like PHP upgrades.
Network Administrator:
Installs and maintains networking infrastructure including firewalls, proxies, network caches.
Information Architect:
Creates informational structures to help put data into understandable and manageable segments. Often creates wireframes for page layout.
Web Designer (Artist):
Creative talent that produces graphical content that fit wireframes or other criteria for use on websites.
Web Editor (Writer):
Creative talent that produces textual content that fits structured segments or other crieria for use on a website.
Usability Expert:
Examines and adjusts wireframes and content to fit best practices for user experience.
Back-End Web Developer:
Programmer responsible for creating functionality that assists the display of content on a website. Often responsible for CMS and/or Database integration through to the site.
Front-End Web Developer: This is what you wanted, hence longer description.
Takes graphic content, usability widgets, back-end functionality, textual content and creates layouts using (X|D)HTML, Javascript, back-end code snippets, CSS, CMS template scripts. These layouts fit into certain strict parameters regarding SEO, size optimization (both image and code), speed of loading, cross browser compatibility, limitations of layout markup and specifications of back-end delivery of data. Lacking any of the above positions (and the one below), this person is often tasked with doing whatever is missing from the classic "Webmaster" position.
Quality Assurance:
Jerks.
Nope. That would be a system administrator. A webmaster is more the guy who maintain the website, ie. uploading the html/php files updates and so on.
Seriously, if "doing HTML" is the only skill someone has to offer, they do not command enough to warrant a title other than slapping the word "Assistant" ahead of the title of their direct supervisor. Since even that may be vastly overstating the truth, simply "Administrative Assistant" with "HTML skills" in the job description has more than sufficed for the better part of the last decade.
What's the point of getting more specific than that when there is in fact nothing more to specify?
I would just say Web Designer. There are three main categories, design, coding and administration.
HTML and CSS is just markup - lets make this clear, being able to write HTML does not make you a programmer. I would expect a web designer to be able to design the graphics and type the HTML to display it. They don't even need javascript necessarily. Their sole role is to design a web page.
A Web Developer on the other hand takes the design and adds bit into it to make it interactive properly - so this might include flash content, javascript image galleries, etc. They are also the people that do the server side scripting in PHP and Ajax. They are the programmers.
There are people who do a little of both but i think in most companies there are people who do almost solely one or the other. Crossover experience is useful because if you're a designer you need to know what is within the limits of the coder and if you're coding you need to be in constant contact with the designer to make sure that your code not only works, but looks pretty when in action. Again, with coding, you might want to knock up a piece of code that displays a certain thing depending on the situation - and of course your thing will be rendered in HTML so clearly coders need to know HTML, but it's not their job to make the images or design the colour scheme.
A webmaster doesn't need to do either of these things but sometimes does both. The webmaster, to my mind, controls the hard drive space and/or server. It's his job to check that everything works ok, that people can't access files that they can't and to liaise with clients to see what they want. Again it's handy to have design and coding experience, but the webmaster is basically an administration role.
Finally you have the people who test things, i.e. testers.
That's my take on it. In an ideal world an applicant to a job would need a mixture of experience with all three, but needs to specialise in one. This description makes web designers look a bit wimpy compared to developers who need to know basically everything, but good coding is NOTHING without a good front end to back it up with.