What is Website Design? Essay

What is website design?
Web design is the process of creating websites using various webpage layouts, content production and graphic design to achieve the desired outcome and look of the website which will be appealing to the end user.
Websites are created using HTML which is then read by the browser. Web pages are built using HTML tags that define the content and metadata of each page. The layout and appearance of the elements within a webpage are normally defined using CSS (cascading style sheets). Almost all websites include a combination of HTML and CSS which defines how each page will appear in the browser that its view in.
Websites can be coded from scratch or software's such as Adobe Dreamweaver can be used to design the website. Other popular ways to design websites are with content management system like WordPress or Joomla. Joomla is the web CMS that I have used to build my website for this part of the assignment. Content management systems comes with out of the box templates and plugins. Free or commercial third party templates or plugins can be found over the internet. These templates and plugins can be used as a starting point to design the website instead of designing it from scratch.
HTML and CSS are used to design the look and feel of a website, however images must be created separately to add to the website.
"When discussing a page layout, web designers will often use terms like fixed, static, liquid, adaptive, responsive, and a few others. If you're a web designer, a web developer, or even a project stakeholder or client, it's important to understand what these terms mean and when each type of layout should be utilized". (Nick Pettit, 2014)
Different types of website layout.
Static Page Layout
A static page layout or fixed as it is also known uses a preset page size and does not change based on the browser width. The layout might have a permanent width and will not change no matter what browser it is used in eg mobile, tablet and desktop. Web pages were built like this for many years prior to be changed to accommodate mobile and table devices.
Different devices such as phones, tablets and desktop will show a static website differently. It is for this reason new websites are built to be mobile friendly so it can respond to the different devices and browsers.
Static Layout (teamtreehouse.com, 2014)
Liquid Page Layout
A liquid page layout is sometimes called fluid. It is designed using relative units instead of fixed units. A liquid page layout will typically use percentages instead of pixels.
A liquid page layout will often fill the width of the page regardless if the width of the browser. Liquid layouts are not as great good as a responsive layout and issues can arise with very small or large browser widths. Based on the browser some contents can be stretched too far or be too crowded for the viewing screen.