Web Design - You See It Every Day, But What Is It?
Generally speaking, web design is a set of techniques and methods, required to create and run websites. It is a very broad term, which incorporates many different areas of expertise, including, but not limited to, graphic design, web programming, filling websites with content, search engine optimization, etc. To avoid misconceptions, the term 'web design' usually relates to the client side (what users see on the page). Here are some more tips from http://graemewinchester.co.uk that will give you an idea of the ins and outs of a great website design.
Nowadays web browsers are used to assemble and present the information to users in a convenient way. They also allow people to interact with websites (going to other pages, fill up forms, upload and download media). Each page is constructed from different pieces of textual and graphical information in a specific way, defined by code.
Speaking of code, despite the relatively short history of web design, the methods of programming a website changed very significantly. Modern iterations of HTML with fairly recent technologies like CSS, Flash, and Java give numerous new opportunities to web designers.
All of that would be impossible, though, without the development of World Wide Web itself. In a mere couple of decades, the speed of internet connections available to people changed from almost text-only to capable of transmitting full HD video in real time. This, of course, changed web design dramatically and gave birth to projects, never before possible, like video hosts, for example.
However, some core principles of web design haven't changed through time. And the main of them is user-friendliness. It is the measure of how convenient it is to navigate on the site for the user and how pleasant the experience is. As internet gets bigger and bigger, the competition grows, and it becomes increasingly more important to keep users happy and not let them bounce to other sites, because this directly affects the financial income.
All abovementioned tendencies contribute to the fact, that web design is now one of the most rapidly growing industries in the world. And there are no visible signs that this is about to change in the nearest future.