“Do you do web design as well?” was probably one of the most-asked questions in discussions with new clients. I still don’t do it for a living, but finally finally, I caught up and have a pretty decent understanding about how it works. I must say, web designers have to endure a pretty big mess.
It takes an incredible amount of trial and error to get basic things sorted (try lining up things in a straight line for example). Unlike writing back end algorithms, which you can sort of read/follow, a page full of HTML tags is impossible for a human to understand. Pages are set up as long scrolling bits of text.
No one is to blame though, HTML needs to be backward compatible and fit a huge range of screens and devices.
For productivity application development, things are different. Screen dimensions are more or less the same, people usually work in (almost) full-screen mode, scrolling and resizing is less relevant… All you need is a decent x/y coordinate system and you are done (almost).
That is another business opportunity for someone to cover…
Photo by Pankaj Patel on Unsplash