Friday, February 28, 2014

1stwebdesigner

1stwebdesigner

Beware: Web Design Pitfalls to Avoid

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 06:00 AM PST

Let's accept it. The wonderful world of web design is not a walk in the park. There are web design pitfalls to avoid. You need to create eyegasmic designs that will attract people and hook them into visiting your website frequently. However, what makes it more challenging is that web design isn't created for the eyes' pleasure only. User-experience, including how he gets the message or the gist of the whole design is a priority. The foundations of web design are deeply rooted on practicality and usability.

Despite the our constant avoidance, we, web designers, are very vulnerable to pitfalls that hamper the practicality of the design. Most web designers, especially the starting ones, tend to make mistakes that could easily jeopardize the usage of their websites.

Good thing, your 1stWebDesigner knows of these blunders. Let's talk about them.

Poorly Placed Search Box

Looking for a tiny bit of information on the Internet is like searching for true love. It's there, but you have to know how and where to look. That is why search boxes are important.

  • It helps users find what their looking for.
  • It gives the user easier time in looking for previous posts.
  • The user can easily type what he’s looking for rather than scan each page in the archive.

In a world where Google equals to search, having a poorly thought search box would mean no website visitors.

pitfalls-of-web-design-you-should-avoid-01

Photo by YOU & I tee

A search box becomes a necessity as you increase content, for most visitors look for your search box, believe it or not. They usually feel irate when they are not able to find it- and that, my friend, is very bad news.

Smashing Magazine identified some problems with search box designs. In its article, Designing The Holy Search Box: Examples And Best Practices, it defined the following as frequent pitfalls:

  • Search box placed at the bottom of the page, or hidden on the navigation menu
  • Too short input fields
  • Tiny submit buttons (almost microscopic)
  • Search box is hard to find
  • Search box is placed together with the Subscription box
  • Overdesigning the box
  • Giving submit buttons ambiguous names
  • Search box with multiple submit buttons

Possible solutions:

  • Search box positioning – The most convenient position of the search box is on the top corners of the page. You can place them there to make use of the navigation space without hindering the main content.
  • Submit Button names –  Use names which people might connect the Submit button to. Use Submit button labels such as "search", "find" instead of "Go" and “Yes” to prevent confusion. 
  • Make your submit buttons easier- make the button be the same size as the input box.
  • Avoid placing the search section with other forms. Again, used the F-shape viewing theory. Start from the top right, (where most people would look at)
  • Be simple. Don't overdo it.

Unreadable Text

One of the reasons why your viewers opted to look at your website instead of a printed material or a letter is they don't understand other people's handwriting. Some are very illegible. This is a crucial aspect of the whole page. The content is still the undisputed champion of the Most-Important-Section-in-the-Design league. As good as your interface is, if the viewers can't even read the content, it's still no use.

Mistakes Include:

  • Small and unreadable fonts
  • Bad font selection
  • Poor color combination
  • Ghastly background to text complement

pitfalls-of-web-design-you-should-avoid-03

Photo from http://solvm.com

Possible Solutions

  • Body fonts (or content fonts) should be the sans-serif type, minimum size is 14px.
  • Avoid using these fonts.
  • Use Adobe Kuler for your color scheming.
  • Use uniform font sizes and know when to emphasize a text.
  • Limit your design with minimal font families.
  • Your background color or image should always be in contrast with the texts.
  • Align properly.
  • Use uniform spacing.

Try to read Readability – Making Web Pages Easy to Read

Chaos Is Everywhere

Content is the life and blood of a website. Without it, it will just remain a shallow shell. The content attracts traffic to the website and allows you to monetize and share your information. This should be the driving force why you need to organize each content properly and logically. You need to pick out important points in the content of your website and highlight them so that the reader gets what you are trying to say.

pitfalls-of-web-design-you-should-avoid-02

photo from telegraph.co.ulk

Some web designers tend to design a website for the sole purpose of eye entertainment, thus, sacrificing the content. This is highlighted when the client posts some content and ends up being confused himself. Remember the design will be put to waste if you put the content to haste. (that is a pretty good rhyme, isn't it?)

 This means that the use of bullets, headings, subheadings and other organizational symbols and elements is advisable. This will avoid confusion and inaccuracy with the content.

Jordan Dick of  venturi-web-design.com said it best,

"Organizing website content like a restaurant menu"

In his article, Organizing Website Content, Jordan pointed out the following points:

  • The website content should be put in logical arrangements like a restaurant menu where each is divided into categories and sub categories.
  • Each category should group content in a panoramic sense and, then, specified in each sub category and so on.

To put it in Jordan's analogy, it's like looking at a restaurant menu where there are a lot of food items to order. All of the contents of the menu are grouped whether they are for dinner, breakfast or snack. The groups are then further divided to pastas, chicken, vegan, pork and dessert.

Poor Navigation

Let's say that the website is a tourist destination, a 1000-year old labyrinth perhaps, and you want to explore it to see its true beauty. Will you do it without a map?

Navigation is one of the most important parts of the web design. It should be unbroken. Your web visitors should be able to find where they are and where will they go in your web design.

Remember that the main purpose of the navigation is to act like a map and to direct and redirect the user to a particular page in the website. With it being messed up, the viewer might feel lost and opt for another link instead.

Here are the things you need to avoid:

  • Some options are not visible to the user – yes, this happens. A missing link in the custom menu, a missing category link – they happen. If you keep on doing this practice, your viewers will just assume that the link, which is actually present in your website but absent in the navigation, simply does not exist.
  • Too much flair on the navigation area – rotating nav-bars, blinking links, these are unacceptable practices. Inasmuch as we want our website to be entertaining, avoid them. Your navigation area should be consistent. The viewer should immediately identify where the navigation area is and will be.
  • Complicated designs – your visitors should easily identify and understand your navigation area. Symbols, if used, should be treated properly to avoid confusion.

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Photo from dafacto.com

Possible Solutions:

  • Complete your navigation area. Put all the possible links the user will look for.
  • Place your nav-bar where the visitor will see first it. It's very advisable to place the nav-bar on top, however, as web design trends change, this is flexible.Only one rule is absolute: place it where the visitor will clearly see it.
  • Use proper icons (for more info, read our article IconTalk)

Horizontal Scrolling

Today's web design trends look at horizontal scrolling as an abomination. With the invention of the scroll wheel in our mouse, it has definitely solved the growing problem of vertical scrolling. However, the horizontal scrolling problem wasn’t solved- it was demolished.

Web designers should do away with this also. For developers, fit it to 1024 x 768 px.

 pitfalls-of-web-design-you-should-avoid-05

Photo from Everyinteraction.com

Putting a Displeasing Amount of Images 

The time when there are almost 50 GIF images in a single webpage is over. Modern web design trends discourage the use of too many images. It irritates and distracts the viewer from the main content. Plus, it adds a little bit of memory in the page that you load each time a visitor views your website; images make it slower to load.

Possible solution:

  •         Limit your images. That's it.

pitfalls-of-web-design-you-should-avoid-06

Photo from Jade

Too Much Website Clutter

There are times where you just feel like you are strangled by the content. Images are placed closely to the point where you feel claustrophobic. That just means that the web designer hasn’t heard of the white space yet.

White space allows the content to breathe. (Not literally, of course.) It gives the eyes some sense of relaxation and suggests cleanliness and organization of design. So you need to add spacing to your texts, images and other website content.

pitfalls-of-web-design-you-should-avoid-07

photo by experiencing dyanamics

Conclusion

The aforementioned pitfalls are very subtle and yet dangerous to fall into. It will hamper the quality of your work. Learning what these pitfalls are is just the first step. You have to apply them in your design. Yes, it will be very difficult and arduous; it takes a lot of time, but it will make you a better designer. You’ll be surprised with the results as you progress. Learn to kill these bad habits and you’ll realize that your income, your design and your view of self will totally change!
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Wednesday, February 26, 2014

1stwebdesigner

1stwebdesigner

Web Industry Job Titles: Where Do You Fit In?

Posted: 26 Feb 2014 06:00 AM PST

With the continuous evolution of the Web, web industry job titles are created at a very impressive rate, opening up a lot of possible career opportunities for more people each day.

Speaking of careers, what do you call yourself? I mean, are you a web designer or a web developer? Or are you the kind of person who's somehow stuck on both boats? I believe that learning your real job title will be tantamount to learning where you're good at. In my previous article, I have explained that you should be an expert on something. And honestly, stamping your identity through a job title could be considered as the first step.

To begin with, I would like to make it clear that there are a lot of job titles on the Web. The confusion between such jobs is understandable because they do meet ways. So, how do we know which is which and where we fit in? Let's take a look:

Web Designer

As the name suggests, a web designer's main job is to design. Taking literally, this job focuses on the 'look' of the whole website. We can consider them as the architects of the Web. Web designers should be masters of the visual arts.

web-job-titles-01

What Web Designers Do:

  • They plan for the over-all look of the website, including considering the costs of actually developing it.
  •  They should be able to create a look and feel that catches the viewer's attention to keep them glued to the screen.

What Skills Web Designers Should Have:

  • They should be competent in color scheming, graphic design and information flow.

There is an ongoing debate if web designers should learn how to code or not. This talk has been prevailing around web design and development forums for over a long time now. However, there is really no definite answer for that right now. 

In my opinion, they should learn how to code. It lessens the burden of hiring another person to write the code and consider the feasibility of the design. But then again, there's no telling which is correct or not.

UI/UX Designer

UI designers are responsible for creating unforgettable user experiences. Using their keen observation of trends and eye for creative and totally neat designs, they make your browsing experience a once-in-a lifetime opportunity.

web-job-titles-02

What UI/UX Designers Do:

  • They collaborate with product managers and engineers to orient themselves in the themes of the design.
  • They execute the plans from conceptualization to actual development. This, of course, will include wire-frame creation, storyboarding, among other things, so to facilitate communication and interaction between the design and the user.

What Skills UI/UX Designers Should Have:

  • They should have broad experience in the design process (that includes manipulation of Photoshop, Illustrator and other products).
  • They need  skills to code (told you, learning the basic is important for fast prototyping).

Portfolios are important for the designers for this will show the designers’ design style and skills. If you are interested being a UI/UX designer, better get it started.

Art Director

Art directors or design directors take designing into an administrative level. They are supervisors of the workflow. They head a team of designers.

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What Art Directors Do:

  • They are responsible for coordinating with the client and supervising the design process.
  • They update the clients from time to time regarding the progress of the work.
  • They check the quality and uniformity of the design.

What Skills Art Directors Should Have:

  • They need to have an excellent taste of design.
  • They must have the ability to create designs in minimal supervision.
  • They must have an excellent grasp of the technologies used in designing.
  • They should have the skills needed to fully utilize the talents of the team and transform them into outstanding results.

Web Developer

If web designers are the white-collared architects of the Web industry, we have the developers as the ever-hardworking blue-collar builders. Web development can be considered the building industry of the web. Without web developers, the design will just remain in plans, or in the Web industry, PSDs/mock-ups. They use a lot of tools in producing an optimized and interactive website.

web-job-titles-04

What Web Developers Do:

  • They are responsible for the production, modification and maintenance of the website and its user interface.
  • They work with designers in making semantic mark-up languages like XHMTL/CSS, and turning their static PSDs to working browser pages.
  • They implement server-side codes to develop a complex and interactive website.

What Skills Web Developers Should Have:

  • They should be experienced in programming languages like PHP, ASP, Ruby, Phyton, HTML/CSS and more.

Web Content Strategist

Of course, the website won't just purely be designs. It needs content and this is where web content strategists come into play.

web-job-titles-05

What Web Content Strategists Do:

  • These guys are responsible for planning, developing and managing information placed in the website.

What Skills Web Content Strategists Should Have:

  • Being in-charge of the content of the website, web content strategists should have great command of the English language.
  • They should have ample amount of knowledge in copywriting and audience experience.

Information Technician

Just because information technicians deal with hardware doesn’t mean that they can’t be considered having a web-related job. Truth is, without these guys, the web won't probably run as smoothly as it does right now.

web-job-titles-06

What Information Technicians Do:

  • They are responsible for hardware and software maintenance.
  • Training, consultation and recommendation about future planning and development of resources are also part of the job description of the information technician.
  • They are the point person when it comes to ensuring that technology is accessible and equipped with the up-to-date hardware and software.
  • They are also called in to perform troubleshooting in hardware, software and networks.

In short, information technicians tend to the basic needs of the computers and networks per se.

Product Manager

I have mentioned the role of the art director. Well, art directors have bosses too, and they are called product managers.

web-job-titles-07

What Project Managers Do:

  • They ensure that every facet of the project is well-tended.
  • They deal with clients, art directors and lead developers and steers the whole project into the projected results.

What Skills Project Managers Should Have:

  • They should have great multi-tasking skills.
  • They know how to take charge.
  • They know how to communicate effectively with clients and the developers too.

Customer Service Representative

As every product or web service is not flawless, it is a must to have some people who are alerted if these flaws reach the customer. Smiling Telemarketer

What Customer Sales Representatives Do:

  • They make sure that each client meets what they want.
  • They help the client or tell the developers to solve problems met by the customers.
  • Their main job is to talk to people and help them solve problems from navigation to unruly website bugs.

What Skills Customer Sales Representatives Should Have:

  • They need to have a clear grasp of the product or service being offered.
  • They can easily make the regular customer understand what they are trying to ask that customer to do.

SEO Specialist

Search Engine Optimization specialists work with copywriters (sometimes, copywriters are also SEO specialists).Facebook Postcard Design 

What SEO Specialists Do:

  • They develop the website's visibility on the Internet by continually trying to improve the website's ranks in the search engines.
  • They are also responsible for maximizing the traffic a website gets through the addition of keywords.

What Skills SEO Specialists Should Have:

  • Basically, when you speak of SEO specialists, they are the common people who makes a living out of understanding what Google, Yahoo Search, or Bing wants.

Conclusion

So there you have it guys, these are some of the many web design job titles that we commonly encounter. Now, knowing the different job titles, are you now aware of what you will be called? Well then, if you are, you may now start adding the title in your business card. Flaunt that name, but flaunt your work more.
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Monday, February 24, 2014

1stwebdesigner

1stwebdesigner

10 Exciting Premium WordPress Plugins That Are Worth Every Penny

Posted: 24 Feb 2014 06:00 AM PST

Everything in the world comes with a price. It's nature's way of balancing the scales. So don’t be surprised when the premium WordPress plugins can cost you a lot. You need to spend something in order to acquire something that you really need. In our modern world, money is most often that 'something' I was referring to.

It is, of course, good to find free WordPress plugins that you could use with your blog or the website that you are currently developing. However, free plugins have drawbacks.

  • They work for a particular time frame only
  • Some work at a very minimal amount
  • The full features won't be utilized unless you buy the plugin

That, my friend, is but natural. Of course, our WordPress developer buddies work hard to brainstorm, design, and code, troubleshoot and re-code these plugins. They exert their utmost effort to help you with your daily WP needs. This is the main reason why some plugins can never be free, even if we wanted them to be.

Of course, you wouldn’t want to throw away your money for some crappy plugin. I know that choosing the best plugin still depends on your personal needs but having a guide on which plugins to buy is a very considerable advantage.

1stwedesigner.com presents these plugins that were deemed to be the most practical, cost-effective and advantageous. Let's try them!

UberMenu ($16)

premium-wordpress-plugin-ubermenu

UberMenu has uber-exciting features. It is a user-friendly and fully customizable responsive mega-menu WordPress plugin. It is very easy to use. It works with most WordPress 3 menu-enabled themes. It includes over 20 style presets, ranging from horizontal to vertical menus and supports both slide and fade effects for sub-menus (you can also deactivate this if you want).

Uber Menu comes with the following features:

  • Fully responsive
  • Lighter weight and more efficient than JavaScript
  • iPhone & iPad compatible
  • Full-width sub-menu option with ability to define the number of columns
  • It has various click, hover, or hover intent triggers, which can improve the overall design of the page

Gravity Forms (Personal: $39, Business: $99, Developer $199)

premium-wordpress-gravity forms

Gravity Forms is one of, if not, the best contact form plugins for WordPress. It enables you to quickly build and design your WordPress forms using a form editor. You can choose from fields to configure your options and embed these forms in your WordPress-powered site.

It comes with the following features:

  • Multi-page forms
  • Form settings
  • Limit entries
  • Advanced fields
  • Schedule forms
  • Standard fields
  • Pricing fields
  • Post Fields

Intense WordPress Plugin ($18)

premium-wordpress-intense

Intense is a WordPress plugin that provides you with a very big library of short codes, custom post types and more. Being built through Twitter bootstrap, this plugin will surely provide you with the most essential codes you need in the easiest-to-use interface. This plugin is so intense that you wouldn’t look for anything anymore.

It comes with the following features:

  • Short code dialogs
  • Easily adds 59 different animation effects such as animate an item on mouse hover, on mouse click, or when scrolled into view.
  • Parallax content sections and images
  • Many image hover effect options with Adipoli and Effeckts
  • Filter Blog, Portfolio and FAQ with transition effects using MixItUp

Logos Showcase ($13)

premium-wordpress-logoshowcase

Do you want to display a set of images as a grid or in a carousel slider? Well, this plugin is perfectly fit for you! Perfect to display the list of clients, supporters, partners or sponsor logos in your website, create a grid of images with external or internal links, and to show off your best photos.

It comes with the following features:

  • Easy to use pre-built styles and tooltips to enhance your logos
  • Filter by categories
  • Widget ready
  • Custom feature name
  • Bulk uploading

SabaiDiscuss ($20)

premium-wordpress-plugin-sabai-discuss

Q&A plugins come in handy, especially when you want to attract discussions. SabaiDiscuss is a very potent candidate for the best discussion plugin there is. Re-imagine the services of Stack Overflow or Yahoo Answers with this plugin! Sabai is an ideal tool for websites that aim to attract more discussion and hits.

It comes with the following features:

  • Post and edit comments inline
  • Tag questions with auto-suggest
  • File attachments to questions and answers
  • Code syntax highlighting using Google Prettify
  • 10 email notification templates
  • Integration with the Cubepoints plugin

Social Locker ($21)

premium-wordpress-plugin-social-locker

Social Locker helps your content to be seen by more people. Its main feature allows you to lock a certain part of your content until the user clicks the social buttons. It is a great way to get traffic and customers!

It comes with the following features:

  • Any URL to like/share/tweet/+1.
  • Analytic tools
  •  Facebook Like
  • Facebook Share
  • Twitter Tweet
  • Google +1
  • LinkedIn Share
  • SEO-friendly

Anticipate ($39)

 premium-wordpress-plugin-anticiapte

Are you taking a lot of time building your website? Or just updating? Anticipate will help you build the excitement. It is a very good maintenance mode plugin that allows you to post an alternate "coming soon" page while you build your website. Once you activate the plugin, your visitors will be redirected to the Anticipate landing page.

It comes with the following features:

  • Complete localization
  • Progress bar
  • Email collection
  • Social networking

Paypal File Download ($25)

premium-wordpress-paypal

If your website wants to sell digital contents, like e-books, PDFs, ZIPs and more, this is the plugin that you are looking for. Paypal File Download Plugin for WordPress is still the easiest way to sell online. It is built in with IPN, email delivery and expiry.

It comes with the following functions:

  • Multiple products with different prices, editable in the Products settings page
  • Guided insert-in page
  • Support for 26 different currencies
  • Edit the email that goes out when payment has been successfully processed
  • Expire links after a customizable amount of time to prevent abuse
  • Zero code experience required

Attention Grabber ($12)

 premium-wordpress-attention-grabber

Attention Grabber is a WordPress plugin that adds a notification bar to your website. With this plugin, you will be able to display custom texts, Twitter posts and RSS feeds. It is a very simple and yet powerful way to market your products and share your content.

It comes with the following features:

  • Unlimited bars
  • Fixed and inline position
  • Animation effects
  • Multiple fading messages
  • Click counter for each bar
  • 6 Pre-designed themes
  • Support for short codes (You can add your own short codes too)
  • 7 Pre-built short codes: Facebook Like, Twitter Like, Google +1, Post title, Page title, Link, Multiple messages

WordPress Advanced Image Lazy Load ($12)

premium-wordpress-plugin-lazyload

This plugin allows your website to load faster without sacrificing the quality of images. It provides the user with a better browsing experience by delaying the loading of images. Images which are outside the visible portion of the page that the user is viewing won't load before the user scrolls down to them.

Look out for the following features:

  • Search engine friendly plugin
  • Ready to use, no action is needed for existing or future images on posts/pages
  • Improving images selection performance by customizing default selectors for several site sections
  • Cascading enabling/disabling levels :
    • Level 1 : Enable or disable for the whole website
    • Level 2 : Enable or disable for all posts and pages
    • Level 3 : Enable or disable for all images within a specific post or page
    • Level 4 : Enable or disable for a specific post's or page's image
  • Customizing the loading of images
  • Possibility to also hack theme images that are not part posts/pages to be lazy loaded

Conclusion

These are just few of the best WordPress plugins that will make you say, "It's worth every penny". They are not just premium plugins; they actually make your website better and they actually work. They will make your website more comfortable to use and makes your overall workload easier. So, what are you waiting for? You can now swipe those cards because these plugins rock!
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iPad Air Template (PSD) - Six Revisions

iPad Air Template (PSD) - Six Revisions

iPad Air Template (PSD)

Posted: 24 Feb 2014 02:00 AM PST

This is a free PSD of the new iPad Air that includes 3 different color options for the Smart Cover.

This PSD freebie is neatly organized and allows for near-endless customization since the mockup was designed using vector shapes, which allows you to scale the design to any size you need without sacrificing image quality.

You can use this PSD in your designs, presentations, app mockups, and much more.

This freebie was created by Best PSD Freebies. It’s available exclusively here on Six Revisions.

Preview

License

This freebie can be used in any projects, commercial or otherwise. Attribution is appreciated, but not required.

You aren’t permitted to make this freebie available for sale or distribution elsewhere, as is, without prior consent.

Download

Related Content

About the Author

Michael Reimer is a professional web designer from Canada. You can view more of his work at his site Best PSD Freebies where he offers a huge collection of free and premium web design resources. You can follow him on Twitter to get his latest freebie updates.

The post iPad Air Template (PSD) appeared first on Six Revisions.
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Friday, February 21, 2014

1stwebdesigner

1stwebdesigner

Web Designers Who Code: Should Be or Should Not Be

Posted: 21 Feb 2014 06:00 AM PST

There is a great debate on whether the web designer should learn coding. Is there a need for web designers who code? If you were one, would you try it?

There are two types of people: left-brained people and right brained ones. Left-brained people are mostly inclined to do technical matters. This means that the left hemisphere of their brain is more dominant. They possess strong left hemisphere characteristics. They have the ability to memorize, categorize and analyze data easily. Commonly, left-brained people are the ones who excel in science, mathematics and the likes. On the other hand, right-brained individuals have dominant right hemispheres. They are naturally intuitive, adventurous and creative. Designers, writers and speech-givers are great examples of our right-brained buddies.

should-web-designers-learn-code-02

Photo from Taylor’s Website

With that being said, web designers categorically fall in the right-brained category. However, upon dissecting the roles a web designer performs, you might arrive to a conclusion that the role somehow sits in the middle. Many web design purists will agree that web designing is, in majority, a creative field. The layout touches colors, fonts, and design elements. How all of these will concoct to form the big picture is he ultimate goal of web design. Web designers thrive on trends and techniques to improve how people visualize the web pages they create. This is important because most people are visually stimulated. Meaning, they are easily hooked on a visual image as they see it. If the image is not aesthetically enticing for them, no matter how good your content is, your website will just be sniffing stinks out there.

should-web-designers-learn-code-03

Photo from businessinsider.com

Yet, with the growing demand for faster and immediate results, web designers are forced to get their hands dirty in coding. They usually take time to read PHP, CSS and HTML languages as a start. Though this is a very good step towards self-improvement, some people still do not support the idea that web designers should learn coding. Hence, the argument: Should web designers need to learn how to code?

Personally, I firmly believe that learning to code is not a requisite to become a web designer. However, having a large depot of code knowledge gives you an edge over designers who just know how to design.

should-web-designers-learn-code-04

Photo from Andysowards

As a web designer, having coding experience will give you an edge knowledge-wise. Learning the basic language in creating web pages gives you familiarity on the project you are working on. You are aware of what goes in and out of your code; you know the bugs that keep your project from moving and address them as early as diagnosed.

You may be using some software which offers WYSIWYG features, but what if a bug comes out? What if a very important element, say your header image, is not visible? Would you just mope around, repeat the process and waste time? Or, would you be knowledgeable enough to know what to find and where exactly to find it?

Also, having some coding experience makes you the boss of your own design. Example, you are designing a web page template. Of course, if you'll use the template generators out there, you won't have the advantage of which elements should be absolutely-positioned. You just follow what the template mandates and you're stuck in a box- and web designers as artists in their own right- should never be stuck in boxes. But if you know some basic coding, you'll be able to control which divs are positioned relatively or otherwise.

In addition, you'll be spared of some big files that will occupy your drives. Most WYSIWYG editors produce longer codes which can affect the loading speed of your web page.

should-web-designers-learn-code-05

Photo from BAVC

Furthermore, having coding experience will save you time. Contrary to the popular belief, WYSIWYG editors take more time compared to hand-coding. Also, you don’t have to look fo a coding expert. You can code the page all by yourself, thus saving money and time all in one shot. With this advantage, you will be able to work on more projects, increasing possible profit and eliminating misunderstanding in terms of coding.

With all these advantages, you might be under the impression that you are going to start learning how to code. However, before even starting, you need to answer the following: 

Am I ready?

Are you ready to start learning new knowledge? Are you sure you'll push through with this? Sometimes, the drive of your motives on wanting to become a better designer makes you take wrong choices. Contemplate on whether you really want it now or not because learning the languages in web pages is a very arduous task and it requires time, and loads of patience. It will be very counter-productive if you stop in the middle of everything.

should-web-designers-learn-code-06

Photo from Web Designer Depot

Am I good enough as a web designer?

Here's the catch: learning how to code can be taught. But creativity? Never. You acquire it through practice and a big chunk of mistakes and rejected designs. Yes, you can catch up through learning the different trends, but designing is more right-brained, so you need to be artistic rather than knowledgeable. If you think you're ready and good enough as a designer, then go learn coding. But if you're still terrible, I suggest you learn to polish the design aspect first. Never jump unless you know you have some good landing ground. Never learn coding and waste a great deal of time as a web designer if you're not even sure if you really are a web designer.

should-web-designers-learn-code-07

Photo from 1BP

Am I patient enough?

Let's face it, looking through a seemingly endless threads of codes could be a silent and visual lullaby for many, especially those who do not find coding as exciting. Now if you really want to learn, you have to beat the pain in the you-know-what and the boring periods of learning. You're like being taught a new language. You have to be patient, open and at least, curious to become better.

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Photo from Amazon News

Conclusion

In the end, I would say that web designers who know how to code have a great advantage over those who don't. It makes them a one-man wrecking crew. This might put aspiring designers to the belief that coding is something to learn in an instant. Despite the many benefits of knowledge in coding, a designer must always hone his craft first, the right-brained one, before moving on the left. Web designer-coders are not a must, but being one an advantage. What do you think?
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