Topic > Designing a Developer's Perspective

In the 21st century, for any business, company, organization or institution a virtual presence away from its physical location is critical to economic survival. To further this purpose, these entities have developed web pages that they operate on the World Wide Web, also commonly known as the Internet. The Internet is a resource that allows customers and companies to conduct business and enables transactions of all kinds from all over the world. In order to interact with a wide range of people, a web page must successfully achieve its intended purpose by being interactive and easy to use. Which is not an easy task and requires designers to create a friendly website. A user interface should work properly on all devices that access it and cater to a wider range of platforms. This makes the user interface design process one of the most challenging aspects of creating an efficient and complete web page. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Web designing is divided into two sections; front-end and back-end. The front end is the part that is usually considered the look and feel of the website, it is ideally what online users of a website view and interact with. Front-end developers are usually expected to have strong knowledge of programming languages ​​such as HTML, JavaScript, and JQuery. The second section is the backend of the website, which is considered the website server. The backend connects to the frontend via templates and uses databases to competently carry out the intended purpose of the website. Backend developers are generally well trained in, but not limited to, Java, PHP, Python, SQL, and .Net (Stewart, 2015). From a purely design point of view, the front end is considered much more sophisticated and complex than the back end. The reason offered is that backend design deals with how the website runs and performs its function. It is subject only to the approval of the developers and their supervisors (Sonmez, 2018). On the other hand, front-end design is a much more complex matter. The front end should be subject to the experiences of hundreds, thousands, or in some cases up to millions of users per day. For example, in the first quarter of 2018, Facebook Inc. recorded 1.47 billion users accessing its platform every day (Statista, 2018). If there is a huge traffic of users trying to visit the site, it is important for the designers to make sure that the application is pleasant to look at and can easily render services that customers/users would like to enjoy even if they are not particularly skilled in using the Internet, otherwise the company would find itself at a strategic disadvantage (Bloc, 2016). In order for a designer to make a website layout decision, it is important to know the four main website layouts; namely fixed, fluid, reactive and adaptive and how they overlap with each other. Static or fixed design is the type of web design that is rigorous in its attributes regarding measurements, dimensions and other content properties. This means that whatever browser or software is used to access the material on the fixed page, this will be independent of changes that occur in the browser with respect to size. In the early days of websites, fixed web designs were more appropriate because cell phones, tablets, and other wireless devices were not commonly used and only one version of the website was needed to be designed. It allowed you to add content to pages without worrying too much about rendering it perfectly because it was only intended for use ondesktops and large tablets as the hardware was ideal for viewing the website. It was favored primarily for its ease of creation, but with the advent of smartphones and other interactive electronic devices it was discouraged by developers due to its inflexible nature. Since the websites did not offer similar services to these devices, developers had to create separate websites for each platform, which resulted in additional work. (Spencer, 2018). Fluid web design is based on the concept of using relative units. Unlike static websites, fluid web designs do not use units like pixels, but are designed using percentages. When you access websites designed on the Fluid Web on smartphones or other smaller electronic devices, the page content automatically adapts to the size of the hardware. The result is a platform that is much easier to use than static web projects. However, fluid projects present a number of problems. The most commonly cited problem is that once a media file is uploaded to the website, if the browser in which the website is viewed is too large or too small, it can create resolution issues and the media file will not function as intended by the uploader (Dawson 2015). For example, if a video is played on a screen much larger than the originally designed desktop, the resolution will not be optimal and therefore the experience will be unsatisfactory. The third main layout available to developers is known as responsive web design. Responsive web design (RWD for short) became popular in the latter part of the last decade as an increasing number of people began using smaller wireless devices. More and more Internet-connected people and businesses have seen the potential in meeting the needs of these masses. Responsive web layout is that type of design that is receptive to the device that the user uses to view the website. For example, if the content of a page is viewed on a larger desktop that has a much better resolution and larger canvas size, the server identifies the changes and makes the website adapt to them. The reason RWD is able to do this is the fluid grille. Fluid grid is a design or layout that can withstand shear stress due to the size of the screen or user's device, meaning that fluid grid allows designs to adapt to the size of the device or screen and adapt to the user's environment while maintaining an optimal visual experience (1stWebDesigner, 2016). It pushes developers to create a single website that serves users across a wider range of platforms. RWD layouts are much more complex to create because they require in-depth knowledge of programming languages ​​to make best use of the available options. The last major website design option is called adaptive web design. Adaptive web designs (abbreviated to AWD) may seem virtually indistinguishable from a responsive web design to a casual user because they offer almost the same experience, but unlike RWD, adaptive web designs are not fluid. Instead, developers anticipate the nature of the devices that will be used to access the website and write the necessary code for the devices in advance. The code remains on the server and cannot be accessed until requested by the user-managed device. After the request is sent to the server, the server responds by displaying the appropriate layout for that particular device. A particular caveat for AWD is that as new devices are introduced and users take advantage of theservices of these devices to access the website, the website may not load correctly on new devices because the AWD code was not ready for this new platform (Harris, 2015 ). Developers need to be cautious while making a decision about the website layout because it is the building block of developing a functional website. To create a user-friendly layout, developers need to come up with multiple templates that then progress into the website. This is one of the most important parts of the whole process. The prototyping process is a way in which website developers try to create a fictional system and then build the foundation of the original web page on top of it. There are two types of prototyping, evolutionary and disposable. Evolutionary prototyping relies on feedback and gradual improvements until and unless all correctable problems are resolved (Teach-ICT, 2018). One of the most common evolutionary prototyping is paper prototyping. Paper prototyping is cheap, quick and easily editable. For example, if a group of amateur developers is starting to plan a web page project, they should start with paper prototyping. It allows for more options in a fairly short time frame. If the group doesn't like a particular element of a project, they can simply delete it. It is smarter to have the design process completed and tested meticulously before moving on to coding. The other prototyping methodology is called disposable prototyping. The goal of rapid or disposable prototyping is to quickly develop a feature, evaluate it, and then implement it. A big problem with rapid prototyping is that once the feedback is accepted and used, the original suggestion is discarded (Teach-ICT 2018). However, it is preferred by some developers for its speed in the short term, although it can cause many more problems in the future. For example, if a design difficulty occurs at a later time, there is no way to access the original idea because it has been thrown away, which puts designers in an awkward situation and they are expected to retain a lot of information from previous steps. This also means that front-end developers need to be careful in their projects. The thought process behind designing a website is based on the priorities and needs of the users. At the beginning, the front-end designer needs to imagine what it would feel like to be in the user's shoes and how the website could have the greatest possible impact. There is a tendency to assume many things about users which leads to logical design flaws. To illustrate, developers can create an input field that only works when integers are entered, but if the user ends up entering decimals the result may be different. Developers must spend a significant amount of time on the design process. After making the design decision, the developer's task has only begun. The upcoming task is to code the web page in one of the many available resources, such as cloud9, atom and pycharm etc. The developers' job is not only to create the website that achieves the objectives but also to be as efficient as possible in doing so. For example, instead of writing a line of code about 30 times, there could be just one for loop that goes through the entire table of elements and does exactly the same task, this approach is known as dynamic coding. Dynamic coding is the type of coding that allows flexibility in the system. It collects information and processes it, preserving the results (Garg, 2018). The result data can be used elsewhere, which saves the developer from wasting a lot.