web-designer . web-developer . webmaster

[Jason Batten]

As many of us are or at least trying to be (:D) is a webmaster which is of course both the design a development of a website.

My query is how long do you think we (all of us) will be able to balance the roles of both the designer and developer of a website?

Both areas are progressing. The design part is becoming more invloved in 3d modelling, another hobby of mine. The development part seems to be or at least trying to loose the responsibility of maintaining a website by letting the user maintain it themselves. The coding, well I can not say too much on that as me be noob but from what I can see it has just become more dynamic. How was that for state the obvious ;)

It is our future, where do you think it is heading, where do you know it is heading, where do you want to take it?

[cretaceous]

no one replying?
I used to work in a new media company (when that was the coool term of the time) - when it started everyone worked together, there was lots of cross fertilisation

as the company expanded (and shrunk) - more and more, everyone became specialised

later some designers came along who barely understood diddley squat about anything - they could make something look nice but thats all

I also do 3d - I have friends who are pro animators for big films - they have teams of specialists in those places, some guys just rig the models, others do texture mapping - which seems really boring if you ask me...

me I love not specialising - I do php, mysql, 3dmax, html, aftereffects, macromedia director, graphic design
BUT as I'm self employed its ok -
as an employee only a small company wants that mixture - the bigger the company the more specialised the roles

its really important to understand and appreciate the different disciplines - just be prepared to accept that people who specialise will probably be better at the single thing they do!

[fire_cracker]

For the last five years I have been Unspecialized, foccusing on all the graphics, HTML, code, database and everything that goes into a website. I run my own company, and over the last two years I have started bringing in more and more people to do specific types of work, namely graphics. I can't draw a stick figure on paper myself, and my graphic design shows it, so I have started outsourcing my graphic work. Recently I brought onboard other people to do different coding work and such to lower the load that I have to carry. My goal by the end of the year is to have a whole team in the office who all have a basic understanding of what everyone else does, but has their own little niche that they will be doing most of the work for. I.E. my graphic designer doesn't need to know every in an out of PHP, but it is nice if they have a basic understanding of it so that when I explain what the goal of a project is, I don't get that awful "dear in the headlight" look.