My work
I am a Web Developer living and working in Brighton & Hove in southern England.
So, what exactly is a Web Developer?
Some people would call me a jack of all trades. I prefer to think of myself as a Renaissance man.
I am a designer and I am a programmer. The two trades aren't as far apart as some might believe. In fact, they are very similar in many respects.
Web designers tend to view the web in terms of visual design. They are often frustrated by what they see as a lack of control over the way their web pages will be viewed.
Programmers tend to view the web as a series of interconnected documents. Information, rather than design, is seen as the priority. They often show little concern for how this information is presented.
Yet, both designers and programmers are striving to acheive the same goals: excellence and elegance.
Programmers might show little appreciation for well-crafted, atmospheric graphics, and designers might not be very impressed when they see a few lines of well-structured code. A programmer might not see the harm in a web page that uses a rainbow of clashing colours, and a designer might not see what's wrong with pages of indecipherable, redundant code. In their own fields, however, they will both recognise and acknowledge the same traits. Elegance in design and elegance in code are essentially the same.
I can appreciate the beauty of good visual design as well as the beauty of good code.
I like to handle all aspects of web development, from initial design through to complicated server-side programming. I create page designs in Photoshop. I write HTML by hand. I implement back-end solutions using programming languages like PHP.
Of course, I don't get to wear all my hats on every project I work on. Quite often, I work as part of a team marking up existing designs or writing JavaScript.
I could call myself a web designer and programmer but I find it's easier to just say Web Developer.