[greghinch]

I personally would prefer to see this divide:

- Product developer - implements the functionality, from the database to the functional UI. Lives in Ruby/Python/PHP/etc. AND Javascript

- UI designer - creates and implements visual designs. Lives in Photoshop and HTML/CSS

- Dev Ops - maintains the infrastructure, optimizes resources, manages deployment. Lives on the command line

Of course, all these rolls have crossover. And hopefully that's a good thing, your team shouldn't be segregated by knowledge barriers.

A big problem I see is that "front-end" is right now defined as "HTML/CSS/JS". Being good at the first two is a completely separate skill from being able to write and design software in a programming language like JS. I see much better results from designers who can deliver built templates than I do from those who can just deliver photoshop files

[mnicole]

My problem as a designer living in code is that by calling myself "UI Designer" (or "Web Designer" for that matter), I'm putting myself in the same boat as people who don't know any code (I'm basing this off of seeing what people on Dribbble's titles/"skills" are). I much prefer "UI Developer" to "Designer" because that implies I am actually able to build what I've designed while acknowledging the design/interface aspect.

[greghinch]

I would take a similar stance but say that anyone who has the title "UI Desginer" or "Web Designer" should have to know HTML/CSS. If you are designing UIs for the web, HTML and CSS are your medium, Photoshop not, that is just where you formulate your ideas.

[mnicole]

I absolutely agree with you there; but people have taken unkindly to my saying so :)

[greghinch]

I think (hope) we are in a transitional period. There is an "old guard" in the design crowd who came up in the era where web and print design were still pretty mixed, and so the idea of knowing code seems unfathomable. I know and have worked with designers who, while I know they are perfectly capable of learning HTML/CSS, just put up a wall when you try and talk to them about code of any kind. It's a shame, and I see the trend changing in younger folks, so hopefully that continues and companies will adjust their orgs appropriately.

I certainly know if/when this project I'm on gets some legs and money behind it and we are hiring, the designers I hire will be writing HTML/CSS ;)

[jcampbell1]

> Being good at the first two is a completely separate skill from being able to write and design software in a programming language like JS.

If find to write good JS view code, you need to be able to write html/css yourself. If you are implementing something like auto-suggest, a designer's html isn't likely to be much help. To write the view properly, you need to know how to position the suggest box relative to the input or cursor without interference from the rest of the DOM.

I don't think you can claim to be a good front end JS developer, and suck at HTML/CSS. I constantly find situations like: "how am I going to make this design work if the user name is 20 characters long?... Okay I'll float this, right text align this, overflow hide this, then a long-title plus a long username will automatically push the content down a bit". It is clearly a programming puzzle that needs to get solved by someone other than a designer.

[greghinch]

Yes, as I mentioned, there should be crossover, and everyone should know a something of the other side where that happens. So the Product dev should be able to certainly write HTML/CSS and understand how they work, but the Designer would be typically better at building a full template with optimized CSS. Put another way, good designers know their mediums, which should includes HTML and CSS, and doesn't stop at Photoshop.