A Web design trainee performs several tasks in the course of Web design training, utilizing software to create code for the construction and design of a Web site. The Web design trainee is also responsible for organizational and clerical tasks needed by the firm. A trainee often must be enrolled in an accredited college or university Web design or software coding course. There are two broad categories in Web design — front end and back end. Front-end design handles the visual aspect of a website while the back end handles the creation, organization, and maintenance of the code that generates the Web site itself.
Generally, a Web site design trainee is familiar with design and coding concepts. A Web designer does not always directly lay out and construct a project visually. The designer must use a Web coding language, such the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), to construct and organize a website. At the very least, a Web design trainee must be moderately familiar with the basics of HTML, as it provides a foundation for more complex forms of Web design. The trainee will usually work with this language first, compiling and creating small portions of larger Web sites that the more experienced designers are creating.
Firms that contract with a Web design trainee will often assign tasks that focus on the back end of the process. These tasks often involve compiling basic code for templates for other designers, modifying code as needed to conform to new projects, and double checking code for syntax errors and other problems. A syntax error in the code for a Web site can prevent Web browsers from displaying the site properly, and if such errors are not caught early in the process, they may be replicated dozens of times throughout the code. A Web design trainee may also be responsible for verifying the cascading style sheets for each Web page on a site as well as checking that all images are set to Red/Green/Blue and at the proper resolution of 72 dots per inch.
The Web design trainee may work with content creation software such as Adobe® Dreamweaver®, which constructs code in numerous languages for the custom creation of a website. Dreamweaver® takes considerable effort to master, and, often, the first time that a Web design trainee will encounter the program is during the training period. Firms that offer Web design internships often don't require advanced familiarity with Dreamweaver® or similar programs.