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How much time do we have, really? At the moment there is still a huge percentage of businesses and clubs who do not have a web site. A web site is clearly a valuable tool for many businesses, and there are few who either do not want, or would not benefit from a web site.
For many people now, if they want to buy something expensive, one of the first places to look, if not only just for curiosity, is the Internet. As a result, many businesses have realised this, and are looking for a designer who will give them a web presence that can be relied upon to give them a good return for their money.
So at the moment, it seems as though web designers are OK - there are plenty of firms out there who want the kind of quality which most good web designers can deliver. As well as this, many web designers have begun to specialise in certain areas - both broad areas such as static and dynamic pages, but also more specifically in individual languages such as PHP, MySQL, Flash (not a language as such but you know what I mean).
All this means, that at the present time, if a firm wants a truly high quality web site, then they must turn to a web designer who has good experience of their clients' needs. But how long is this all going to last. Jobs such as word processing and printing which once would have been left to specialised agencies, are now much more common place in house. Firms do not rely on outside agencies for these things, and how long is it going to be before web designers suffer the same fate?
Packages such as Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver have made web designer much easier, and it won't be long until these programs can produce as high-quality code as a web designer who codes everything in Notepad.
Indeed, you may argue that these firms may not possess the expertise or creativity of professional web designers, but does that really matter? Both packages mentioned above, and many others as well, include many templated sites, with others available for download. You can buy add-ons that will allow you to create eCommerce web sites with a Wizard which will guide you through the entire process. If all else fails, it is even possible to go to the site of a rival company and open this using the web editor to see exactly how it has been constructed.
All these things create huge pressure upon professional web designers like ourselves. There are however some things in our favour, that will hopefully ensure we are not out of jobs just yet.
One major reason for companies employing outside agencies to produce their web sites, is the belief that professional web designers will produce even higher quality sites than the many WYSIWYG packages available. And I'm glad to say, that in the majority of cases, this is true.
As I'm sure many of you will testify (and indeed already have just by reading this forum), web design is more than just a job, it's a passion. We devote a huge amount of time to web design, and our knowledge of what's available on the Internet often far exceeds that of most people. This gives us a huge advantage over non-professional designers.
Not only do we possess the ability to hard-code web sites should it be required (and to produce a really good site, it often is), but we also have the experience of other sites to know exactly what are the good things to include in a site, and what should be used with caution, or not at all. Many people who are beginners at web design are fascinated by 'all singing, all dancing' sites, and as a result, their sites do look incredibly amateurish.
As a result, their sites are often very large, difficult to navigate and just don't have the same finesse as professionally produced sites.
Finally, web designers have one last selling point - the knowledge of all things web design related. We have the experience to know where is the best place to host your site, how to choose a domain name, how much writing to have on a page, to name but a few. People making their first site will be tempted by seemingly innocent advertising that results in poor performance for their site - they may not know how much bandwidth they need (or even what it is).
So in conclusion, what's the outlook like? Mixed, with a touch of rain. On the one hand, the new packages will push up the standard of amateur sites, thus making it more difficult for us to find business.
However, on the other, it will still be easy to spot the differences between amateur sites and truly professional sites. As a result of competition from WYSIWYG packages, our sites will become more dynamic, more easy to navigate, and more technically proficient. The competition will quickly weed out the poor-quality designers, so if you want to remain in business, you must keep up-to-date with what's going on in the world of the Internet, and most importantly of all, never, ever, ever, resort to using Microsoft FrontPage to produce entire sites! The same goes for Macromedia Dreamweaver to a certain extent, as you should always go through the code manually.
I hope this wasn't too depressing, or long. This is just what I feel about the future that web designers can face...
For many people now, if they want to buy something expensive, one of the first places to look, if not only just for curiosity, is the Internet. As a result, many businesses have realised this, and are looking for a designer who will give them a web presence that can be relied upon to give them a good return for their money.
So at the moment, it seems as though web designers are OK - there are plenty of firms out there who want the kind of quality which most good web designers can deliver. As well as this, many web designers have begun to specialise in certain areas - both broad areas such as static and dynamic pages, but also more specifically in individual languages such as PHP, MySQL, Flash (not a language as such but you know what I mean).
All this means, that at the present time, if a firm wants a truly high quality web site, then they must turn to a web designer who has good experience of their clients' needs. But how long is this all going to last. Jobs such as word processing and printing which once would have been left to specialised agencies, are now much more common place in house. Firms do not rely on outside agencies for these things, and how long is it going to be before web designers suffer the same fate?
Packages such as Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver have made web designer much easier, and it won't be long until these programs can produce as high-quality code as a web designer who codes everything in Notepad.
Indeed, you may argue that these firms may not possess the expertise or creativity of professional web designers, but does that really matter? Both packages mentioned above, and many others as well, include many templated sites, with others available for download. You can buy add-ons that will allow you to create eCommerce web sites with a Wizard which will guide you through the entire process. If all else fails, it is even possible to go to the site of a rival company and open this using the web editor to see exactly how it has been constructed.
All these things create huge pressure upon professional web designers like ourselves. There are however some things in our favour, that will hopefully ensure we are not out of jobs just yet.
One major reason for companies employing outside agencies to produce their web sites, is the belief that professional web designers will produce even higher quality sites than the many WYSIWYG packages available. And I'm glad to say, that in the majority of cases, this is true.
As I'm sure many of you will testify (and indeed already have just by reading this forum), web design is more than just a job, it's a passion. We devote a huge amount of time to web design, and our knowledge of what's available on the Internet often far exceeds that of most people. This gives us a huge advantage over non-professional designers.
Not only do we possess the ability to hard-code web sites should it be required (and to produce a really good site, it often is), but we also have the experience of other sites to know exactly what are the good things to include in a site, and what should be used with caution, or not at all. Many people who are beginners at web design are fascinated by 'all singing, all dancing' sites, and as a result, their sites do look incredibly amateurish.
As a result, their sites are often very large, difficult to navigate and just don't have the same finesse as professionally produced sites.
Finally, web designers have one last selling point - the knowledge of all things web design related. We have the experience to know where is the best place to host your site, how to choose a domain name, how much writing to have on a page, to name but a few. People making their first site will be tempted by seemingly innocent advertising that results in poor performance for their site - they may not know how much bandwidth they need (or even what it is).
So in conclusion, what's the outlook like? Mixed, with a touch of rain. On the one hand, the new packages will push up the standard of amateur sites, thus making it more difficult for us to find business.
However, on the other, it will still be easy to spot the differences between amateur sites and truly professional sites. As a result of competition from WYSIWYG packages, our sites will become more dynamic, more easy to navigate, and more technically proficient. The competition will quickly weed out the poor-quality designers, so if you want to remain in business, you must keep up-to-date with what's going on in the world of the Internet, and most importantly of all, never, ever, ever, resort to using Microsoft FrontPage to produce entire sites! The same goes for Macromedia Dreamweaver to a certain extent, as you should always go through the code manually.
I hope this wasn't too depressing, or long. This is just what I feel about the future that web designers can face...
GlideM wrote:
> Dont discount Frontpage and other similar web creation programs that
> easily. I have been creating web pages for quite a while now. I dont
> make out to be a very good one, but I still use Front page to get the
> simplicities out of the way that graphics and tables.
>
> Then I will go through the page and put in any coding that is required
> for CGI/PHP or whatever.
>
> Yahoo could be done in the same way!
You couldn't produce a site with ALL of the Yahoo features on it, email etc using Frontpage.
Well you could but then anybody who could do that wouldn't use frontpage!
You need knowledge to design sites as well as Yahoo! and nobody is going to be able to sit there and design it all on frontpage without any knowledge...
> Dont discount Frontpage and other similar web creation programs that
> easily. I have been creating web pages for quite a while now. I dont
> make out to be a very good one, but I still use Front page to get the
> simplicities out of the way that graphics and tables.
>
> Then I will go through the page and put in any coding that is required
> for CGI/PHP or whatever.
>
> Yahoo could be done in the same way!
You couldn't produce a site with ALL of the Yahoo features on it, email etc using Frontpage.
Well you could but then anybody who could do that wouldn't use frontpage!
You need knowledge to design sites as well as Yahoo! and nobody is going to be able to sit there and design it all on frontpage without any knowledge...
That is a post worthy of a GAD, but we don't seem to get them awarded in here :(
You do raise some great points. I think Tyla has beat me to most of the things I was going to say. Web Designers will need to adapt to be able to develop (PHP, ASP, JSP etc) they will need to understand usability and navigational issues a lot better, they will need to understand how to set up a web site on servers and to advise upon domain names, online advertising, search engine strategies, etc.
The Web Designer of the future will have to be a hybrid of design, development and management. A Web Guru. Hopefully, this is what I'm taking steps towards as I start my company up. It doesn't cut it anymore to be just good at Photoshop, or just good at Flash, or just good at ASP.
As for template built sites, well, the truely visionary companies will avoid them like the plague. The trouble with template sites is that they all look, well, the same! I can tell a Frontpage site from 50 paces, and if a certain DHTML wizard is used, I can tell when it's been done in HotDog. I dont think Microsoft would build their own site in Frontpage XP, do you? Also, stuff like Dreamweaver and Frontpage are great when everything is working, but in my experience, when stuff goes wrong, you need somebody who has been there, done that, and knows what to debug, what to reboot, or who to call at the ISP, 'cos I'm damn sure Dreamweaver will not develop enough to do that. In many cases, a web site is only one part of an integrated marketing push, an amatuer designer would not be able to cope with the kind of thing a medium to large company would expect.
New Technology will develop and be in use long before the software companies like MS and Macromedia get the time to build it into their packages. Dreamweaver MX supports ASP .NET, but what, 6 months after it has been released?
As for Web Design moving more in-house. I don't have a problem with that. The only thing that is bad about looking after an in-house web site is that you don't get to play around with it too much, like you could do if you were building a brand new site every few months for a web design agency. As long as the wages don't drop further than they already have done, I think there will always be a ready supply of multi-skilled web heads, to work on both internal web sites and intranets, as well as a long list of web design firms. Remember, the average life-span of a web site is 3-5 years before a redesign is called for, in that respect, the best Web Gurus will never be short of work.
> As I'm sure many of you will testify (and indeed already have
> just by reading this forum), web design is more than just a job,
> it's a passion. We devote a huge amount of time to web design,
> and our knowledge of what's available on the Internet often far
> exceeds that of most people. This gives us a huge advantage over
> non-professional designers.
Damn right. I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels like this ;)
You do raise some great points. I think Tyla has beat me to most of the things I was going to say. Web Designers will need to adapt to be able to develop (PHP, ASP, JSP etc) they will need to understand usability and navigational issues a lot better, they will need to understand how to set up a web site on servers and to advise upon domain names, online advertising, search engine strategies, etc.
The Web Designer of the future will have to be a hybrid of design, development and management. A Web Guru. Hopefully, this is what I'm taking steps towards as I start my company up. It doesn't cut it anymore to be just good at Photoshop, or just good at Flash, or just good at ASP.
As for template built sites, well, the truely visionary companies will avoid them like the plague. The trouble with template sites is that they all look, well, the same! I can tell a Frontpage site from 50 paces, and if a certain DHTML wizard is used, I can tell when it's been done in HotDog. I dont think Microsoft would build their own site in Frontpage XP, do you? Also, stuff like Dreamweaver and Frontpage are great when everything is working, but in my experience, when stuff goes wrong, you need somebody who has been there, done that, and knows what to debug, what to reboot, or who to call at the ISP, 'cos I'm damn sure Dreamweaver will not develop enough to do that. In many cases, a web site is only one part of an integrated marketing push, an amatuer designer would not be able to cope with the kind of thing a medium to large company would expect.
New Technology will develop and be in use long before the software companies like MS and Macromedia get the time to build it into their packages. Dreamweaver MX supports ASP .NET, but what, 6 months after it has been released?
As for Web Design moving more in-house. I don't have a problem with that. The only thing that is bad about looking after an in-house web site is that you don't get to play around with it too much, like you could do if you were building a brand new site every few months for a web design agency. As long as the wages don't drop further than they already have done, I think there will always be a ready supply of multi-skilled web heads, to work on both internal web sites and intranets, as well as a long list of web design firms. Remember, the average life-span of a web site is 3-5 years before a redesign is called for, in that respect, the best Web Gurus will never be short of work.
> As I'm sure many of you will testify (and indeed already have
> just by reading this forum), web design is more than just a job,
> it's a passion. We devote a huge amount of time to web design,
> and our knowledge of what's available on the Internet often far
> exceeds that of most people. This gives us a huge advantage over
> non-professional designers.
Damn right. I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels like this ;)
Dont discount Frontpage and other similar web creation programs that easily. I have been creating web pages for quite a while now. I dont make out to be a very good one, but I still use Front page to get the simplicities out of the way that graphics and tables.
Then I will go through the page and put in any coding that is required for CGI/PHP or whatever.
Yahoo could be done in the same way!
Then I will go through the page and put in any coding that is required for CGI/PHP or whatever.
Yahoo could be done in the same way!
Excellent post...
The future is still kindof merky. I've been working as a website deigner now for over 4 years and though you have raised some interesting point, I have a few of my own...
You mention consumers using the internet as a first place to go for purchaseing goods. True , online shopping is slowly incresing, but not too quickly in the UK and this is aminly down to "lack" of trust in online shopping and security. Not enough is done to comfort the user in performing online transactions, many may browse or reaserch, but frewer than you may think actually shop online, especially after the Tesco farce and the rise of fraudulent transactions on the internet. As with all things, the press tend to report on the down side of online shopping, this in turn affect the confidence of potential shoppers.
With regards to "Web Designers", this role is becoming obsolete, no longer is there room for guys who can produce pretty sites full of eye candy, this is something I have had first hand experience in as I made the transition from Graphic design to print when "Web Designers" we all the rage. these days you'll get nowhere just understanding Photoshop and Dreamweaver. there's project management, backend knowledge, user psychology, Usability (will come to this in a sec), scripting, programming and finally good stable GUI design.
..."One major reason for companies employing outside agencies to produce their web sites, is the belief that professional web designers will produce even higher quality sites than the many WYSIWYG packages available. And I'm glad to say, that in the majority of cases, this is true."...
I work internally for a huge corporation, we occassionally use outsorced companies due to timne constraints, but 99% of our work is done in house. Its well known fact that if you work in the industry, WYSIWYG is not enough on its own. Any NewMedia Creative worth his money would understand the importance of hand coding. In defence of WYSIWYG, again is cost... rapid prototyping, quick scamps, demonstrations and alpha sites are deal for this, even final build. I've used DW since in conception and have produced some highend sites which would give most agencies a good run for their money, but at the end of the day, i can produce the same by hand, but it still comes down to time and time equals money...
The future of the internet at the moment is stagnant, cross platform integration is the way forward, reusable, scaleable content, sticky content, and finally Usability. As you say, anyone can build a site these days, but only those who know their trade understand the importance of Usability and user experience.
The boom almost ruined it's future, too many Design houses charging huge fees for what I could frankly call appaulling sites promising revenues which didn't exist. Too many "individual roles", to much blinding clients with science and too much promise of a technology which is still young.
If you kow your stuff, and can deliver what the client wants, not you think he wants, then your survival is almost guranteed. Most design houses have gone back to roots design and build instead of force feeding clients overly priced flash monsters and whizzy front ends...
I could go on about this all day, my job is consultation, build and design and I spend most of my life looking at clients needs and producing their visions, not mine.
My gfuture is safe, I have adapted and as with all those who are still here to, we have learned from our previous mistakes... Lets just hope the next generation don't make the same ones....
The future is still kindof merky. I've been working as a website deigner now for over 4 years and though you have raised some interesting point, I have a few of my own...
You mention consumers using the internet as a first place to go for purchaseing goods. True , online shopping is slowly incresing, but not too quickly in the UK and this is aminly down to "lack" of trust in online shopping and security. Not enough is done to comfort the user in performing online transactions, many may browse or reaserch, but frewer than you may think actually shop online, especially after the Tesco farce and the rise of fraudulent transactions on the internet. As with all things, the press tend to report on the down side of online shopping, this in turn affect the confidence of potential shoppers.
With regards to "Web Designers", this role is becoming obsolete, no longer is there room for guys who can produce pretty sites full of eye candy, this is something I have had first hand experience in as I made the transition from Graphic design to print when "Web Designers" we all the rage. these days you'll get nowhere just understanding Photoshop and Dreamweaver. there's project management, backend knowledge, user psychology, Usability (will come to this in a sec), scripting, programming and finally good stable GUI design.
..."One major reason for companies employing outside agencies to produce their web sites, is the belief that professional web designers will produce even higher quality sites than the many WYSIWYG packages available. And I'm glad to say, that in the majority of cases, this is true."...
I work internally for a huge corporation, we occassionally use outsorced companies due to timne constraints, but 99% of our work is done in house. Its well known fact that if you work in the industry, WYSIWYG is not enough on its own. Any NewMedia Creative worth his money would understand the importance of hand coding. In defence of WYSIWYG, again is cost... rapid prototyping, quick scamps, demonstrations and alpha sites are deal for this, even final build. I've used DW since in conception and have produced some highend sites which would give most agencies a good run for their money, but at the end of the day, i can produce the same by hand, but it still comes down to time and time equals money...
The future of the internet at the moment is stagnant, cross platform integration is the way forward, reusable, scaleable content, sticky content, and finally Usability. As you say, anyone can build a site these days, but only those who know their trade understand the importance of Usability and user experience.
The boom almost ruined it's future, too many Design houses charging huge fees for what I could frankly call appaulling sites promising revenues which didn't exist. Too many "individual roles", to much blinding clients with science and too much promise of a technology which is still young.
If you kow your stuff, and can deliver what the client wants, not you think he wants, then your survival is almost guranteed. Most design houses have gone back to roots design and build instead of force feeding clients overly priced flash monsters and whizzy front ends...
I could go on about this all day, my job is consultation, build and design and I spend most of my life looking at clients needs and producing their visions, not mine.
My gfuture is safe, I have adapted and as with all those who are still here to, we have learned from our previous mistakes... Lets just hope the next generation don't make the same ones....
Top web designer don't use Frontpage or any program like that because they are rubbish!
Looking at sites like Yahoo!, Frontpage could never make anything like that.
You need to know a lot of programming before you can make a site as complex as Yahoo! and it will be a long time before Frontpage or anything else like it can do the same thing.
Looking at sites like Yahoo!, Frontpage could never make anything like that.
You need to know a lot of programming before you can make a site as complex as Yahoo! and it will be a long time before Frontpage or anything else like it can do the same thing.
How much time do we have, really? At the moment there is still a huge percentage of businesses and clubs who do not have a web site. A web site is clearly a valuable tool for many businesses, and there are few who either do not want, or would not benefit from a web site.
For many people now, if they want to buy something expensive, one of the first places to look, if not only just for curiosity, is the Internet. As a result, many businesses have realised this, and are looking for a designer who will give them a web presence that can be relied upon to give them a good return for their money.
So at the moment, it seems as though web designers are OK - there are plenty of firms out there who want the kind of quality which most good web designers can deliver. As well as this, many web designers have begun to specialise in certain areas - both broad areas such as static and dynamic pages, but also more specifically in individual languages such as PHP, MySQL, Flash (not a language as such but you know what I mean).
All this means, that at the present time, if a firm wants a truly high quality web site, then they must turn to a web designer who has good experience of their clients' needs. But how long is this all going to last. Jobs such as word processing and printing which once would have been left to specialised agencies, are now much more common place in house. Firms do not rely on outside agencies for these things, and how long is it going to be before web designers suffer the same fate?
Packages such as Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver have made web designer much easier, and it won't be long until these programs can produce as high-quality code as a web designer who codes everything in Notepad.
Indeed, you may argue that these firms may not possess the expertise or creativity of professional web designers, but does that really matter? Both packages mentioned above, and many others as well, include many templated sites, with others available for download. You can buy add-ons that will allow you to create eCommerce web sites with a Wizard which will guide you through the entire process. If all else fails, it is even possible to go to the site of a rival company and open this using the web editor to see exactly how it has been constructed.
All these things create huge pressure upon professional web designers like ourselves. There are however some things in our favour, that will hopefully ensure we are not out of jobs just yet.
One major reason for companies employing outside agencies to produce their web sites, is the belief that professional web designers will produce even higher quality sites than the many WYSIWYG packages available. And I'm glad to say, that in the majority of cases, this is true.
As I'm sure many of you will testify (and indeed already have just by reading this forum), web design is more than just a job, it's a passion. We devote a huge amount of time to web design, and our knowledge of what's available on the Internet often far exceeds that of most people. This gives us a huge advantage over non-professional designers.
Not only do we possess the ability to hard-code web sites should it be required (and to produce a really good site, it often is), but we also have the experience of other sites to know exactly what are the good things to include in a site, and what should be used with caution, or not at all. Many people who are beginners at web design are fascinated by 'all singing, all dancing' sites, and as a result, their sites do look incredibly amateurish.
As a result, their sites are often very large, difficult to navigate and just don't have the same finesse as professionally produced sites.
Finally, web designers have one last selling point - the knowledge of all things web design related. We have the experience to know where is the best place to host your site, how to choose a domain name, how much writing to have on a page, to name but a few. People making their first site will be tempted by seemingly innocent advertising that results in poor performance for their site - they may not know how much bandwidth they need (or even what it is).
So in conclusion, what's the outlook like? Mixed, with a touch of rain. On the one hand, the new packages will push up the standard of amateur sites, thus making it more difficult for us to find business.
However, on the other, it will still be easy to spot the differences between amateur sites and truly professional sites. As a result of competition from WYSIWYG packages, our sites will become more dynamic, more easy to navigate, and more technically proficient. The competition will quickly weed out the poor-quality designers, so if you want to remain in business, you must keep up-to-date with what's going on in the world of the Internet, and most importantly of all, never, ever, ever, resort to using Microsoft FrontPage to produce entire sites! The same goes for Macromedia Dreamweaver to a certain extent, as you should always go through the code manually.
I hope this wasn't too depressing, or long. This is just what I feel about the future that web designers can face...
For many people now, if they want to buy something expensive, one of the first places to look, if not only just for curiosity, is the Internet. As a result, many businesses have realised this, and are looking for a designer who will give them a web presence that can be relied upon to give them a good return for their money.
So at the moment, it seems as though web designers are OK - there are plenty of firms out there who want the kind of quality which most good web designers can deliver. As well as this, many web designers have begun to specialise in certain areas - both broad areas such as static and dynamic pages, but also more specifically in individual languages such as PHP, MySQL, Flash (not a language as such but you know what I mean).
All this means, that at the present time, if a firm wants a truly high quality web site, then they must turn to a web designer who has good experience of their clients' needs. But how long is this all going to last. Jobs such as word processing and printing which once would have been left to specialised agencies, are now much more common place in house. Firms do not rely on outside agencies for these things, and how long is it going to be before web designers suffer the same fate?
Packages such as Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver have made web designer much easier, and it won't be long until these programs can produce as high-quality code as a web designer who codes everything in Notepad.
Indeed, you may argue that these firms may not possess the expertise or creativity of professional web designers, but does that really matter? Both packages mentioned above, and many others as well, include many templated sites, with others available for download. You can buy add-ons that will allow you to create eCommerce web sites with a Wizard which will guide you through the entire process. If all else fails, it is even possible to go to the site of a rival company and open this using the web editor to see exactly how it has been constructed.
All these things create huge pressure upon professional web designers like ourselves. There are however some things in our favour, that will hopefully ensure we are not out of jobs just yet.
One major reason for companies employing outside agencies to produce their web sites, is the belief that professional web designers will produce even higher quality sites than the many WYSIWYG packages available. And I'm glad to say, that in the majority of cases, this is true.
As I'm sure many of you will testify (and indeed already have just by reading this forum), web design is more than just a job, it's a passion. We devote a huge amount of time to web design, and our knowledge of what's available on the Internet often far exceeds that of most people. This gives us a huge advantage over non-professional designers.
Not only do we possess the ability to hard-code web sites should it be required (and to produce a really good site, it often is), but we also have the experience of other sites to know exactly what are the good things to include in a site, and what should be used with caution, or not at all. Many people who are beginners at web design are fascinated by 'all singing, all dancing' sites, and as a result, their sites do look incredibly amateurish.
As a result, their sites are often very large, difficult to navigate and just don't have the same finesse as professionally produced sites.
Finally, web designers have one last selling point - the knowledge of all things web design related. We have the experience to know where is the best place to host your site, how to choose a domain name, how much writing to have on a page, to name but a few. People making their first site will be tempted by seemingly innocent advertising that results in poor performance for their site - they may not know how much bandwidth they need (or even what it is).
So in conclusion, what's the outlook like? Mixed, with a touch of rain. On the one hand, the new packages will push up the standard of amateur sites, thus making it more difficult for us to find business.
However, on the other, it will still be easy to spot the differences between amateur sites and truly professional sites. As a result of competition from WYSIWYG packages, our sites will become more dynamic, more easy to navigate, and more technically proficient. The competition will quickly weed out the poor-quality designers, so if you want to remain in business, you must keep up-to-date with what's going on in the world of the Internet, and most importantly of all, never, ever, ever, resort to using Microsoft FrontPage to produce entire sites! The same goes for Macromedia Dreamweaver to a certain extent, as you should always go through the code manually.
I hope this wasn't too depressing, or long. This is just what I feel about the future that web designers can face...