Hey guys

I am taking an online web design course and I am assigned to ask professional web designers why it is important to know HTML. If you could please help me with this assignment, I was hoping you web designers out there could share your opinion with why you think professional web designers should know HTML.

Thanks!

I think its because HTML is what we are stupposed to learn first, its the most simple language and my knowledge on other languages are built on what I learned in html. And besides, you need to know html to make web pages so how are you going to be a web designer if you know no html?

some people think that an "easy" webpage maker will do whatever and that is fine, but a lot of the time, those easy things make A LOT of errors. you have to know your stuff to fix those errors, or better yet, not use one of those things and do it all yourself.

as wergo said, html is the basis of any webpage. it is a required knowledge to be a "professional".

"Why should a Professional Web Designer Know HTML"

imo you aren't professional if you don't even know HTML

why should a math teacher know how to add 2+2?

I dunno about that - someone can take some paper and a pencil and design a beautiful website without knowing the first thing about coding it, and have someone who's good at HTML actually build it.
Then it would still be the first guy's design, right?

it depends on what you classify as a designer. is a designer someone who does what Marianne said and just designs the layout, or is a designer the person who makes it as well?

If it is the latter, then DUH! How can you make a website without knowing HTML? And if it is the first, then it is important to know HTML so that they don't design a layout that is impossible to code. That way they can say to the person doing the code "This section is where an iFrame would go" or "I thought we could do some tables here, or a few divs here."

imho a webdesigner does at least the html and the graphics
otherwise i would call it a webprogrammer/scripter (for more advanced functions as example like php asp)
or a graphics "designer" or how to call it.

And i don't think that there are much professional webdesigners that don't have any knowledge about html.. she/she must ask his self why he she is doing this job then.
Although people can make nice graphics i really think html is a must.

why should a math teacher know how to add 2+2?
My idea exactly.

it's the easy'st and anyway you never know when it could come in handy.

Professional Web Designer implies that you know HTML as part of the job unlike a Computer Graphics Professional which may only do web graphics.

If you look a high traffic site like yahoo or google none of them were made with a graphical editor like dreamweaver because the HTML it generates is bloated 2-3x what it needs to be to achieve what a good HTML coder could do. If they tried to use an dreamweaver created version it could cost them thousands of dollars in extra bandwidth!

homestead.com, geocities.com. nuf said.

well maybe not. These two places both have an online page builder. (or at least they used to). It was one of those dragp and drop WYSIWYG things. If you compare the code, it is a lot more bulky, and generally poorly done. The ability for a web designer to make a page is not a requirement, but the simple fact is: Crappy WYSIWIG editors are garbage, and html takes all of 10 hours to get the entire language down...

Professional Web Designer implies that you know HTML as part of the job unlike a Computer Graphics Professional which may only do web graphics.

If you look a high traffic site like yahoo or google none of them were made with a graphical editor like dreamweaver because the HTML it generates is bloated 2-3x what it needs to be to achieve what a good HTML coder could do. If they tried to use an dreamweaver created version it could cost them thousands of dollars in extra bandwidth!

On the other side it isn't even possible to make something like google in dreamweaver

imo you aren't professional if you don't even know HTML
Exactly. If a job is looking for a professional and you go in there and say, "well, I know Dreamweaver," they'll just rip up your application. I don't consider anyone a "real" designer if they don't know the language.

have to disagree with the fact that a webdesigner should know also HTML as a required thing.

to me the word "webdesigner" means literally "a person who DESIGNS a webpage" not "a person who designs AND CODES a webpage". At my work someone also designed a webpage, but did not build it. Someone else did that part, putting it online and make it work.

so nope, i don't think it's required to know html to be a "webdesigner". However i DO think that you have more chance for a job if you know some extra things, it's always handy. But on the other hand, if you are awsome with designing they will hire you anywayz. It's the quality that counts the most in the end ;)

I agree with Mirna.
If someone is VERY talented at thinking up a design, they don't need to know how to code it.

Of course, some basic knowledge about HTML helps, so they'll know that something they think up is actually possible.