Web Design is Different from Print Design
Working on the Web can be very challenging. It's not like designing a magazine. With print work, you know that once the article is layed out and printed, it's not going to look drastically different depending upon who reads it. But with Web pages you may have some customers viewing your pages in screen readers (or just browsing with images turned off), browsers that are 3 and 4 years old, various different operating system platforms, and any number of monitor configurations. Most Web developers choose a set of platforms, browsers, and color depth to design for, and hope that those not supported are either very few in number or very understanding.
Connections to the Web
The connection you have to the Web can be a big factor in how you get your job done. If you work from home off of a 28.8 modem, as many of the About Guides do, you are limited in what you can see. Many sites that your customers may want to emulate will take hours for you to download. Even having the opposite situation -- a high-speed connection to do your work can be a problem. If you view all your Web pages on a fractional (or even full) T1 line, you won't know what they are like to your dial-up customers. The page that downloads in 2 seconds for you may look beautiful, but your readers on modems won't have stuck around long enough to find out.
Web Developers Must Stay Current
To stay competitive, it is important that Web developers stay up-to-date on the latest Web technologies. Many companies no longer want a Web developer who only knows HTML. She must also know CGI (Perl being the most common language for that), databases, server maintenance, and backend software packages like ColdFusion or PHP. Working for a company, it can be easy to keep working on maintaining the site and not develop new tools. And as a contractor, you can easily get caught up in just finding work and then doing it quickly and well and leave no time for keeping up with the business.
Web Developers Risk Repetitive Stress Injuries
As a Web developer, you are typing most of the day. This means that you run the risk of getting repetitive stress syndrome problems. To combat this, I do wrist exercises every day, I have a very expensive ergonomic chair (Herman Miller Aeron Chair), a "bent" Microsoft keyboard, and a trackball mouse. I also use my right hand for mousing on my PC and my left hand for mousing on my Mac, and I still have difficulty with my shoulders and wrists at times.
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