Web developers: Implement the code or design first? [closed]

Question

What comes first? After the design has been outlined and approved, should a designer create pages in HTML and then hand them to a developer to add code? Or should a developer build simple pages that work and hand them over to the designer?

I've always done the latter, but recently worked with a designer who built an entire site in HTML and handed it to me to make it work. I found it saves a lot of time for 3 reasons:

1. The developer doesn't have to create all the form fields and rudimentary layout.
2. The designer doesn't have to rework all the "ugly" pages into something attractive, instead starting with a clean site which is faster.
3. The code isn't accidentally broken by the designer. I've found designers are more likely to break the code doing their work than developers breaking the design adding the backend functionality.

In short, if the designer does his work first, there's very little rework. I just make what already looks great actually work.

So which is best practice? See other plusses and minuses?

EDIT: Assume both designers and developers are already in agreement on the proposed design.

Answer 1

Wireframe mockups and visual aides are a great way to elicit requirements from end users. Giving the user something to look at and see helps to drive the design to where it needs to go instead of developers just doing the guesswork.

Also, UI design does affect your code. I think the biggest myth that we buy into as programmers is that we can just build a business layer and then spread the UI on like peanut butter. It never happens this way, so I am a big fan of having designers work with users early on and often. Having a visual design to work against is like TDD for the UI, and it helps to drive the process downwards.