If You Want to Learn Web Design Where Do You Start?

starving student · Post by **starving student** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 7:07 pm

a question by someone who does not program anything but beats.

nbinder · Post by **nbinder** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 7:14 pm

SelfHTML if you want to do it yourself, Dreamweaver & co if you need WYSIWYG.

And you don't program HTML, it is a descriptive meta language (therefore you just write it). The only thing you would program is Javascript, and that is not what you're after I guess.

babkubwa · Post by **babkubwa** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 7:15 pm

http://www.w3schools.com

babkubwa · Post by **babkubwa** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 7:17 pm

wordpress recommended if you'd rather avoid too much coding. I use wordpress sites hosted on dreamhost.

Good support from dream host last four years - few problems and quick response when there has been an issue

the_antagonist · Post by **the_antagonist** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 7:18 pm

step one. press ctrl+U

nbinder · Post by **nbinder** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 7:22 pm

the_antagonist wrote:step one. press ctrl+U

In Safari it is alt+cmd+U plus definitely not step one but step 39.

starving student · Post by **starving student** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 7:23 pm

thanks for your repsonses, I'm actualy asking because i'm intrested in getting into it seriously and I'd like to know the best way to start from like minded folks, I'd like to get to the point where I can build for others as well as all of my own needs.

Moody · Post by **Moody** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 7:27 pm

Learn the basics of HTML first. This will always be your foundation. Then muddle around a little with javascript, php, flash and a few other ones you may run into. Then try to find an environment to start building your sites. IE. Dreamweaver, Flash CS, etc...

After you have a little foundation to you and know where you may want to go, try figuring out how some of the sites you enjoy work. This may also help strengthen the direction you choose to be your coding strengths. My prefered platforms are Flash / Actionscript and Wordpress which is php driven. Just Have Fun!

Hidden Driveways · Post by **Hidden Driveways** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 7:45 pm

If you just want to build sites for yourself and make basic stuff for clients, I would suggest paying for a year of webhosting service from a company like like Bluehost, installing Wordpress and figuring it out for yourself from there. What you can do with those two things will make anything you build from scratch with HTML and CSS after a year of schooling look like crap. With Wordpress and a good host you can do a lot of stuff.

If you're envisioning getting hired by a company and working with a team of other web coders and getting paid big bucks, then do what I suggested first for 6 months, then enroll in a formal training program where you can learn PHP and other horrible, terrible beasts like that. PHP is kind of like intense math, but instead of using numbers, everything that you have to calculate has a secret code, like ?//~qj>??=/-

nylarch · Post by **nylarch** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 8:36 pm

I'm a fan of the Head First series:

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596101978/

Kind of a cheesey / jokey tone but they're designed to keep your attention and actually keep you interested in the coma inducing practice of reading programming books.

jonny72 · Post by **jonny72** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 9:10 pm

starving student wrote:thanks for your repsonses, I'm actualy asking because i'm intrested in getting into it seriously and I'd like to know the best way to start from like minded folks, I'd like to get to the point where I can build for others as well as all of my own needs.

What exactly do you mean by web design? What sort of websites do you want to build?

There are two parts to building a website, the presentation side (which means HTML, CSS, graphics etc) and the content side (which means PHP, Java etc). If you want to create from scratch you'll need to know both. But then you can get round the content side by using components and the presentation side isn't necessarily that important as there are a number of solutions for that to pretty much handle itself.

Have a read up on Ruby on Rails or Grails and you'll be amazed by the websites even a novice can put together pretty quickly, with just basic programming skills.

If its just basic websites with forums, blogs, shopping carts etc then your best bet would be to learn the presentation side and PHP and go with any of the multitude of open source software projects that will provide all that functionality quickly and easily.

SolutionG · Post by **SolutionG** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 9:41 pm

As someone who makes side cash as a freelance web designer, I can tell you first hand that you absolutely have to start with HTML and CSS, as these skills will enable you to present something, though it won't be very dynamic. Getting to that point is going to require you to use PHP and javascript, and once you have those down you can do quite a bit, especially if you're using a publishing/content management system like Wordpress.

This is where you would start. If you begin to dabble with creating web apps, you're becoming a developer at that point, so you need to decide where you want to focus as you start learning this stuff. The bottom line is that the broader the skill set you have, the more likely you are to find work.

You're going to need a good text editor to code with (notepad and textedit may be free, but they are horrible for marking up code). I use Coda for this myself, but there are a jillion other ones, many of them available for free. Tools like Dreamweaver are nice to have, but they're expensive and usually have wonky interfaces that will really end up slowing you down until you get to know them inside and out. Of course, you can always grab something like RapidWeaver and just stick to light amounts of coding, which works well for a lot of people. You will definitely need an FTP client for uploading files to the server you are working on.

One last note, the most difficult part about web design isn't coding, it's designing. Grid systems, color theory, and other design fundamentals always need to be taken into account before you even open up your text editor or photoshop. Always draw small thumbnails to brainstorm, and mock-up your pages before you start coding. A lot of guys I go to school with have a bad habit of coding and designing as they go, and they're almost always running into issues and scrambling at the last minute to debug code. Stay organized, be smart, and everything else will fall into place.

Hope that helps.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 9:55 pm

want to learn web design?
Here's my advice - don't!

Reason 1
because you make music on computers, you chat with your friends on computers, you pay your bills on computers, you shop on computers. So you really want to work on computers too?

I am a web designer, have been for many years. When I get busy with work I am doing 8 hours a day staring at a screen, then I spend another 4 hours on a computer making music.

Argh.

Reason 2
Every single day in web development I am learning something new. Unfortunately that is actually a minus point because there is built in obsolescence in the industry. It's like learning the very latest way to make cartwheels, or steam engines. Except the technological redundancy cycle is a thousand times faster. EG: No client asks me for VRML these days (!), likewise my "award winning flash skills" have been dead in the water since about 2002.
Imagine taking a 5 year break from webdesign and try to come back. You pretty much have to start again, because what was important a few years back is now not.

If your learned something less transient, like say ... structural engineering, or geology, that knowledge you learn is always transferable into new techniques and technologies and it stays valuable. 50 years or a hundred years from now it will be valuable to know how to calculate a load bearing beam, etc.
But If you learn something in Web Development you can pretty much guarantee it will be totally worthless in ten years.

reason 3
because it takes a lot of learning to just stay current (to try out new faddish techniques and to evaluate their actual worth) this means the part of your brain that can do that will be used up. Do you want to spend 20% of your week trying out new security measures for SQL injections on Logins ... or do you want to spend that 20% of your week making stupid sounds?

I could go on and on about this, I have at least 5 more reasons. But we are into tl;dr; territory now.

Advice - get a dumb assed job that pays OK and doesn't change much!
leave plenty of time for music

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 3:15 am

Very solid advice from everyone above ^^^^

Start by getting a basic handle on HTML and CSS.

I'd suggest maybe getting a subscription to Lynda.com and going through the HTML and CSS tutorials for starters.

Also figure out if you'd rather be designing sites or coding them, or both. Often times designers will put together the visual design and then hand the design off to a coder who then puts it together. Design and writing code both pull from different sides of the brain so a partnership such as this is often very effective. If you can do both well all the better. I'm a designer (mostly print) but I can code. It really taxes my brain but I know enough to take on small projects. If I ever were to work on a large scale web project I'd almost certainly hire a coder/developer to work with me.

Even if you are just doing the design end you still will need, in addition to solid design skills, a basic grasp of html and css, just to know what is and what is not possible.

starving student · Post by **starving student** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 3:18 am

fucking well said Angstrom, I do understand where you're coming from but I'm tired of depending on other people for this kind of stuff, it kills me to have a computer and web needs and not be able to handle them myself, the problem is I don't like to half do anything so if its something i end up getting into i gotta give it 110%, this is definitely something I have to sort out.

solution g thank you
johnny72 thank you
nylarch thank you
hidden driveways thank you
moody thank you
babkubwa thank you
nbinder thank you
the antagonist thank you
and my man smutek thank you very much

If You Want to Learn Web Design Where Do You Start?

If You Want to Learn Web Design Where Do You Start?

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Re: If You Want to Learn Web Design Where Do You Start?

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Re: If You Want to Learn Web Design Where Do You Start?

Re: If You Want to Learn Web Design Where Do You Start?

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