Web Design?

[Taigan]

Hello IBS

So I've really always been interested in web design but haven't had the opportunity to really get into it. I tried joining a Web Design class at school but they only teach HTML. Also, for ICT (IGCSE) they taught us how to use Dreamweaver. So my question, is anyone else interested in web design? Does anyone have their own websites (don't include IBS) and any advice of where I can start etc.?

Thanks

[The Economist]

I have made 4 or 5 web sites but I haven't found any good Web Hosters that wouldn't add any ads on my page, so I didn't publish them.

If you are interested in creating web pages with a a lot of animation, you should deffinitely try Flash.

But it's kind of difficult at first. You may want to start with HTML and then start adding CSS and Java into it

There are a lot of online tutorials to help you out. All you need to do is practice.

By the way Dreamweaver is a good program but not for real web designers

[Sandwich]

I used to run some websites when I was little - various games and spin offs of games mostly, ahah, but still. It was all just HTML, CSS and boards (I never got to the javascript stage or beyond ) but I really liked it. Mostly the designing the layout and such on Photoshop/Imageready part of it I'm not really hardcore enough to learn beyond the basics, or how to code PHP etc etc but for some mediochre personal stuff it was adequate just to know HTML, because that was 99% of what was required to bring the design to a reasonable degree of interactivity. Still have one website, but it's one of those ones with free banners all over it aaaand being honest there's nothing I particularly want to make a website about, so it's content-less. Web design came in handy for showing off "leadership" though. I started up a web design club at school for the little kiddies

I have Dreamweaver (it came free with something) and used it a few times, but once you know the basic HTML for things, Dreamweaver seems kinda redundant. For some reason working it out by yourself is much more fun, especially if you're already familiar with how to do it yourself. There's something nice and logical about HTML/CSS etc. which makes it easy to grasp and manipulate such that it's not frustrating, so I picked most of what little I know up from just viewing source on pages and checking out what was what. Trial and error is actually a pretty good method to pick it up, IMO, and I'd actually recommend checking out what other people have done, butchering their ideas and just seeing what happens You learn by osmosis that way

[Abu]

I've done up a couple of sites for companies and hosted them as well. It's not too much of a hassle, but I had to do them from scratch because I had no knowledge of web design whatsoever. There were tons of face palm moments, it's tedious and boring. I'd rather do accounting or something, since it is a mundane task for me. And the fact that I didn't know any java or something pretty cool meant that my sites never compared to the professional ones.

[sweetnsimple786]

I took a semester of web design. We basically read a book on FrontPage for the entire 5 months. Terribly boring. I wanted to take a Java class, but they put me in visual basic instead so IB would work in my schedule. And then that didn't work out either because I wanted to take math team, so they put me in web design.

Since then, I've learned compromises suckk, but I do have a deep appreciation for my friends who get paid to run sites for local companies.

[moneyfaery]

Me me me!!! I mainly specialized in CSS though, with CS2/PSP on the side and a bit of Flash. Code by hand using notepad!! The code is more streamlined and nicer. Frontpage and Dreamweaver eventually make things really messy. Anddd not to mention the learning curve is about the same.

Edit: I also haven't touched coding since IB started so I'm rusty as hell.

Edited August 30, 2009 by Irene

[Taigan]

OK, I know what Flash and CSS are but what the heck is CS2 and PSP (you sound very technologically advanced to me right now). Also, would you say that this is all worth learning? Last question, doesn't coding by notepad take a lot more time than using software (like dreamweaver) to do it for you???

Thanks for your help

Edit: just wanted to say this is my 111th post

Edited August 30, 2009 by Taigan

[Sandwich]

CS2 = Adobe Photoshop version 9 and PSP = PaintShopPro, which is like an alternative image editor to Photoshop.

Coding by notepad takes about the same amount of time once you know what you're doing (assuming you're not looking stuff up all the time) - and unlike Dreamweaver, you can know what you're doing. Dreamweaver does all the hard work for you, but as a consequence you'd probably end up not knowing any of the "why" behind the stuff coming up which, IMO, is the satisfying bit - and also the bit which allows you to keep editing things independent of Dreamweaver.

[meh]

I used to be extremely interested in web design around grade 5 and tried to teach myself some HTML. Unfortunately I didn't learn to do anything very elaborate, but I was decent enough to make a basic website for a school project in grade 6. I've forgotten how to do many things since then >_> I picked up photography instead.

Anyways, I don't have my own site but perhaps http://htmldog.com/ will be useful to you since it was one of the main resources I used to teach myself the basics.

[moneyfaery]

OK, I know what Flash and CSS are but what the heck is CS2 and PSP (you sound very technologically advanced to me right now). Also, would you say that this is all worth learning? Last question, doesn't coding by notepad take a lot more time than using software (like dreamweaver) to do it for you???

Thanks for your help

Edit: just wanted to say this is my 111th post

I've used Dreamweaver maybe once or twice. Got pissed off after a few minutes coz it wouldn't do what I wanted it to do, so I did it by hand instead. Dreamweaver is miles better than Frontpage which creates really really messy coding, so I wouldn't suggest it. Even Dreamweaver doesn't create the shortest, quickest coding, but it's good enough. As for using notepad, when I code, I know exactly what I want and I didn't need to look up stuff unless it was some new specification that I wanted to implement/test out. So no, I found notepad easier during the coding process, and also easier during debugging because of the 'clean code' and the fact that I typed everything up! I use Notepad++ now, which is basically notepad but spiked with cool gadgety stuff for added ease. There are also a few Firefox add-ons that are really useful if you want to download them (Web Developer, Firebug being top ones).

As for usefulness... for me, it wasn't exactly useful. Through gr9 and 10, I made webpages whenever possible for school 'creative projects' because this was what was easiest for me. But like I said, I haven't touched coding since IB started so nahh, don't expect a huge payout ratio or anything. It's quite time consuming to keep "up to date" with all the W3C changes and be familiar with the cool new ways to do stuff, but I thought it was fun and a good creative outlet.

Smashing Magazine is also a good read for any future web designers. Some really cool stuff there.

[Austin Glau]

Irene:

I use Notepad++ now, which is basically notepad but spiked with cool gadgety stuff for added ease. There are also a few Firefox add-ons that are really useful if you want to download them (Web Developer, Firebug being top ones).

Yah, I use Notepad++ too. Its cool how it supports almost any recent programming language.

I love greasemonkey for Firefox. It is pretty cool to mess around with. Especially when I have no idea how to make a Firefox add-on, and when I try to the code looks all messed up.

[Caustica]

Same, Notepad++ fan here I love websites; have been making them since I was 10 (although, of course, the websites I made then were utter crap). I'm familiar with XHTML and CSS, as well as Wordpress (which is not a language, but a CMS-but-blog-centric kind of thing; it's quite famous so I'm sure a few people here will also have heard of it). I can understand PHP but can't write anything useful (all those files and variables... nah, leave it to someone else please )

My school uses Dreamweaver too and it is utterly useless at teaching HTML and CSS. Because the students are being taught to click this and click that, they're completely clueless as to how basic code is structured. And when they run into errors and cross-browser failure, they have no idea how the hell to fix it.

In fact, I could rant about how my school screws up web design teaching but this is not the place for it.

I still have a website going; it's running on Wordpress. If you want to know what it is just message me

EDIT: Oh right! I forgot to write about where to start. I personally started on Piczo which is a drag-and-drop messy unorganised affair, and anyway I was younger then and stupider. I think I will recommend Webs, which was formerly called Freewebs. I haven't used it in, what - 3, 4 years, so I can't tell you what it'll specifically be like.

Also, I'd recommend you search up some basic HTML + CSS tutorials online Web designing is a pretty damn popular thing and there are lots of tutorials for every aspect of it.

And if you're interested in aesthetics, I'd recommend the graphics programs Adobe Photoshop - there is CS4 (the full version) and Elements (the cut-down version). I use Elements, and it's fine for web design - CS4 is more for professional (non-web) graphic designers, and anyway, it's more expensive too! If you're looking for some free programs, I know GIMP is a popular choice.

Good luck on your website, by the way If you run into any basic HTML and CSS problems, again - feel free to message me.

Edited December 6, 2009 by Caustica

[Darren]

Hey,

I own my own Web Design business and have been doing it professionally for about two and a half years now. To start learning you probably want to have a look at www.w3schools.com/ and have a look at HTML/CSS.

[Austin Glau]

Caustica

I think I will recommend Webs, which was formerly called Freewebs. I haven't used it in, what - 3, 4 years, so I can't tell you what it'll specifically be like.

I used to do freewebs, and it was pretty cool, they had their own forum, chat, support, ect. I really liked it, it was kind of a fourm/web design sort of thing.

However, I have drifted away from webs a while ago and came across the cPanel stuff. It is very useful, if you are lazy and don't want to do coding there is a site builder that works quite well. It has an Online file manager that has a ftp sort of layout and you can upload any kind of file (of course there are size limits), and if the file is recognizable (html, css, php, js, ect.), then you can edit it. You can chmod and mess with permissions with any file, and do a bunch of other things. There is also an actual ftp service you can use (although i haven't tested it, not sure if it is free file manager works better in my opinion), and what is really nice is they have MYSQL databases, script usage statistics, ect. and its free. I got busted though for having a script that periodically uses some server memory and run time to fetch data (also known as Google Analytics ), they apparently don't like giant scripts that fetch data like once every half an hour and get as many variables as they can from the site it is run on (lol i never new i could monitor the Screen Resolution of my visitors until i tried google analyitics )

The one i used was zoka.cc you have to use a wierd username like zokac_38247239 or something but it is worth it until something better comes out

[masochist]

I used to be pretty into it and made a lot of websites. I used CSS and PHP but yeah didn't get into the javascript stage. As an above user said, haven't had time to do any coding since IB. So yeah, extremely rusty.

Edited April 13, 2010 by masochist

[aditya12]

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[Vazara]

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