Need advice!! Brand new to web design!!

Notorious Lee

Notorious Lee

Notorious Lee

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Joined
1 Jan 2007
Posts
355
Hi guys,

I'm after a little advice on where to start with regards to studying web design.

I have just started reading a book called Sams Teach Yourself HTML & CSS & find it very helpful & understanding.

However, am I wasting my time learning HTML especially now there are numerous software packages out there which makes web designing so much easier by importing images & dragging & dropping, etc.

Do web designers actually build websites anymore using purely html coding?

Also, where does these web design programs stand with regards to conforming to the latest web standards?

Any advice would be very much appreciated.
 
I would imagine that all pro's only really use code.

These packages add lots of crap into the code.

It is much better to learn to do it all yourself!
 
Well knowing html is good since even the most advanced editors can add code that is not needed and that can create problems. By knowing html you can go in the code and fix and optimize the code by removing tags you don't need.
Dreamweaver is a very nice program in my opinion. Anyway don't to jump into dreamweaver before knowing the basics of html since it will be easy to get lost.
In addition Dreamweaver while not being a hard program to learn requires some time to get used to. There are some nice tutorials on the web but i advice using the lynda.com Dreamweaver Essentials since it shows you have to navigate and get the job done in the program. There are some useless stuff in the tutorial but also some nice tricks and everything you learn is valuable.
 
Notorious Lee said:
Thanks for the reply AHarvey.

If you don't mind me asking what do you do with regards to web design & using software?
Click to expand...

Me, I have just started getting back into it, reading "head first html & CSS". very good.

The only tools I use are Notepad++ and Firefox with the web developer addon, athough I do have firebug installed I just haven't got around to reading how to use it. :D Use Gimp for creating images (although I am pap at that :D )

Notepad++ will do your html/xhtml, CSS and PHP.

I think that learning to code is the only real way to make web pages. The WYSIWYG packages seem harder to learn to use than it would be to learn the code in the first place, plus you always have the chance of something not working right. The less levels between you and the basics means that there is less area for errors to creep in.
 
As others have said, learn to code properly.
It won't be long before someone comes in and defends the WYSIWYG editors. They're fine for the amateur but just try to find a job ad for one of the top design/development firms that says "you don't need to create clean code by hand because dreamweaver is alright".
 
I think that as a beginner using a WYSIWIG tool has its advantages. It enables you to quickly whack together a site and lets you understand what is and what isn't possible. After that you can start fiddling with the code and begin to understand how the code works.

It depends how you prefer to work, although you'll never get a job at a Web Dev just knowing how to use Dreamweaver.
 
I work as a website developer and hand code everything, I use dreamweaver as it highlights my code for me. Other than that its all manual. :)

The best advice I can say is do all your CSS and HTML manually, you will learn more that way and also install "html validator for mozilla/firefox" it will tell if your site is valid when you are previewing it. Big X in the lower right hand corner means its not and a tick means it is. Very simple but will also teach you to get into the practice of making valid code.
 
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learn to code html by hand in notepad

it really doesnt take long

when designing a css driven none dynamic website i dont come out of source mode no matter what editor im using - be it dreamweaver,expression or visual studio.

also as mentioned above i would download the firefox browser and install the web developer toolbar

fantastic tool for on the fly real time web site validating and css editing.
 
You should just use code view in Dreamweaver. The design view is handy for showing you how things are looking and the syntax highlighting is great too.

Also, if you're not running Firefox with Firebug/Web Dev Toolbar, you're not a real developer ;)
 
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