html & css for DUMMIES . . .

khushy · 12 Jan 2010 at 21:50

Hi

I am NOT a coder, a designer or an IT anything BUT I have designed and built and manage a couple of websites for our business interests and have just picked up a little html along the way as you do.

I know that our sites are not "code-correct" by any stretch - but they work, are (fairly) attractive, easy to navigate and google seems to like us too - oh . . . and customers buy from us!

www.solo2.co.uk
www.iCycles.net
www.trafik.in
www.water4togo.org
www.khushy.com
www.5dm.co.uk

One of my goals this year is to understand and "learn" to do html properly and then to go on to understand what exactly the hell css is and learn how to do that too for our needs.

I really enjoy the "design" aspect (using Adobe Fireworks) and for some bizarre reason - I also enjoy doing the coding that I have learnt to do too.

What should my 10-point plan be please?

khushy

PS - all our sites are designed for IE*

MarcLister · 12 Jan 2010 at 22:32

Hi khushy. I'm not an expert in any way, certainly not in comparison with some of those who'll reply.

I'd recommend ditching tables for layouts (still good for presenting tabular data!) and use CSS to position stuff.

Then visit HTMLDog.com and W3Schools for (X)HTML and CSS tutorials.

Tripnologist · 12 Jan 2010 at 22:32

Simple really.

1. Learn HTML and CSS together. They go hand in hand.
2. While doing that, start paying more attention to design and trends.
3. When you're feeling comfortable with html/css, learn jquery.
4. If you're feeling up to it after that, learn a backend language such as php or c#/.net

gord · 13 Jan 2010 at 11:02

Select one of your websites you want to revamp.
Read www.tizag.com on CSS and XHTML.
Apply what you are reading to your new design for the revamp.
Tough it out through this process, constantly learning by applying and doing.

You can't learn web design without doing it, so just do it to learn it.

If you are OK with Fireworks for the graphics I see no reason why you wouldnt be able to get stuck in.

Mort · 14 Jan 2010 at 10:53

To understand CSS I would have a play around with a css framework such as blueprint.

This will preset a lot of styles that will make cross browser compatibility a lot easier, as well as making it much easier to construct templates based on boxes / containers.

Tables is definitely the wrong way to go, the sooner you can comfortably use divs, and position them where you want them to go using floats / margins / position etc the better.

Also as gord says, take one of your existing websites and apply stuff you are learning to redoing that. I always find having a goal to learning makes it a lot easier