nyquil

so i just learned html and css and studied one of the web sites i found(a simple one with white background) but now i'm seeing a lot of web pages with special background images and images for menu bars, and etc. Now i realized that a lot of the times people would use a small image and repeat it so they could have a more fluid background that could be easily adjusted, instead of a fix background image. So basically they would create a visual layout of the web page using photoshop (creating what the page will look like (one big image)) and then just chop up the image into different parts... .some for menu, some for background...and use them accordingly right? Does anyone know a good place to learn about doing web page layouts with photoshop? i know for html and css there's htmldog and w3schools, but what about for photoshop web page layout type stuff?

Anyone know of any chat rooms where web designers hang out? perhaps on IRC? there's tons of rooms for graphic designers, but i haven't found any rooms with sufficient amount of people and activity. =\ anyway, if anyone know a good one please let us know

Hi guys, it's nice to finally join this wonderful forum. I'm a cs graduate from johns hopkins and am thinking of making a shift in career into Web Designing. I have some experience back in college in regards to coding, so i think the aspect of web designing wouldn't be too alien to me. html and css are pretty much the most important things i need to know and master first right? html is a given, but what are some other things that are a must know? A friend of mine mentioned a few things to me such as css , adobe flex, dotNet, Csharp, expression blend, flash/silverlight.... From your experience... what would be your personal approach to learning web desgining? html first of course, then css ? and what next? Reason i'm asking this is that i know absolutely nothing about any of these products/technology other than html, and i would appreciate it if anyone could point me in the right direction and maybe share some of their experience. In addition, what are some software you guys would recommend for a web designer? what's a very good html editor, what are the nice tools that i need to acquire. Finally, does anyone know of any good sites for learning the stuff i need for becoming a good web designer? sites that have tutorials and guides on html, css, or anything that might be helpful for a guy who is just getting his feet wet? thanks in advance.