Dan81

I have taken the liberty to rattle on quite a lot on this thread but only because it's my introduction so I feel I might as well be open about my thoughts and opinions to try and introduce myself better. I sometimes find it frstr8ng wen 3reds trn in2 txt spk. AAAARHGHH! Take what you want from what I type...agree, comment, disagree or whatever....it is a forum after all. My interest in web design has come about exactly because of that reason notbanksy...there seems to be lots of 'website makers' making lots of 'web content' but its hard to come across genuinely good web design work. Any muppet on TV who can colour co-ordinate some curtains with the paint on the walls is apparently now a 'designer'.....I think the term gets thrown around too easily and there is serious misuse in this particular industry that discredits the good work of skilled professionals (....but thats enough ranting for now!). Breathe out.

Links and comments appreciated, I will have a good read through when I am not in work! I know this will sound a little ahead of myself but I am pretty confident on the design issues. I have an industrial design degree and whilst I don't beleive it qualifies me to know everything under the enormous banner of "design" I have the experience to handle most design issues well. Assessment of the target users requirements, presentation techniques, layout, graphical elements, mode of use etc etc I have had years learning about - where I really have to start from scratch is actually being able to put this into practice on the net! I know you are right about the trial and error. I want to start up my own site for me to start work on but do not know where to start with hosting and domains. I view a website like any other product - having a pretty colours and looking nice is a crucial part of its function but not its only function. Form Vs. Function is one of the great designers debates but to me its simple - form is a function. Something that may be of value to web designers is a 'communication identification analysis.' Put simply, all issues that are to be communicated within the presentation (in this case a website) are listed, these are then broken into groups as is suited to the particular product (so in this case probably each separate web page would become a group). Each item from each group is given a score on how important it is to communicate that particular point. What this does is take control of content and make decisions on what takes priority rather than just making assumptions on what the design requires (well, I normally just bung some text here, a big logo over here, oh and a menu would probably look OK about there...and so on). Guesswork or 'doing something cos thats what I usually do' is not designing, it's just making. This type of analysis should apply to every stage of the design process - especially when deciding what functional elements are to be included and considering layout. True design is a controlled and analytical process that constantly questions itself. What am I going to create here, what function does it serve, how does its appearance make it do its job better, where should it be positioned, how accessible is it, how does this particular element fit into and serve my design as a whole.... etc etc etc. Class is finnished!

Thanks, I started off with a text editor and some tutorials but then through more reading found that it was junk. I have seen a book reccommendation on here that I will learn hand coding from I think in conjunction with DW as I want to see what its doing wrong. I don't really do one step at a time learning! - my usual way of learning is full on and intensive. I have loads of ideas on the design front as I come from a design background. In fact there are too many ideas in that sense because at the moment I have the ability to realise them in say, photoshop but not on the web. I am not in a rush to set myself up as a web designer and fob off clients with crap sites, I want to deliver quality and visually rich content. From looking at many 'web designers' sites I can see that whilst they may have a sound knowledge of coding they have exactly 0 idea about design. This seems quite a common problem. Whilst the market does seem flooded (take a quick look on yell.com) there seems to be a lot of rubbish to sift through.

I was just reading through some threads on the forum and people discuss making web pages using Photoshop. By this do people create the website in terms of the whole layout and its elements; banners, pictures, pictures to be used for links, menu bars etc etc all nicley laid out on Photoshop layers then break it down into the individual files to use when creating the site in other software? Is this a common way of designing a site?

From what I gather hourly rates range from £25-£35. Giving the customer a guide on how to write HTML to adjust their website seems odd to me, I understand you took the job as unpaid to develop your 'folio / experience etc. but be careful that offer is not exploited. Can anyone advise; is it normal for freelancers to hand code customers sites in Notepad? I thought that software like DW existed to make managing customers sites...well, managable? Not criticising those who do this just trying to understand a little better!

I have read many times that Dreamweaver design view is 'bad' or 'wrong' but after a lot of searching no-one seems to discuss exactly why it is so bad. I am only just starting off learning about web design and the tutorials I am doing at the moment explain everything in design view. Don't get me wrong I understand that becoming used to the code view is important to see whats going on but I am curious as to why design view is so shunned when to the outsider it looks quite useful?

no.1 made my eyeballs sting Whilst its fun criticising the dodgy designs its always worth remembering that there is no limit to how good any piece of design work can be.

This reply has taken a while as when I originally tried to post I was having problems that made my posts appear several times! So anyway; Apologies to those who saw my original post appear 11 times, there was a problem with the site and from my end looked like it was just rejecting my new thread. I know my intro goes on a bit but I thought as well give some background to who I am and what Im doing here! Thanks bluedreamer for the comments, I am learning so much and so quickly so please bear with me when I ask questions I appreciate will sound a little stupid(!): I have heard the code that Dreamweaver generates is less than great, how can I learn how to work through this and make ammendments? As Im trying to concentrate on the html and css side of things for now all the 'secondary' stuff along the lines of domains, hosting, freelance contracts, self promotion etc I am trying to pick up tips and info as I go along. However, I am baffled by the amount of hosting sites and options available. Is there any sort of standard requirements for the main types of website? For instance; a 5 or 6 page 'brochure' site will need something along the lines of -----------, whereas a CMS site will need ------------? Im totally confused. Also, how do you get into doing you own hosting? Is it considered good or bad business practice to host all clients websites yourself? Is there a reasonable amount to be made from this as opposed to just recommending a host to the client? (I don't want to know anyones exact earnings but an approx. idea would be worth keeping in mind). Is web design a flooded market or a feasible career option? I know this is a matter of opinion but opinions are what im after! Will shut up for now.

Hello All, This is my first post on this forum, I am Dan, 26 years old and currently working as a CNC programmer with an Industrial Design degree but working at the (very) early stages to develop a career in Web Design. Its something I have been interested in for a long time but put off for one reason or another but now am very determined to work towards to build a career in. I am determined as my current line of work, for me at least feels pretty dead end but I feel that web development still has a long way to go and I want to contribute to making sites into better user experiences. I got off to a bad start learning from a website that I later found out was depracated html but interesting seeing how it worked anyway. I have been teaching myself using my spare hours and staying up very late doing what tutorials I can find (sad, I know but I really do want to make this work for me). I am currently working my way through a slightly exhaustive Dreamweaver eBook but I know there is much else I need to understand but what order do I learn things in? After HTML and CSS do I start working on CMS next to create 'admin options' for freelance clients? Or do I start working out how do build an e-commerce site (do I need PHP for this and / or MySQL?). Then what about Javascript, Flash ARGHHHH! I am used to learning software and have a pretty good grip on Photoshop from my degree work. The coding side relates a little to the day job in that whilst you can create a pretty picture on the screen its the code that counts and you have to be able to understand it for when things don't go to plan. Im also curious how the full-time freelancers find a continual stream of work? Do you have on-going email campaigns? Does site maintenance help keep things ticking? word of mouth? Im just interested to know how much time (and money) has to be dedicated towards marketing yourself. Also whats the general concensus on the eBay Classified Ads stating "your website for £99"? Sorry for going on....just wanted to introduce myself as I will probably be asking lots (and lots) of questions on here. Apologies for how daft some of them will seem now but I have to learn somehow! If you read through all that.....Cheers, Dan