I am looking to learn web design and would like advice what software people would recommend me starting with.

Primarily I would like to start this as a hobby and maybe turn it into a part time business venture if possible designing websites.

 

I have read fairly positive reviews on Serif Web plus 10 & Net Objects Fusion 9 or 10 - both of which appeared to be aimed towards novices like myself.

 

I am running Windows 98 at present but could upgrade to xp if needed.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I'd strongly recommend that you read up on HTML and CSS so you understand the underlying technology you're using instead of relying solely on an editor. It'll help you to make your sites work under various browsers and media.

 

http://www.w3schools.com/ is an excellent resource to to various technologies applied to the web.

Hello, welcome to the forum.

 

I am not familiar with those products, but i'm sure they would be ideal for beginners, you could use any html editor (even text pad would be fine) if you had a good book or online tutorial to learn from You don't need an editor to build great websites nowadays. As what used to take complex table structures now can be easily achieved with css styles.

 

There are plenty of freeware html editors, some of which are:

 

1st Page: http://www.evrsoft.com/1stpage3.shtml

HTML Kit: http://www.chami.com/html-kit/

S Standard: http://xstandard.com/

 

They should all do you fine.

 

Any more advice just let us know.

 

Regards

 

Ben

Remember as well that if you run into any difficulties post on the forums!

 

Btw, not so much for web design, but I think you would definitely enjoy an upgrade from win 98 to XP. You can buy copy quite cheaply now (and provided you have system requirements) it will be much more stable OS to work on.

Remember as well that if you run into any difficulties post on the forums!

 

Btw, not so much for web design, but I think you would definitely enjoy an upgrade from win 98 to XP. You can buy copy quite cheaply now (and provided you have system requirements) it will be much more stable OS to work on.

 

 

I second this. Windows 95/98/ME is not a relyable platform to make your work on. It crash and burn way to easily, something you don't want when you're in the middle of your work.

If you do stick with it however, save often and make backups. (This is something that's generally important nomatter what OS you use, but espesially old Windows version.)

HTML isn't hard to learn at all. I think rather than getting some software you purchase a good book. One I can't recommend more is CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions by Andy Budd.

 

It taught me tons.

I currently use AceHTML6 pro, a sort of upmarket text editor/html editor. You do need to learn basic html coding and css. Web Plus and Net Objects are all very well but you should know what's happening under the bonnet. I have more confidence using text editors than web page editors.

HTML Kit is also worth considering.

although im using Dreamweaver, I really dont use all the functions/tools

 

When just starting off an learning, simply get some guides/tutorials/books (google helped me alot ) and sit down with Notepad or any other free HTML editors and learn from the ground up.

 

When i was learning, i made the mistake of simply assuming it wouldnt be hard as i had dreamweaver etc. I was wrong.

 

My advice is to start from scratch. Read. Learn. Try it. Most of all, try and understand it - its one thing reading it and following a book step-by-step, but try and understand why and how things are achieved. That is my only criticism of step-by-step books in terms of not remebering what you have done. Sure, you may have a nice simple looking design at the end of it, but could you re-do the design again without the aid of steps and instructions?!

 

Remeber, if you get stuck then ask on these forums

I completely agree with what sc26 (above) has posted. Dreamweaver is a fantastic tool and I use it every day but if you don't understand HTML / CSS first Dreamweaver will work against you and build nasty fat HTML (admittedly this problem isn't as bad as it used to be but it's still not great).

 

I echo sc26's advice - learn from scratch first, then feel free to use a tool like Dreamweaver to speed up your work time. Dreamweaver is my favourite html / css tool because it has a nifty auto-complete function for classes and code, as well as in-built html validation.

 

http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/

 

Also don't forget your free Firefox addons These are a godsend when you've got some buggy CSS error that just doesn't make sense (argh!). I can't live without my Web Developer Toolbar or Aardvark CSS Debugger.

And Firebug! Don't forget that! It's an über-extension. When it comes to Javascript debugging it'd console tool is fantastic. So is the the stack trace.

I like html kit. It's what I learnt with. It's a very nice bit of kit. I'd also plug my current software Phpdesigner 2007 but it's not free. $53 for professional or $39 for academic. It does all the main languages though not just php

 

Intelligent Highlighter that automatically switch between PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript depending on your position!

• PHP (both version 4 and 5 are supported)

• SQL (MySQL, MSSQL 2000, MSSQL 7, Ingres, Interbase 6, Oracle, Sybase)

• HTML/XHTML

• CSS (both version 1 and 2.1 are supported)

• JavaScript

• VBScript

• Java

• C#

• Perl

• Python

• Ruby

i am running PHPDesigner 2007 on Linux (Ubuntu) via WINE, and it is essentially free - the trial limitation is stuck on "14 days left"... It is really nice program, almost worth paying for....

it runs under wine? cool. That's the only thing that'd been stopping me switching to linux on a more permenant basis. I got work to buy it for me but I'd have paid anyway. I don't mind paying a reasonable fee for good software.

PHPEdit is a good software to write PHP applications. Even assist you on putting together them MySQL queries.

all you need is this very cheap thing at £0 (or $ if ur in the usa or what ever place you are in with that currency) and it's called notepad

all you need is this very cheap thing at £0 (or $ if ur in the usa or what ever place you are in with that currency) and it's called notepad

 

please tell me you're not a puritan? All you need is notepad and dos / linux and vi. The rest is all pointless etc etc. Yes technically notepad will do the job but why not have a program that 

will help you out a bit? Highlight a syntax error, connecting brackets and tags, suggest words based on 

what you're typing? There is no shame is having a tool help you.

Starting in notepad is a great way to learn how to code.

You have to put more effort into understanding and remembering correct layout structure,

mark-up tag usage and their attributes etc.

Hand coding will stand you in good stead for your future career as a web developer.

Advanced editors with intellisense are cool once you’ve got the basics under your belt.

Here’s a tutorial using notepad to get you started:

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp

I'd still recommend getting at least an editor which perform syntax highlighting as it'll help the readability greatly and make hand coding allot easier.

exactly. I'm not talking about using drag and drop stuff but editors with syntax highlighting is so much easier.

well i use Dreamweaver - alll the WYSWYG tools just plain code mode

I don't know about anyone else but i have started on frontpage... Very crapy. Now i am using photoshop CS3 And dreamweaver CS3, but i don't think that it is enough to use only that so I also use Expression Web. I think that everyone has their own oppinion about that...

Notepad++ - Notepad, but with syntax highlighting, multi-language support (php, HTML, css, etc) and free.

like i say to everyone... if you are starting out try Aptana...

Yes i'd go with NOTEPAD

I would say think about your objective. Are you learning for the sake of learning the ins and outs of web dev? If so, going down the route of hard coding simple sites in (X)HTML and CSS using your favourite text editor is a great place to start. If you're looking to construct a site for a particular purpose (in a short space of time), think about using an existing platform to develop upon. Examples of these could be a CMS such as Joomla or Drupal. You could adapt a blogging platform such as Wordpress as well. There are many templates out there for both Joomla and Wordpress (not many for Drupal).

 

I know this might be a little early in the day for you, but keep in mind the separation between the appearance and the coding. I'll stop here before I talk more crap at this late hour....