June 30, 200917 yr Hi everyone ! This looks an ideal place to help me get started in building a few sites, and hopefully get me out of my dead end job! ok, a bit about me. I recently did 3 part time modules at University (Teesside) which involved the use of Dreamweaver and Photoshop. Buiding websites in HTML. I found this to be good introduction to Dreamweaver, but a bit limited as we only used HTML. From what I gather, there are other widely used languages (and programs?) used in the industry, which I think I need to get familiar with. So far then, i've built a few basic sites at Uni, and I have Dreamweaver and Photoshop on my home PC. I want to get a bit more experienced in Web Design and hopefully progress and start applying for work. I'm keen to get back into Graphic design and incorporate this in my designs (I did Graphics at college). Can anyone recommend any widely used programs/languages to help me get started? Any tips and advice will be hugely appreciated. The more the better. This is the way forward for me, and I need to get out of the BORING financial industry. Thanks very much for any help, Greg
June 30, 200917 yr Hi greg, welcome. you want to get started with HTML combined with CSS to start. and learn how to code to w3 standards. in dreamweaver (i used to use this all the time) you should get used to only using code view. for html and css you dont really need a decent program, notepad will do. although dreamweaver offers features like coloring the code and guessing what code your typing etc so it can auto finish, rather than type every letter. quite handy. www.w3schools.com - great learning resource validator.w3.org - check your html to see if it is valid jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator - check your CSS to see if it is valid Only other thing you can do is look at websites you like to see how things are coded, find out how things work etc
June 30, 200917 yr Welcome Greg, Some links in my sig for some good learning resources, as someone else stated Start with HTML and CSS once you have a good footing in them you could move onto javascript, PHP and Mysql, that should give you a decent skill set, then if you want you could branch off into more specialized fields, like CMS's. One more piece of advice I would give is put Dreamweaver away for a bit and do all your coding by hand in notepad, you will learn a lot faster doing this. Dreamweaver does have a habit of taking short cuts and chucking out some bloated code if used in design view. As far as software goes I use a mac so hopefully a windows user would be able to recommend some for you, when I did use windows I used photoshop for my design stuff, notepad++ for coding, firefox installed with firebug was my testing browser, and I used Xampp for setting up a local server environment and other than that I didnt use much else.
June 30, 200917 yr Hi Greg, Welcome to the forum. Ive already replied to your email, and hopefully i can lend some more help to you soon. Reaper
June 30, 200917 yr Hey Greg, Welcome to the forum, hope you enjoy your stay with the community! You already know about the graphics side so I wont say much about that, for the actual developing side of things, like T_break said above, the way to go is to learn (X)HTML and CSS first, the once you have an understanding of them two you can move on to more advanced things such as Javascript and server side scripting (php, asp etc). Application wise, the best applications at the end of the day all come down to how you feel, I mean for example I like to use more minimalistic software such as Notepad++, however some good options are Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft Expression Web. If you need any help though, just PM me and I'll try and lend a hand Have fun! Matt
July 1, 200917 yr Hi Greg, Just keep doing what your doing, buy yourself some cheap web hosting, have a look at some content management systems as these are pretty easy to learn but you will learn 2 big things... 1 CSS and how to slice your website properly...2...A little about how PHP works and the scripts that sit behind it. Just a suggestion, there is no right or wrong answer. Good luck and welcome to the forum.
July 1, 200917 yr Author Hi everyone, I really appreciate all your help, its been very useful. Every reply i've had, including a few emails/PMs have all suggested pretty much the same thing i.e. stick with learning the code, rather than using Dreamweaver to simply knock something up. Most of you have also suggested using HTML and CSS, and then move onto PHP etc later on, so that is definately the way forward for me. And im sure all the links i've been given will come in very handy as well. Thanks very much everyone Greg
July 3, 200917 yr Hey Greg Thought I'd say welcome as well...as you've heard XHTML/CSS is the way to go...along with a Photoshop or Fireworks...then add other languages to your skillset. By the way Greg does a great line in speakers ;-) I know him from a hi-fi forum where a few years back he sold me a rather nice pair of Revolver R16's.. Top bloke.
July 4, 200917 yr Welcome to the forum Greg I found Dreamweaver (in code view) really helped when learning html/css. The code hints and code completion speeded up the learning progress. Once you've got the basics, get a decent book on web standards - I've found these two books very helpful : http://www.amazon.co...46726255&sr=8-6 & http://www.amazon.co...46726255&sr=8-1 Rob
July 7, 200917 yr Author Hey Greg Thought I'd say welcome as well...as you've heard XHTML/CSS is the way to go...along with a Photoshop or Fireworks...then add other languages to your skillset. By the way Greg does a great line in speakers ;-) I know him from a hi-fi forum where a few years back he sold me a rather nice pair of Revolver R16's.. Top bloke. Hi Mike, Good to see you here, and glas you're still happy with those Revolvers. I think the R16s are very underrated ! If you're not a bass-head (not that they're too shabby in that dept) they're a cracking speaker ! Back on topic i'm learning from "HTML Dog", which i've kindly been pointed to. This seems a perfect place for me to start - can anyone tell me whether this is likely to be updated in the near future? (I don't want to be learning from soon-to-be out of date material.) So far im just brushing up on the basics, but looking forward to really learning CSS. I'll feel better once I can make a start building sites from scratch Rob, thanks, i'll take a look at those books once i've learned the basics. Cheers guys!!.
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