Learning Web Desing

I've had a hosting account for sometime - using it as an email server, now I want to start dipping my toes into Web design (Simple pages). Where should I start and what books would you recommend rather than coding websites.

Thanks


Badboy

Edited by badboy1 (Sat 05-Jun-10 21:04:42)

Whenever I want a book to learn a subject - I tend to go into Cambridge and browse the book stores to see what suits my needs

html isn't that complex - so you might get away with just following w3schools.com courses (useful references even if not courses)

CSS is probably the harder aspect to master - but when you have a feel for it, then I found The ZEN of CSS Design very useful to understand what you could do with it

w3schools.com is an excellent website (I'll spend most of my time browsing this site). One of the reasons why I wanted web design in a book format so that I won't be printing pages and pages and then losing them. There's also an online web design package on the site. Would you recommend using it or buy buying a software package, if so which one.

Thanks

badboy

In reply to a post by badboy1:

One of the reasons why I wanted web design in a book format so that I won't be printing pages and pages and then losing them.

tbh I tend to just buy text books to learn a subject - I just have book marks for references (but I do a fair amount of web apps at work) and haven't brought a html reference book in years - so not sure what is good now

In reply to a post by badboy1:

There's also an online web design package on the site. Would you recommend using it or buy buying a software package, if so which one.

Since most of the web stuff I do is dynamic - I just tend to use a development IDE and/or text editor (usually this one)

If you are learning - then I'd start with a text editor for now - but several threads in here aout free web editor tools

In reply to a post by badboy1:

I've had a hosting account for sometime - using it as an email server, now I want to start dipping my toes into Web design (Simple pages). Where should I start and what books would you recommend rather than coding websites.

Thanks

Badboy

As the others said use W3schools because it is updated, has examples and its free. Get to grips with css quickly, since css now makes the page special and basically is 80% of the structure of the site ..

A couple of things, be aware that ie6 treats the box model differently (even though ie6 is dying in consumer space, businesses are a different matter as many still have win2k systems with ie 5.5 on it ).

Also ie and firefox treat Paragraphs, Heading tags and unordered lists differently so be aware of that too ..

In reply to a post by Kenneth:

In reply to a post by badboy1:

One of the reasons why I wanted web design in a book format so that I won't be printing pages and pages and then losing them.

tbh I tend to just buy text books to learn a subject - I just have book marks for references (but I do a fair amount of web apps at work) and haven't brought a html reference book in years - so not sure what is good now

In reply to a post by badboy1:

There's also an online web design package on the site. Would you recommend using it or buy buying a software package, if so which one.

Since most of the web stuff I do is dynamic - I just tend to use a development IDE and/or text editor (usually this one)

If you are learning - then I'd start with a text editor for now - but several threads in here aout free web editor tools

We use a combo of notepad+ DW and phpmyadmin .. Adding to that soon will be our cms backbone modx

For a nice HTML editor, take a look at KompoZer. This used to be called Nvu and is quite well-regarded.

Thanks for all the replies and advice. I will use the software mentioned and see which one suits me best.

Thanks again


Badboy

Post deleted by billford

In reply to a post by badboy1:

Thanks for all the replies and advice. I will use the software mentioned and see which one suits me best.

Thanks again


Badboy

You might think it sounds daft, but the "Dummy" series of IT-related books are quite good. For you, HTML for Dummies and PHP & MySQL for Dummies.

Sams publishing) Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML and CSS, by Lemay and Colburn, is a bit deeper.

All worth a browse in the bookshop, even if you don't buy.