Viewing Thread:
"web design - what do I need to know?"

I've decided that I need a hobby. I've picked web design. The problem is I know very little about it. I tought myself basic html (The stuff you can learn in a day)and I'm now trying to improve on that.

My question is, to be a good web designer what do I need to teach myself. The list of things I want to teach myself at the moment is:

xHTML
CSS
Javascript

other things I've heard about and I think I might need to know are:

Java
C (or C++, or whatever it is)
CGI

I don't really know much at all, so If you could explain what things I need to learn and why.

I want to be able to design semi-professional web pages by the end of the year, but I would also like advice on where to go after that. Which order should I teach myself in etc.

All help appreciated. I know this sounds a bit confused, but thats because I don't really know what I'm doing, which is why I'm asking for help.

Thanks

I've decided that I need a hobby. I've picked web design. The problem is I know very little about it. I tought myself basic html (The stuff you can learn in a day)and I'm now trying to improve on that.

My question is, to be a good web designer what do I need to teach myself. The list of things I want to teach myself at the moment is:

xHTML
CSS
Javascript

other things I've heard about and I think I might need to know are:

Java
C (or C++, or whatever it is)
CGI

I don't really know much at all, so If you could explain what things I need to learn and why.

I want to be able to design semi-professional web pages by the end of the year, but I would also like advice on where to go after that. Which order should I teach myself in etc.

All help appreciated. I know this sounds a bit confused, but thats because I don't really know what I'm doing, which is why I'm asking for help.

Thanks

There are loads of different ways of going about it.
The decent web designers in here will give you much better info than me but I just wanted to highlight a few points about your post.

Java and C (or C++) wouldn't provide you with a lot web page wise. Java would be useful for applets and a few other things but javascript would be much better. If you wanted to go the full way and learn java and javascript then it would be helpful if you want to write your own scripts but there are loads of places where you can get them for free.

I've been advised by a few folk on here to learn php for making web pages.
So I would say look into that as an option too.

Good luck with it though.

CSS and Javascript are both essential for most of the snazzy tricks you see on webpages these days, and also provide a lot more freedom in design once you know them well enough to get ideas of your own. XHTML you don't really need to know (as of yet), but it's useful background info, and will likely become more important in the near future.

You might want to learn to use Flash and Paintshop pro. This will aloow you to make animated pics, and more interactive pages.

As for Java, that's mostly used for Applets. It's powerful, but it's a full-on programming language, so best left until you're pretty hot with everything else.

CGI scripts are something you'll definitely want to learn. The main advantage of these is the ability to process and permenantly store user input - eg message boards, display perferences, timestamps, or anything else you can think of. These can be written in any of several languages depending on your personal preference, but most commonly Visual Basic or Perl. If you're doing any serious amount of data storage with the website as a front end interface, consider using PHP instead.

That's all that springs to mind at the moment....

css is a must (apparantly, don't like myself but that's probably because I spent less time on it than I should have).

Javascript can be cool, but use it sparingly :O(

If you want to learn how to make pretty sites, then look into graphics design primarily - buy or steal a copy of Photoshop (or a decent alternative). Flash is also fairly easy to learn I'm told, not looked at it much meself though.

If you're interested in building technical, dynamic sites (such as ukchatforums.com) you may first want to look into the mechanics of web-servers - try installing Apache on your home PC for instance. This will allow you to add web-server extensions such as php and see how dynamic pages look without having to upload them to a remote server. If you're feeling frisky try out php and MySQL, they utterly rock in unison, this forum was almost certainly built using them.

Java and C++ are bona fide programming languages, you don't need to learn them. Java applets can be embedded in a web page (think of a chat app for Yahoo, or similar) but that's where it gets velly messy, so avoid.

A god link is www.webmonkey.com, they have all sorts of well-written tutorials on there dating back centuries. Yes, I meant god :O)

If you're only just getting into HTML, I wouldnt bother with anything else at the moment. Get yourself a quality web-art package like Fireworks to design your pages, and then practice rewriting the code that the program creates.

Basic HTML is all about tables. The layout of the page is generally a table spanning the entire page with images in the cells to create the look. Fireworks will show you this.

From there, learn css, as it makes your html faster, and then go onto either ASP or PHP, but you'll find it a lot easier once you're real fluid with HTML.

Slaveunit wrote:
> Basic HTML is all about tables. The layout of the page is generally a
> table spanning the entire page with images in the cells to create the
> look.

*cringes*

Tables are to be avoided. They weren't designed for laying out pages, it's just something which happened before there was a viable alternative. The code is messy, and they are difficult to maintain. There now is a viable alternative (CSS), and you should really be using this to lay out the design of your pages.

Even if you don't count CSS as 'basic' HTML, it is still what you should be using for layouts. As of HTML 4.0 onwards, tags should be used as structural markers and CSS for presentation.

"Tables should not be used purely as a means to layout document content
as this may present problems when rendering to non-visual media.
Additionally, when used with graphics, these tables may force users to
scroll horizontally to view a table designed on a system with a larger
display. To minimize these problems, authors should use style sheets
to control layout rather than tables."

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/

VenomByte wrote:
> "Tables should not be used purely as a means to layout document content
> as this may present problems when rendering to non-visual media.
> Additionally, when used with graphics, these tables may force users to
> scroll horizontally to view a table designed on a system with a larger
> display. To minimize these problems, authors should use style
> sheets to control layout rather than tables."

You'd have to be pretty dumb to table a page that doesn't resize itself into a smaller browser. People who cannot code like that shouldn't be allowed to.

But you're right, css is the current trend.

Firstly, take care of the HTML, which isn't all that difficult. Once you've managed to grasp that, I'd suggest moving onto CSS, as the main structure for laying out your Web Site. I'd suggest learning XHTML now rather than later, as it's really the proper way of doing it now, so why put it off?? :)

Tables do lay out a site ok, but CSS is the proper way of doing it, its just because CSS wasn't supported correctly in all browsers previously that tables took on the main method if site layout. The problem with tables is that can become very confusing on a large site, as well as a pain if you decide you want to move a few things around.

CSS allows you to section off parts of the site, and position them according you how you really want the site to go, and you can go as far as positioning every single item in your web page with pixel positioning (its not as hard as it sounds).

http://www.w3schools.com/ is where I learnt most of my CSS and XHTML.

If you take a look at:
http://ukchatforums.com/display_forums.php?groupid=2
... and then ...
http://www.chrisjhaig.co.uk/SR_Sample/

You'll see they look the same on the outside, but viewing the source, you'll see it's very different. I used the SR Page as an example of something I could re-do using CSS, and think it came out quite well :)

Each bit is set up in it's own section, the top links, the site links, the Splat Image, the banner and then main bit below are positioned individually (the Forum Listings are just in Tables as that is what they are really for, laying out parts of the Web Site not all). So, each section is given a name, and each name, you can give CSS instruction to, like where to place it, if it overlaps with something should it be on top or below, what background colour the whole section should be, what the text fonts, colours should be, etc.

You'll more than likely want to be able to create pretty pictures as well :) so something like Fireworks or Paint Shop Pro would be good. I don't really go in for the images area just yet, I'm so bad at it, so won't try and make it sound like I know what I'm talking about.

Then, if you want to make your site more dynamic, take a look into JavaScript for a few neat tricks, but don't go mad with JavaScript, only use them for good purposes, rather than to make your site covered with JavaScript things.

Then, if you haven't given up by then, take a good look into either PHP or ASP, as a Server Side language to allow you to keep the content of your site up-to-date and versatile. PHP and ASP are pretty similar in terms of what they do, but I would personally rate PHP over ASP. PHP lets you do simple things like include another file within your Web Page, for example the links bar to the left here, instead of SR typing the html for it in every page, they instead write it once, and save it in a file named
'Main_Links.inc' and in every page they wish to use it in, simply type out
this saves you so much re-typing of the same data. PHP includes functions for creating images dynamically, calculations, manipulations of stings (works) .. etc. But, one of the greater uses is its interaction with a MySQL Database. A Database is typically used to store data, which will be used on the Web Site. PHP includes many build in functions to gain access and read/write and alter data stored in your Database, making it easy and quickly for you to grab saved data and use it on your site. This includes things like the charts SR show on he site, or the amount of posts used on the Forum.

Finally, you'll need a host for your site :) Either purchase some space from a company like fasthosts.co.uk webfusion.co.uk, or whomever you can find that is cheap. I used bargainhost.co.uk for the Example I showed above, but don't really rate them to highly. If you're willing to use a Freeola Dial-up to Upload your site, I'd recommend Freeola any day, one of the best hosts I've used. They might not be the cheapest when you have to upload a lot, but you really get what you pay for. They are apparently setting up a monthly rate service to, so you don't get restricted to their dial-up.

Hope at least some of that was useful.

Oh, and for now, try and set your site up to span no more than 780 pixals, as horizontal scrolling isn't very popular :) and there are still people with 800 X 600 visual resolutions (screen sizes).

Do you know anything about tables? if you don't, learn about them before moving onto different languages, most websites are based entirely around them.

When you've got the hang of that CSS, PHP and JavaScript would probably be a good next step.