Best web design courses? Is web design a good job? =]

James129

Web designer is someone who is extremely creative when it comes to graphics and has top notch knowledge of Html and Css and is also expert in photoshop, fireworks and simpler tools like dreamweaver.

Discodave

James129 wrote: »

Web designer is someone who is extremely creative when it comes to graphics and has top notch knowledge of Html and Css and is also expert in photoshop, fireworks and simpler tools like dreamweaver.

Na, that's just a clever lil bug ger ;-)

[Deleted User]

Discodave wrote: »

Na, that's just a clever lil !!!!!!! ;-)

I'd say it's the bare minimum to know a little bit of graphic design (using tools like photoshop / painshop pro) and web-page development in HTML and CSS.

Anyway.. to the OP - you're best starting off with one of the many tutorials that exist on the web and see how you like it.

Discodave

ringo_24601 wrote: »

I'd say it's the bare minimum to know a little bit of graphic design (using tools like photoshop / painshop pro) and web-page development in HTML and CSS.

Anyway.. to the OP - you're best starting off with one of the many tutorials that exist on the web and see how you like it.

tbh, I disagree with that. Although I knew a little about HTML and CSS files, i didn't know about/or use Photoshop until after the first version was launched.

I initially used FrontPage and MS Word, but managed to grab a copy of DW and have never looked back

alisonmeyers

Discodave wrote: »

What do you mean by Div classes as numbers

The naming convention used in the div declarations in the code to render the page - they're named "Box_One" or something equally bland. Generally if it's a custom-built website then the developer would have named them something more specific to that project e.g. "Solar_Navigation_Box_Left". I'm not saying it's good practice (I wouldn't know), I just think it's human nature.

Discodave wrote: »

and also the thing with IE8 hun?

The .css file inclusions have an additional one to render IE browsers version 8 (the bits with the square bracket). You should read up on rendering page elements for different browsers if you don't know about this. I'm not sure if there are other ways.

An example of where this might be useful:
FireFox supports rounded borders on things natively. IE doesn't, you have to use images. Apparently it's bad code to tell IE to do round borders (or attempt to). That's what a colleague at my brother's web design place told me - again, I don't know WHAT happens if you tell them all to do the same thing and one can't do it (crashes?) but the point is that cross-browser compatibility is something you should already be aware of.

Discodave wrote: »

If you're that good, would you mind looking over the website once its complete this weekend please?

No thanks! I just work in a charity sector organisation - I'm not involved in IT, although I have been heavily exposed to it with a programmer husband and a geeky brother. My point is rather that: if I know all this as a "layman" with only brief exposure to the world of web design, I think you're underestimating the level of tech savvy that people under 30 have these days.

I'm not under 30, but I think I know more than your average 38 year old mum about computers. And I know all that I posted above.

For those reasons, I maintain my earlier point about the distinction between your tinkerer hobbiest for a local firm vs. modern web development agencies, and agree with Ringo's point about "I'd say it's the bare minimum to know" which he made.

[Deleted User]

Discodave wrote: »

tbh, I disagree with that. Although I knew a little about HTML and CSS files, i didn't know about/or use Photoshop until after the first version was launched.

I initially used FrontPage and MS Word, but managed to grab a copy of DW and have never looked back

This explains why your wife's 'free' website lacks any graphic design. Personnally, i've never bothered learning Photoshop - i've been using Paintshop Pro since the mid-90s and i'm quite happy with it. It has layers, plugins ect.. does the job nicely.

But.. you aren't a web designer or a web developer. I'm not even sure what category your 'website production' comes under. But hey, i'm sure your clients like highly generic websites and stock photography. Maybe 'web monkey' is a good term to use.

Discodave

ringo_24601 wrote: »

This explains why your wife's 'free' website lacks any graphic design. Personnally, i've never bothered learning Photoship - i've been using Paintshop Pro since the mid-90s and i'm quite happy with it. It has layers, plugins ect.. does the job nicely.

But.. you aren't a web designer or a web developer. I'm not even sure what category your 'website production' comes under. But hey, i'm sure your clients like highly generic websites and stock photography

the missus site lacks photo's simply because we're waiting for her to get her "own", and not the normal "stock" ones like I'm using the other site (which the client chose btw!)

I obviously know a website looks better with a Gallery, or images of some sorts and now I know about P/shop, and how layers and images work and having just mastered "lightbox or fancybox", that's my next task over the coming weeks.

By saying "highly generic" and "web monkey" - I feel (i'm sure you're not though!), you're putting me down. I designed/put together/created/whatever you wanna call it, a website the best way I knew how - thats self taught, no quals in website design/development whatsoever etc - just simply a NVQ 3 in IT

WPN

Ooooh alison comes across as rather sexy when she talks technical

Anyway. Dreamweaver and Photoshop are industry standard; but to an extent you can use anything as long as it gives great design. Be it specialised logo design software instead of using a vector based program - or those (decent) online gif/png generators. Perhaps software that will generate menus for you. You will always get the debate between WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver and text editors like Notepad. Dreamweaver allows you to view source and do code that way, its beneficial because of code highlighting and also autocomplete as you are typing. Many text editors have similar features - so called syntax highlighting.

The next debate is whether to use tag attributes to style or use the style tag. Whether to use <b> or <strong> for bold etc.

I think there is 3 main elements to a website these are: 1) Design 2) Coding 3) SEO (in no particular order of preference).

Personally what really annoys me is how many people have copyright 2010 (or 2008, 2009 etc.) on their websites still... its rather easy just to add <? echo date("Y"); ?> (if dynamic) or similar so the server auto updates the year.

Discodave

WPN wrote: »

Ooooh alison comes across as rather sexy when she talks technical

Anyway. Dreamweaver and Photoshop are industry standard; but to an extent you can use anything as long as it gives great design. Be it specialised logo design software instead of using a vector based program - or those (decent) online gif/png generators. Perhaps software that will generate menus for you. You will always get the debate between WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver and text editors like Notepad. Dreamweaver allows you to view source and do code that way, its beneficial because of code highlighting and also autocomplete as you are typing. Many text editors have similar features - so called syntax highlighting.

The next debate is whether to use tag attributes to style or use the style tag. Whether to use <b> or <strong> for bold etc.

I think there is 3 main elements to a website these are: 1) Design 2) Coding 3) SEO (in no particular order of preference).

Personally what really annoys me is how many people have copyright 2010 (or 2008, 2009 etc.) on their websites still... its rather easy just to add <? echo date("Y"); ?> (if dynamic) or similar so the server auto updates the year.

If a site has 2008/9 etc are you then allowed to copy it?

WPN

Discodave wrote: »

If a site has 2008/9 etc are you then allowed to copy it?

haha, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Its the year it is copyrighted as.... if I copyright something 2012, then it could be argued it wouldn't be copyrighted but anything copyrighted in the past (unless it has expired) has copyright on it.