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

[Deleted User]

Discodave wrote: »

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

I am a little.. I'm being a mean internet troll. Photos != design

Discodave

ringo_24601 wrote: »

I am a little.. I'm being a mean internet troll. Photos != design

confused now :mad:

[Deleted User]

!= means 'not equal to' in several programming language (e.g. Java)

I meant, yes, i am being a bit mean.

Indo77

No one has really spoken about the differences between web design and web development, they are simply not the same thing. I will agree with what many have said that you can't simply call yourself a web designer if you only really dabble in template fixing, however web designers themselves can't call themselves developers because they do a bit of php scripting or work with JScript libraries such as JQuery. Unfortunately many Unis will waste students time by structuring their web course content to reflect a mixture of the two. Personally I find an application like Dreamweaver hidious except in code view and even then I would be sooner working with Visual Studio.

IMO if the OPs interest is in working with programming languages such as C#, Java etc they would be better enrolling on a Computer Science course not a multimedia one. Just to add flash is indeed crap and very inaccessible, you can now do some great flash-like stuff in JQuery that is completely accessible to screenreaders.

getmore4less

I think you also have to seperate out web site design from web base applications.

For site design it helps to know what can be done but don't need to know how to do it.

Gazing_On_Sunsets

I wouldn't call myself a web designed nor developer, but I've always done hobby sites for myself; couldn't afford DW or anything so just learnt to code in Notepad++. And bit by bit, people asked me to do sites for them, so I did; for free as I'm not trained or anything. And it has grown so that now I'm being paid - but what I keep getting asked to do, is REDESIGN/RECODE other people's poorly executed websites! So now I am really grateful that I was too poor to buy DW or FrontPage or anything. I get people come to me because they had a website done a few years ago, and now their designer is no longer working, and I go in to the site and INEVITABLY it's a template used by someone jumping on the bandwagon who didn't learn enough techie stuff, and are no longer in business. A recent job was a site for someone, who'd had their original site done a year ago, and they asked the designer to make the borders on the photos white - and the designer said it couldn't be done! Because they didn't know the place to swap the hex codes.

So my advice - from my own experience - is get good, know your stuff, learn the code. Also, w3 schools are good for starting but contain some critical errors and are NOT anything to do with W3 consortium. See here: http://w3fools.com/

getmore4less

The other issue with anything web based is compatability.

Make sure it work in compatible browsers.

(so that means don't test with anything from MS till last)

Indo77

Gazing_On_Sunsets wrote: »

So my advice - from my own experience - is get good, know your stuff, learn the code. Also, w3 schools are good for starting but contain some critical errors and are NOT anything to do with W3 consortium. See here: http://w3fools.com/

Thanks for that link, looks interesting. I am a web programmer but I would not call myself a web expert because it's impossible to be an expert - it's a continual learning curve. You stick with the same stuff you will get left behind.

WPN

ringo_24601 wrote: »

!= means 'not equal to' in several programming language (e.g. Java)

I meant, yes, i am being a bit mean.

Yes but programming isn't design, so I do not see where you were trying to go with confusing some people.

James129

Indo77 wrote: »

No one has really spoken about the differences between web design and web development, they are simply not the same thing. I will agree with what many have said that you can't simply call yourself a web designer if you only really dabble in template fixing, however web designers themselves can't call themselves developers because they do a bit of php scripting or work with JScript libraries such as JQuery. Unfortunately many Unis will waste students time by structuring their web course content to reflect a mixture of the two. Personally I find an application like Dreamweaver hidious except in code view and even then I would be sooner working with Visual Studio.

IMO if the OPs interest is in working with programming languages such as C#, Java etc they would be better enrolling on a Computer Science course not a multimedia one. Just to add flash is indeed crap and very inaccessible, you can now do some great flash-like stuff in JQuery that is completely accessible to screenreaders.

Is spot on.

Although web developers and web designers do share common skills like html and css, its the web developer who actually is responsible for the whole website barring graphics. He will normally have front-end skills like javascript/jquery along with html and css. And backend skills like C#/Vb.net/Java/Sql/XML and much more.

Anyone who aspires to be a web designer should lookup for Andy Clarke, he is one of the best British web designers out there. He advocates that html/css should be used early during design phase for mockups rather than just putting pretty images together.