Learning Web Design/Development

elrasho

elrasho

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Im looking to broaden my horizons and have always wanted to learn web designing and developing. Ive got Adobe Create Suite CS3, whats the best way starting to learn?

Ive got some Lynda.com tutorials, but was looking for something that goes through the beginner to expert route
 
There's no such thing as beginner to expert... Tutorials can only take you from beginner to somewhat educated stage.

Sure, Lynda tutorials would probably be fine. Just whatever you do, don't get hooked so much on using a single application. What I would suggest is actually learning HTML, PHP, etc and using those in your website. No professionals use the drag and drop methods seen in Adobe apps all the time, but have to custom code a lot of stuff.

So start with Lynda, and then just go out there and start making websites. I'm sure there are tons of groups out there (mods perhaps) that are looking for some web developers. To gain experience, do a job for them for free, and ask for only credit at the bottom of the page. That's what I would do at least, and I know a few of my friends have done that, and are now really great web developers.
 
Well, I'm in the process of learning web design and development. I'm quite impressed how much information I soaked up without even attempting it very long.

What I started with is learning html... then xhtml and what the differences between them are. After that I spent some time making sure I understood exactly what CSS was and how I could use it to full advantage, and of course paying attention to limitations and compatibility between browsers.

Now, I've moved on to a book called "Build Your Own ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site Using C Sharp and VB".

I'm interested in ASP.NET, so this book has been amazing for me. Well reviewed, proper code inside. I've learned a lot so far, and am nearly through its 700 pages. Once I can afford my own ASP.NET web host for some web space, I am going to get a website up!

The only problem with all this? I have no website ideas yet. I think learning html, xhtml(really what you want over html, xhtml is pretty much the same, just enforced syntax similar to xml), and CSS are quite easy.

Just find some good resources(I think I used Lynda.com for xHTML and CSS, and it's usually a good beginning resource), and try to develop some good ideas, and you should be good to go. Also make sure you practice everything you learn, as you go. Making test websites in your IDE of choice.
 
Don't learn php. Learn ASP.NET.

Raz, check out discountasp.net. Best ASP.NET host I've had yet... you can get a year for $90, though that doesn't include SQL server :\
 
DreamThrall said:
Don't learn php. Learn ASP.NET.

Raz, check out discountasp.net. Best ASP.NET host I've had yet... you can get a year for $90, though that doesn't include SQL server :\
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've been browsing hosts for a while now. It seems that discountasp.net is my best solution, but god damn is it expensive! I mean, 10 bucks a month extra just to get one sql server database. That's insane!

But I guess it'll be worth it... they are at the cutting edge of technology.

I will eventually get an account with them probably... when I can actually afford 20 bucks a month... :O

I was thinking about some other places like easycgi.com or appliedi.net, the latter which gives me a sql 2005 database for under 10 bucks a month, but it has less bandwidth and the database is only 100mb.


So are you currently with discountasp.net? Right now I'm using aspspider.net to practice my skills for free with them. It's a great learning tool made for developers simply for learning purposes.
 
I am. And you'll find that the stats aren't the thing to really be concerned with until you start getting a LOT of visitors. 100mb for database doesn't seem like a lot, but unless you're storing files in binary blob columns, that should last you quite a while. For bandwidth, as long as you aren't streaming movies or music to a lot of people, whatever they give you won't be an issue either.

The most important thing for me, as long as the stats and price are reasonable, is the support - and while discountasp.net doesn't have phone or live chat support, their ticketing system works very quickly in my experience. Plus, I really love knowing that I can work with the newest .NET stuff without having to worry about them not supporting it.
 
Yeah see that's a plus, because I do plan on learning AJAX. Silverlight not so much, since I have no need for that media experience.

I didn't know you did .NET, as I figured very few if any people on the forums did. But that's so cool. I'll have to hit you up if I have any questions I can't answer myself :p
 
elrasho said:
Im looking to broaden my horizons and have always wanted to learn web designing and developing. Ive got Adobe Create Suite CS3, whats the best way starting to learn?

Ive got some Lynda.com tutorials, but was looking for something that goes through the beginner to expert route
Click to expand...

there's a big difference between designer and developer ..they're two different jobs. Learning CS will not teach you how to make websites, it'll teach you to use photoshop illustrator and the like
 
Oh yeah, Stern is right. There is certainly a big difference between a web designer, and a web developer.

Designers are the artistic people, who sometimes know how to do all the coding aspects.

The developers are rather talentless when it comes to the artistic side, but are wizards when it comes to coding it all.

I myself will eventually fall into the latter half.



And yes, I know I'm wrong in thinking that they are just skillsets... but that's the way I look at it... designers, people who excel at the artistic side, and developers, people who excel at the coding side.
 
Raziaar said:
Yeah see that's a plus, because I do plan on learning AJAX. Silverlight not so much, since I have no need for that media experience.

I didn't know you did .NET, as I figured very few if any people on the forums did. But that's so cool. I'll have to hit you up if I have any questions I can't answer myself :p
Click to expand...

I wouldn't bother with ASP.NET AJAX imo... I've been using it since it was called "Atlas", and I've found that it isn't particularly good at anything. The UpdatePanel is really nice for slapping something together quickly, but it's REALLY bloated - it essentially sends the data for the entire page every time, even if you don't need it, which on larger pages can slow things down considerably since the browser has to re-render everything. The AjaxControlToolkit is alright, but I've found that it can be pretty buggy at times. If you were picking anything up right now, I'd start messing around with ASP.NET MVC (it's official now, and in the new .NET 3.5 service pack) instead of WebForms, and use jQuery for the client/ajax-y stuff. jQuery is worlds ahead of ASP.NET Ajax/AjaxControlToolkit... plus, you can use it on any website, not just .NET.

And you're welcome to send me any .NET questions - I'm what some might consider a "senior" level developer. Also, if you start using jQuery, I've made a nice little control that loads the scripts you need - they've split the framework up into bits, so you tell the control which effects you need, and it automatically references them. It'll also reference the unpacked scripts for a testing environment (to help with debugging), and reference compressed scripts for a production environment (cuts size down by like 80%).

And @ developer vs designer - I'm definitely a better developer, but I'm not horrible at design ... this was all me: http://socialcash.com/Register/
 
DreamThrall said:
And @ developer vs designer - I'm definitely a better developer, but I'm not horrible at design ... this was all me: http://socialcash.com/Register/
Click to expand...
oopsmk3.png



Hmm..
 
learn HTML, XHTML, and CSS first, and get used to writing clean standards-compliant code. and I recommend you use notepad to begin with, nothing fancy like dreamweaver etc. After that you can get into dynamic stuff like ASP.NET or PHP.
 
Vegeta897 said:
oopsmk3.png



Hmm..
Click to expand...

Yeah, we haven't done IE6 compatibility yet because the vast majority of our clients are using a modern browser and nobody's complained yet. I'm pretty impressed that's the only issue...

Wiseass.
 
DreamThrall said:
Don't learn php. Learn ASP.NET.
Click to expand...

Do you have any kind of reasoning behind that?

PHP has grown to be the most popular web programming language in the world. The biggest upside to it you might ask? It's not owned by M$, totally open source.

Although it is true that web design and web development are 2 different areas most web designers should know how to code their HTML. I've always done both and I've done well, why pay someone $100 to code my design when I could do it myself in a couple hours? Plus when designing you need to know how the HTML code will be laid out.

To get started I would recommend you get used to photoshop and html. Start off simple, build a simple interface. But if you are expecting to be an expert web designer in a couple of weeks you might as well give up now. I've been doing this since around 1997 (just saying that makes me feel old as hell) and I still have a lot to learn especially since the technology continues to evolve. But it is a great field to work in, especially if you can bring in money running your own web sites.
 
imho you cant teach someone design ..you can teach them technique and or theory but if you dont have it you dont have it


bad designers never become good designers
 
Designing a webpage has never been one of my strong points. I just build it up and change things as I go along. I never stick to a certain design because it properly won't work out and I'll usually end up changing it all anyway.

I made a MySQL database recently using PHP to send data. It works how I want it to but looks basic and not very pretty. I would recommend you learn atleast CSS though. It's not very hard and it makes a big difference to the layout of the page.
 
thanks people, looks like im gonna get learning HTML/XHTML first.. gonna look into Lynda.com and Sams Teach Yourself series
 
No Limit said:
Do you have any kind of reasoning behind that?

PHP has grown to be the most popular web programming language in the world. The biggest upside to it you might ask? It's not owned by M$, totally open source.
Click to expand...

Here's basically how I feel...

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001119.html

Maybe to some, not being owned by Microsoft could be a good thing, but in this case, the Microsoft .NET team has done an amazing job maintaining the framework, adding features and most importantly, providing documentation (I keep the latest SDK open on my second monitor). The framework is a joy to develop on, and Visual Studio is definitely a top-notch dev environment. Plus, having a tool like Lutz Roeder's Reflector (also free) is even better than manually wading through the actual source code.

It's pretty ironic that you referred to Microsoft as "M$", since the .NET Framework is $0 to download. Ditto SQL Server Express and Visual Studio Express for your language of choice (C#, C++, J#, VB.NET).
 
CptStern said:
imho you cant teach someone design ..you can teach them technique and or theory but if you dont have it you dont have it


bad designers never become good designers
Click to expand...

I think that's only true to some extent. Obviously you need to have some creativity to do any kind of art. But even creative people suck at their first web designs, I look bad at my 10+ years of designing and it has been a constant evolution. I learn something new every day.

DreamThrall said:
Here's basically how I feel...

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001119.html
....
Click to expand...

Don't get me wrong, you will find that I'm probably the first person here to defend M$. I am shooting for a MCSE certification in the next couple of years and have been doing a lot with microsoft products lately. Yes, the .net framework is free, they really don't have much choice in that regard. If they charged money for it nobody would program in .net.

I skimmed the article you posted and it's biggest complaint seems to be that PHP is too easy. This is such an insane point of view, it really drives me nuts. There is nothing easy about PHP. Yes, most 13 year old kids can write a php program. But just because something displays on the screen like it's supposed to doesn't mean that the program is properly written. When you get a good programmer to work on PHP it is just as good as any other text processor, be it ASP, Java, Perl, whatever.

So don't get me wrong, I am not knocking ASP. I actually have an interest in learning it eventually. But you shouldn't be knocking PHP, it has grown to be one of the most robust text processors around because of the open source community built around it. And with the way M$ has been doing business lately (making their technology more expensive with each release) open source will continue to gain ground. Yes, M$ has released express editions of their software. But those express editions are hardly suitable for the real world (I know this for a fact in the case of their SQL server, I can't comment on .net).
 
Someone should make a tv show like X-factor for all the useless mongbubbles who believe they are graphic designers. And all the losers should have their hands cut off to stop them being tempted.

My advice is to learn 3D modelling and animation... it's much more fun and it pays more.
 
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