I'm thinking about learning how to create

*Neko* · #1 2006-01-28, 23:12

Webpages professionally.

Any tips on learning how to do it and following a study about it??

Greetings,
Jesse.

ChaosFish · #2 2006-01-28, 23:35

I'm still far from being professional, but that's the way I learnt what I know about HTML: I had someone teach me the basics (mostly <html> <head> <body> <table> <tr> and <td> tags), which is enough to create a page. Then I used a html creating program called Dreamweaver, but since I wanted to learn, I never used it's "WYSIWYG" (what you see is what you get) feature.
So basically I used Dreamweaver for making coding the HTML a lot more comfortable - it:
1. Highlights tags and all in different colors (major +)
2. Auto-suggests possible ways to finish what you just started writing - so even if you have no idea about the possibilities a certain tag has, you learn what they are while you're typing
3. Has a mark-up validato and a target-browser validator, so you can check any time if there are errors in your documents
And of course, it probably has lots of help files, but I didn't check those out.
Now, everytime I want to make something in HTML which I have no idea how to do, I simply Google for the answer. You'll be surprised how many relevant sites pops up when searching for "html help "minimum height"" (random example).

That's it, and in my opinion this is the best way to get to know HTML. If you want to be professional, I think you better start as amateur because that would be the first step.

If you already know how to create websites, feel free to ignor all I just said

Purple Sheep · #3 2006-01-29, 00:41

Try http://www.w3schools.com/

*Gustav Sweden* · #4 2006-01-29, 02:11

Chaos: He said creating webpages professionally

.

Neko: I suggest that you check out some books from an academic course in the subject and then beg/steal/borrow/buy those and learn yourself.

*elmuerte* · #5 2006-01-29, 10:48

w3schools is aweful, don't use it.

Creating websites (design) isn't difficult, most of it is just practicing a lot.
I suggest to buy\borrow a book about XHTML and CSS. I don't know any good books on this subject. It's all about "tricks" with CSS. The XHTML part is rather simple because all you need to do is organise the data in XHTML tags and follow the rules on those. The CSS is what makes the pages look good and that's the hard part.
The difficult part of creating webpages profesionally is getting work to do so.

These links are important:
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/
From there you have find often great other resources.

*Neko* · #6 2006-01-29, 15:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by El_Muerte

w3schools is aweful, don't use it.

Creating websites (design) isn't difficult, most of it is just practicing a lot.
I suggest to buy\borrow a book about XHTML and CSS. I don't know any good books on this subject. It's all about "tricks" with CSS. The XHTML part is rather simple because all you need to do is organise the data in XHTML tags and follow the rules on those. The CSS is what makes the pages look good and that's the hard part.
The difficult part of creating webpages profesionally is getting work to do so.

These links are important:
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/
From there you have find often great other resources.

Is it so hard to find a job with it?

LBAWinOwns · #7 2006-01-29, 15:58

Homepages could easily be created with programs. So noone are really ready to pay for such workers, also it could be like it just needs one coder for 1 day in companys to make a homepage.(im just guessing it is so, so don't take this words so seriously).

I also think the thing is to have nice design, cause thats what really matters.

Please note that i just guess that it is so

*elmuerte* · #8 2006-01-29, 16:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neko

Is it so hard to find a job with it?

As a steady paying job, yes it is. There is a lot of compition in the field of webdesign and website development. If you are going to freelance, what a lot of webdesigners do, you will need good contacts in order to reel in a job. You can also work as employee, that way you don't have to do any reeling, but you need more than just webdesigning skills. Because there are a lot of people out there that can do the same. So don't bet your money on just webdesigning.
Try to pick up related things like skills with Photoshop\GIMP or Flash.

The most difficult part of business is getting customers.

wacko · #9 2006-01-30, 01:45

"Website development" as a profession is a lot of subjects combined, here are some that come to mind...

- Business skills (getting customers and keeping them happy, making a profit)
- Consultancy skills (interviewing, feedback)

- Psychological knowledge (how do people react to things)
- Interface design (ease of getting information)
- Graphical design ('on paper')

- Technical design (Photoshop, XHTML, CSS)

- Technical backend (PHP, MySQL)

If you would want to hold a steady job in website development, I guess you would either:

1) Be at least pretty good at all of the above points. In this case you could start a company and work for yourself.
2) Be really good at one or a few of the above points. You'd probably work in a team or a company.

Of course there a lot of people and small businesses out there who need basic websites and aren't really demanding, and you could probably make some money out of those if you'd learn XHTML/CSS and some graphics tool, but it's not something you can rely on as a steady income even as a part-time job. Unless you happen to have a really great source of customers of some sort.

If you'd want to study 'website development' I guess you could do computer science or information science, with a bunch of multimedia related courses. There are a few truly dedicated website development studies out there, but they're really limited in number of accepted students, and you need to show you have bigass talent.

*Neko* · #10 2006-01-31, 18:10

How about doing website design more as a sidecourse and focussing on programming itself? I am very new to the subject but I really like to see the possibilities before I start, hence the topic.

Is there any job possibility as a programmer in a certain language such as C# ?

*elmuerte* · #11 2006-01-31, 18:36

One language is as good as the other (except for VisualBasic).

What level of education are you aiming at?

*Neko* · #12 2006-02-01, 19:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by El_Muerte

One language is as good as the other (except for VisualBasic).

What level of education are you aiming at?

Probably HBO.

*elmuerte* · #13 2006-02-01, 20:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neko

Probably HBO.

(note for the non Dutch: no that's not the USA TV station, finishing 'HBO' will grant you a Bachelor degree)

You probably want to look into "multimedia and design" stuff, no idea what it's actually called. But it has a high level of "art" stuff and hardly\no programming. But probably you can choose to follow some computer science courses.

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