Hey guys, I am making this thread because I am very interested and new to the world of being a web designer, and am looking for help. Can anyone help me? I have tried watching numerous tutorials and all that kind of stuff on youtube, but it gets very boring, and they do general work instead of the kinds of stuff I want to do. I just want to be able to create my own websites while having a great understanding of how things work and come together on a website. I have Adobe Dreamweaver CS4, which I guess can help, but I am pretty lost in this whole thing. Any help is greatly appreciated.
If you want to be webdesigner, you have to learn PHOTOSHOP AND HTML, CSS, LATER you can learn javascript, jquery. Photoshop is used to design the outlook of website(nowadays) Dreamweaver is the visual editor to code website in HTML. if you want to become a designer these are the approach. If you want to become a web developer. you may have to learn asp.net or php. ms sql and mysql.
Yes, I know, and I was looking for someone to help me learn the basics, as well as some other "techniques" and tips.
if you really want to learn from basic, leave dreamweaver, take notepad++, and start learning HTML and CSS from VERY basic. It will help you handle some major problem for web designer in the future like PSD converting concept, styling with CSS, etc. After that you can choose between learning PHP or Javascript first, but both are actually needed and popular. Tips, I don't think it's can considered as tips, but AFAIK the only word you need to understand is 'learn'. that's all.
the poetry of code, in dreamwever you just need to do some clicks and it's there. you don't (or I guess not yet) understand how to do that.It's visual, and because it's visual, you can't really understand the code structure. And when it comes to PHP and JS, most of your time will be spent on make and modify functions and code structure, and it can't be done in WYSIWYG editor.
You can use notepad++ it highlights the code. Dreamweaver helps you with code completion, but there are more lightweight tools than dw Also, make some goals - like "I want to make a page with red header, two sidebars and a footer". Without them you will wander round and round.. First you need to learn css. Follow w3schools tutorials and you will start fast
Learning to do code well can take a while. Doing a website design in photoshop doesn't take long, but doing one that's high quality, takes a really long time to do. It's taken me nearly two years to get where I am today. If you're looking at tutorials and finding it's boring to learn, it's not for you.
I'm in, just about, the same boat as you. I decided to make a website 17 days ago and now my site is almost a complete site (granted I used open source stuff for most things that required php. No need to reinvent the wheel on those complicated things ). Much of that time was spent researching, not only on web design, but hosting, domain names, etc. I first started with youtube, as you did, then I went through all of the html and css sections of w3schools.com. After that, I searched through sites looking for ideas and inspiration. Next, I downloaded GIMP and made a layout of what I wanted to make my site look like. Finally, I started designing in notepad++. When you can't figure something out, google is your friend. Firefox is likewise a great help with the addons colorzilla, web development tools, firebug, and measureit. I'd have posted links to everything for you, but apparently I'm not allowed yet. Edit: Oh yea I have to agree with KimKiyaa. You can't skip to the last step. At first the site your design is going to look like garbage. But as you go along, you'll get more familiar with the code and get better ideas. And while I say that my site is almost complete, I mean that it's functional enough for people to use, but not a professional site. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles yet. I'll continue to design when I'm 'done'.
Dreamweaver always made script language coding easy but Notepad++ is a better choice to learn from the beginnning.
beeing a decent designer can be long or short way.... it depends on how hard you are trying and how much time you are investing. the best way would be to work on some templates and use the things you produced and learned by trying to make some own things. after that play around with the basics and own ideas. what will help is look at some websites that show some works of other guys and get into the different styles, try to reproduce them to understand how to get something done like that and after that you will create a way of thinking that lets you make good stuff automatically
No, if you want to be a webdesigner you have to learn about graphic design first, then Photoshop, HTML, CSS, javascript and jquery later. kmac, do you have any experience or education in graphic design in general to begin with? If not, you need to start there.
Learn more about what some one, but good. And the rest of you to explore the process of examining one. Knowing all this know nothing!
Develop a good eye for design. If you have a good eye for design, you can make beautiful web pages with only basic Photoshop and Dreamweaver skills. There are sites out there that have been obviously created by people who are experts in Dreamweaver, but who have no clue about aesthetics. Set up a bookmark folder in your browser for nicely designed sites which you can use as references. Start here: http://www.coolhomepages.com/ (not an affiliate of mine, just a cool site)