a good place to start to learn about web design/html? Is it best to do a course, or are there any good books around? You all seem very computer savvy on here, and if Sheffield really is the internet capital of the UK then I shouldn't let the side down!!!

Sharon

EasyHTML (http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/dwnloads.htm)

I went from knowing nought to website in 48hrs :)

Moon

I also recommend a good book such as "HTML for Dummies" you'll probably find it reasonably priced on Amazon or check the computer book section in your local library (if they have one that's anything like up to date, Hillsborough library still stocks programming books for the flippin' Spectrum!).

I learnt by getting some books out of the Library - the one by Elizabeth Castro is quite good, and I also have HTML the definitive guide here.

thanks all, I'll investigate today

Sharon

Hey Sharon,

A well as books on the subject ... you may find a lot of online resources ... tutorials and reference etc ...

Try googling (www.google.co.uk) for 'HTML tutorial'.

If you're wanting to develop websites ... knowing HTML may not be so important these days (although it is good to have some grounding / understanding of HTML) ... as there are a lot of website development programs you can get that will allow you to create a site from within a nice graphical environment.

e.g. Dreamweaver or Frontpage (Dreamweaver is the better IMO).

Hope that helps Sharon.

Best of luck,
Jamie

Its closing now, but www.webmonkey.com is still online


also creating killer websites by don siegel


and envisioning informations by Edward Tufte

A good way of learning is by looking at the code behind other people's websites.

Its much easier if you use a browser such as Firefox with the Web Developer extension - it lets you view the HTML and CSS code much more easily than 'view source' in IE.

Webmonkey is a good starting place, too.

If you are starting learning HTML from scratch, try and ignore books / sites / tutorials that teach you to lay out designs using tables, and that advocate using <font> tags for presentation. Both these methods are officially deprecated - learn to seperate your content from presentation and you will be ahead of 75% of 'professional' web designers/developers.


Firefox: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Firefox Web Developer Extension: http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/webdeveloper

Originally posted by ncrossland
A good way of learning is by looking at the code behind other people's websites.

Its much easier if you use a browser such as Firefox with the Web Developer extension - it lets you view the HTML and CSS code much more easily than 'view source' in IE.

Webmonkey is a good starting place, too.

If you are starting learning HTML from scratch, try and ignore books / sites / tutorials that teach you to lay out designs using tables, and that advocate using <font> tags for presentation. Both these methods are officially deprecated - learn to seperate your content from presentation and you will be ahead of 75% of 'professional' web designers/developers.


Firefox: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Firefox Web Developer Extension: http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/webdeveloper

How do you seperate your content from presentation !?

Sounds ideal ...

Originally posted by Jamie
How do you seperate your content from presentation !?

Sounds ideal ...

By setting the presentation using CSS instead of in the HTML - for example:


<font face="verdana" size="3" color="#ffcccc"><b>Heading</b></font>
<p><font face="verdana" size="2">Some body text</font></p>

is the 'old' way of doing it - the presentation is intrinsically linked to the content. But if you mark it up semantically:

<h1>Heading</h1>
<p>Some body text</p>

and put the presentation in a CSS file:


h1 {
font-face: "verdana";
font-size: 0.8em;
color: #ffcccc;
}
p {
font-face: "verdana";
}


not only is your code smaller, more efficient to download, but ALL paragraphs will be formatted the same without adding any extra code to your HTML. If you wanted to change the colour of all headings, you can just change the CSS file once.

Plus, because it is marked up semantically, it allows different media to use different stylesheets - so a visually impaired visitor may choose to use a high contrast style sheet, or someone using a mobile phone can have it correctly displayed on their device.

Yep ... that makes a lot of sense thanks ncrossland.

I was wondering more how you can avoid using tables in webpage design ... they always seem to be a central element to me ... at least the way I am going about it.

How do you avoid using tables ... what's the alternative !?

aaahhhh! you're upsetting me now:nono:

off to hide under the bed from the scary computer code:blush:

Originally posted by Jamie
Yep ... that makes a lot of sense thanks ncrossland.

I was wondering more how you can avoid using tables in webpage design ... they always seem to be a central element to me ... at least the way I am going about it.

How do you avoid using tables ... what's the alternative !?

Cascading Style Sheets Jamie.

Using <div></div> tags to define blocks of text and positioning them on the page like this:

<div id="Layer1" style="position:absolute; left:27px; top:25px; width:670px; height:57px; z-index:1">some
content </div>


The best read is (as ever) the O'Reilly book on CSS (The big meaty one)

Web Design in a nutshell is pretty good too - oh and learning some PERL or PHP to do some CGI scripting or PHP pges may be usefull - it adds sooooooo much more to your pages :)

Cool ... and you can do all that from the CSS !?

I am pretty sure you can have CSS with dreamweaver 4 ... but will prob upgrade to dreamweaver MX anyway.

I can feel a re-design of my website coming on ...

(sorry to hi-jack your thread elli_boo_boo ... will be quiet now)

don't worry jamie, i'm taking it all in quietly so i won't make a complete fool of myself with a rubbish site - i'm sure it will all make a bit more sense when i can get to the library:D i'm learning already - didn't even know what CSS was before!!