Starting web designing

[manavo11]

If someone was thinking of starting web designing what would you suggest? I know MySQL, I've seen some PHP but don't know a single thing of HTML... What next?

Thanks

[mendhak]

HTML + XHTML
Javascript
CSS
XMLHTTP
Photoshop/PaintShop Pro/Good imaging software

And good design practice.

[mendhak]

I'd also, separate from the above post, say that ASP.NET is what you should be learning, as opposed to PHP, but it seems like you've already chosen your server side language.

[Pino]

For everything i've developed PHP has been good, although I have never used asp.net so couldnt go into the advantages etc.

Really if your HTML is poor you can use tools such as dreamweaver to get a grasp of the basics. But now sites are moving to using CSS etc.

Design skills are pretty essential obviously.

It completly depends on what site your designing to what tools you use!

[RobDog888]

Whatever you do, dont use FrontPage.

Using ASP.NET is a good choice as its the newest, almost most popular I think, editor.

[gigemboy]

The problem with ASP.NET is finding web hosts (if you actually want to run the site in the real world, rather than just a test site you have on a development machine) Much easier finding cheap domain hosting services that have PHP/MySQL, as those are both very low-cost (Free) to obtain...

[manavo11]

I'd also, separate from the above post, say that ASP.NET is what you should be learning, as opposed to PHP, but it seems like you've already chosen your server side language.

Money is always an issue

[manavo11]

HTML + XHTML
Javascript
CSS
XMLHTTP
Photoshop/PaintShop Pro/Good imaging software

And good design practice.

Would you suggest a book or is google my friend? For any/all of these?

[manavo11]

For everything i've developed PHP has been good, although I have never used asp.net so couldnt go into the advantages etc.

Really if your HTML is poor you can use tools such as dreamweaver to get a grasp of the basics. But now sites are moving to using CSS etc.

Design skills are pretty essential obviously.

It completly depends on what site your designing to what tools you use!

What is CSS exactly? HTML is above and beyond poor... Can't say it looks too hard looking at what Dreamweaver does but...

[RobDog888]

Cascading Style Sheets.

You can get the Web Developer version of VB.NET Express for free from MS downloads.

[penagate]

http://www.w3schools.com/

Learn HTML, then CSS. Keep all your HTML pure content, and apply the presentational CSS after you've got the HTML right. It will save you a lot of trouble in the long run.

IMO, PHP is far easier than ASP, and much more widely supported - it's generally a better platform altogether.

[manavo11]

Cascading Style Sheets.

You can get the Web Developer version of VB.NET Express for free from MS downloads.

OK, so CSS is short for Cascading Style Sheets, but what is it?

Thanks for the link penagate, looks good

[penagate]

No probs.

CSS is a declarative language used to apply presentational properties to markup languages, such as HTML, XHTML, XML, etc.

Basically, if you have an element in your HTML code like a paragraph

<p>This is a paragraph.</p>

you use a CSS selection rule to apply properties to that element, such as the following rule which will apply to all paragraphs to give them a grey background and navy coloured text.

p
{
    background: gray;
    color: navy;
}

Or for just one paragraph, you could use an ID

<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
<p id="my-paragraph">Yay.</p>

CSS:

/* insert the CSS from before */

#my-paragraph
{
    color: red;
}

in the second example you will end up with both paragraphs with a grey background, the first one will have navy text and the second will have red text.

Etc.

[RobDog888]

It does things like set a color scheme for a page of site. Like here at VBF we have blue hyperlinks and orange mouseovers and purple visited colors. You can customize schemes like that so each page has a scheme or a particular table or row has a special scheme etc. You can apply css to most of the other tags in html. There should be some sites for CSS tutorials too.

[penagate]

If you want check out my XHTML and CSS tutorial
http://www.forums.spiralmindsinc.com...?showtopic=365

I'm can always use suggestions for improvement to it

[manavo11]

Looks like I have enough info to get started now. Thanks guys

[penagate]

Oh yea and if/when you want to learn PHP then check out the introductory tutorial on php.net.
http://www.php.net/tut.php

I learnt from that with no prior knowledge of server-side scripting.

[manavo11]

Will keep in mind for when I can finally make a half-decent looking page with more than just a few lines of pure text

[gigemboy]

Check out this link for an example on what CSS does... click the "Switch Themes" list on the top right corner.

http://www.web-wise-wizard.com/site-...heme_Switching

That is merely substituting a different CSS sheet, and you can see how all the colors, background images, etc change. It seperates the information from the presentation. You can get a lot more in depth too. You can re-position html elements anywhere you want using CSS, so you can essentially have a totally different format, with, say, a navbar across the top with one sheet, or ... a navbar across the left side on another, all without changing a single line of HTML code. All the changes were made inside the CSS style sheeet.

[manavo11]

I think you forgot the link

Edit: You added it

Edit2: Nice stuff

[gigemboy]

I put it back