[SOLVED] Web Design noob

[themissinglink1]

Im wondering if anybody knows a good way of learning to design web pages. It doesn't have to be to a high level more of a hobby. A real noob so any advice would be helpful. Do the different languages change how a page loads, works, looks? Is there a recommended language to start? I have heard of CSS, xhtml, html etc are these traditional languages like programming with VB, python, C# etc?

Complete noob as you can tell. Please be gentle :)

Thanks

Chris

[finer recliner]

learn XHTML and CSS before anything else

w3schools.com is epic.

[Barrucadu]

I started on web design by staring at random websites' source and figuring out what did what. I then moved from HTML to XHTML (which isn't really a big change), CSS (which is used to style the page), and PHP (a scripting language useful for databases and suchlike). w3schools and google can teach you everything. alistapart.com is very good too.

[themissinglink1]

Thanks. I think i have a better understanding of what the languages do. That should make it a lot easier to google. Thanks for the response.

[gilgongo]

One thing that you you should also do is to buy a book on interaction design and get to know some of the basic principles of what makes something easy to use. Bear in mind that there is no "right" way of designing for usability, but there are better ways of solving problems than others. Have a look at useit.com for some intersting advice, for example.

I'm sure you will simply ignore this advice though. Most everyone else does, but those who heed it become truly great designers in time. Have a look of the works of such designers at places like nyt.com, vimeo.com, flickr.com. Compare this to the works of mediocre weenies at Amazon.com, ebay.com and expedia.com.

[dragos240]

Honestly i'd have to say start with body and head tags, move up to java script, then css, then xhtml. Thats how i did my share of this.

[Sand & Mercury]

Just learn the absolute basics, take a look at other websites and see how they're made. Your basic tool is XHTML, and CSS when you've got the bare essentials covered. From there, just practice practice practice and try new things one at a time. Make up projects for yourself too!

[kernelhaxor]

I would recomment starting with XHTML, CSS, Javascript. Like others mentioned w3schools is an excellent resource.

Once you are somewhat familiar with those, you can start with PHP and MySQL for which again w3schools is a very good resource. PHP is basically a server side programming language while MySQL is a relational database system.

Gud luck!

[Sporkman]

The neat thing about Ubuntu is you can turn any computer into a full featured web server easily & for free. 8)

[themissinglink1]

Thanks for the great reply's. Had at look at W3schools, looks like a great place to start. I completely agree that a book is also a good starting point and I will look into that.

At Gilgongo: Anyone who refuses good advice is nuts. I agree with you that the designs of sites such as flickr are far superior to expedia etc. useit.com looks a great place to get a hold of how to really impress people and more importantly make your website easy to navigate and use.

Great advice all

Sporkman is there a forum relating to this as this sounds interesting if i get to a stage where a website could be hosted.

As you can tell i am new to ubuntu but so far problem free. I just haven't quite got a grip of what i can really do with ubuntu.

Thanks all

[Sporkman]

Sporkman is there a forum relating to this as this sounds interesting if i get to a stage where a website could be hosted.


http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=888987

8)

In fact, I also have my laptop set up as a web server, for local development & testing.

[themissinglink1]

Thanks very much sporkman :):):)

Although I think it will be a while until i have a website worth switching to a server for and i feel i need a bit more experience on my desktop ubuntu but definitely bookmarking the page for the future.

Again thanks to everyone who replied, i know this must be a question asked repeatedly and your patience is appretiated.

Chris

[Barrucadu]

You may also find www.namepros.com of use - it's a forum for webmasters, and has a nice programming board.

[hessiess]

just dont use tables for layout, dont use frames, dont use formatting tags, dont use WYSIWYG editors and you should be OK.

[miggols99]

Make sure you don't use an outdated website that tells you to have HTML tags like <BODY> and not closing the <p> tag..I recommend you try htmldog.com. It sure taught me a lot :) And please stay with CSS layouts. Tables are just bad bad bad.

[themissinglink1]

Already just from a couple of hours of googling :) i understand what you mean. xhtml seems to be a bit stricter and bad habits creep in like not adhering to case sensitivity, which doesnt matter in html. Not a huge difference from html but enough to confuse me if i read differing sources. Thanks for the links. Everyone has been extremely helpful, to be honest i've come to expect this from the ubuntu community, great forums and patience for a new user. Thanks