HTML and Website Design

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Right now, I am learning HTML with Video Professor. I have also gotten training videos for Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop produced by a company called Keyko. If you want to design webpages for clients how important is knowing HTML? I am investing quite a lot of time in learning it and I find it a little harder than I expected. I am sure you use this in web programming. One other question. Do you use visual basic in website design?
Thanks.

You will not use and web sites do not use visual basic. That programming language is used to write many programs but not web coding.

Websites that use code/animation/effects or all of that, they use Javascript/AJAX or Flash, and of course CSS.

You'll be better if you learn CSS, because HTML is horrible to mantain.
CSS separates the code from the visuals, so it's easier to mantain and expand.

Uhh.. uhhhh.. uhhh *Desperately raises hand in air*

Just to be clear, what I think computerlove meant to tell you was that you will have to know BOTH. CSS doesn't do diddleysquat without HTML and vice versa. They are complementary technologies. Here's what you will need to know to start:

HTML (don't learn using WYSIWYG editors; real men use Notepad or Komodo Edit )
CSS
Javascript basics

Then:
Photoshop
Flash
Illustrator

Then:
PHP
Ruby
Perl (maybe)
MySQL
SQLite
Running a Linux server

Don't let it intimidate you. Start with the first group and it will lead you to the others automatically when you are ready.

Very good list, covewrs the essentials. But I would (as a Ruby programer put Ruby (and the Rails framework) first. It's easier to learn than PHP and more powerful.

But all depends, what exactly you want to do. Deliver the whole website? Or just doing the design?

If you want to deliver the whole site, you must learn HTML/CSS to it's full extend. And get at least an overview of those background processes on the server that are used to store data (that's PHP, Ruby, Python and some other languages for. JavaScript is important too, since that's the language that makes the frontend move. (eg clicking one of the emoticons left to the input box, making this appear in the text like that: is done in JavaScript.

If you're only in design and deliver photoshop work to some programming company, then you can ignore that and get some rough overview of HTML/CSS, just good enough to know what's possible, what's difficult to implement or what just can't be done.
1/2 the designers we work with do not even know that much. They just deliver some graphics and leave the job to tell the customer that it can't be done to us

These things rock:

<blink>Seizure!</blink>
Background music that automatically activates.
Flash! Flash made HTML obsolete.
alert() popups saung "Please don't leave!" when focus of the window is lost.
Web 2.0 shiny buttons!!

LOL!



thx, that's exactly what I wanted to say. I was sleepy so I left many things out, thx

I'd also recommend to Silver_meteor to learn Fireworks, easier than Dreamweaver. It outputs mostly graphics, but is a good starting point.
And of course you'll need to know at least Photoshop to do some good designs (if you're also going to design the sites, not only code them).




dude, you rock =D

If you don't have HTML down, don't even get started on Adobe Flash, Microsoft SIlverlight, JavaScript, CSS, or anything more complicated. HTML is the bare basics. Microsoft Visual Basic can technically be used to develop ActiveX controls, which can only be used in Internet Explorer on Windows, but you really wouldn't want to do this.

I am going to go through the HTML Lessons then go on the learning Dreamweaver DVDs that I have. I don't have fireworks. I am learning HTML from scratch using notepad.

good luck

I'd suggest using dreamweaver or any other html editor, so you can see the code and the design at the same time, so you get a better idea of how does the code change the design.

The w3c web group makes a html editer. Cost a download. Go here
http://www.w3.org/Amaya/ will help to learn good coding

Adobe Dreamweaver isn't really the "next step" after learning HTML; it's just a particular HTML editor that has WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editing and other features to make writing HTML and CSS easier.

Instead of plain old notepad I'd use an editor with syntax highlighting, makes looking at the html/css much nicer. A good one is Notepad++ and its free to download.

I wouldn't worry too much about things like php/ruby and MySql until you get html/css down followed by javascript. You can make really nice sites without flash. I'd leave that alone for the time being as there are plenty of free open source flash projects like slideshows and what not you can use instead of making one yourself. If you start delving into Javascript, I'd recomend using an existing library such as JQuery. It will save you a lot of time in the end and you won't be reprogramming what has already been programmed. It will also save you a lot of headache with the different ways browsers do things by making it the same.

There are plently of websites that have downloadable html/css templates you can look at to see how things are done as well as tons of online tutorials.


If your market is going to be local small businesses then you can easily get away with only knowing html/css. I've found that most won't care so long as the site looks good. You can then start adding in more fancy things as you learn them.

As a professional web designer and developer I can tell you HTML is VERY important.



HTML, and programming in general, is just like any other language. It takes time and practice to understand it.



HTML is the foundation of every web page. It is how a web page is structured. Knowing HTML at the code level will help you resolve problems you will undoubtedly encounter. I've encountered web developers who use Dreamweaver's What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get interface to build out web sites then when they encounter a problem they don't know how to fix it because the problem is at the code level; and they have NO IDEA how to troubleshoot HTML there.



I think you might be referring to Visual Basic Script otherwise known as VBscript, or its distinct cousin ASP. If that is the case then yes you'll likely use it, but only if you want to. There are other languages like PHP, dot-net, cold fusion, java, and so forth... all of them are basically the next step above HTML. My advice would be to first learn HTML.

In my ten plus years in the web industry I've designed and developed over one hundred sites. You can see featured examples at www.kxmode.com