Well, it's all relative Arjun. I have a friend sitting next to me right now, and to her (yes, she's female, honestly!) I'm good with computers. You lot probably wouldn't rate me that much though.
Well, we all have to start somewhere.
When I started programming, I used to try to copy other work that impressed me, until I was confident enough to use my own designs. Its pretty much the same with web sites. I would suggest looking at learning php & html.
I would also try to NOT use packages like frontpage. Most of my sites are coded with notepad. (Although Dreamweaver can be OK)
What would the evil snack be?
The Forums would be no fun without say; a huge argument about whether crisps/peanuts are better.
"Crisppy: the sound of crisps being eaten is far superior to peanut"
"KP384: shut up Peanuts are better and they always have been!!"
"Crispfan745: Is it a coincedence that KP384 has the letters "K" "P" at the beggining of his name, I think not :(
I think we have been invaded by devil worshipping peanut eaters"
[ This Message was edited by: guesser on 2004-09-20 17:20 ]
On 2004-09-17 15:05, fogartylee wrote:
Well, we all have to start somewhere.
When I started programming, I used to try to copy other work that impressed me, until I was confident enough to use my own designs. Its pretty much the same with web sites. I would suggest looking at learning php & html.
I would also try to NOT use packages like frontpage. Most of my sites are coded with notepad. (Although Dreamweaver can be OK)
I use a rather old Go Live 4 because I like Adobe's interface, although I always have to change the source code of even my simplest sites by hand to make them remotely compliant with W3C's HTML 4.01 standards...
Just copy and paste any URL into this page and it'll tell you if your site is decent HTML or not. The site also does similar checks for CSS and all that too. It's quite simply a must!
(As an example, try the speccyspoilers.co.uk URL in it, if you haven't seen the buttons at my site already, a very simply laid-out site by any means. Then try a few links from the numerous "web design" sites out there...)
I've found a lot of "cut and paste" javascripts from some dedicated sites on the internet are uncompliant with W3C's standards too and have to be changed.
When I started doing design for web, I didn't particularly want to learn HTML - I wanted to rely on WYSIWYG HTML editors. Eventually, thanks to the W3C, I discovered that making it look OK in Internet Explorer was not good enough, and I'm quite glad that Go Live is so inadequate in a way because this has forced me into learning some decent HTML techniques - the challenge to get it right made it much more interesting.
I still don't consider myself anything like an expert at web design, but I'm better than quite a few "professional design agencies" out there charging twenty times as much.
I took my old rubbish art/design site offline for a total revamp months ago, it looked crap anyway and was lacking content. It's about time I finished it and got it online again 'cos I'm skint and in need of work badly! :cry: (sob!) I need to get my head around PHP a bit better next, methinks.
At least now I've got a PC that's powerful enough to render my "3D gallery" that's been sitting complete but unrendered on my old Mac for over a year - that's gonna be my showcase :) ...
Got ripped off for the last couple of web design jobs I did (waah!), so I've taken a step back to plan it all a bit better this time before "relaunching" my freelance business - one obvious change will be that I've learnt not to do a website for anyone in future without some money up front. Can't trust anyone these days! :mad:
I agree, PHP is definately worth learning. www.phpbuilder.com is a good start, especially the forums.
The advantage is that you can run an apache server on just about any OS, and install PHP with it. This way you can easily test the website on your localhost before uploading.
As for WYSISYG, it is OK for designing layout, etc., but something like frontpage adds sooo much crap to the HTML.
I would try to avoid template sites as well, unless you like to see how they are put together to do your own.
Comments
The best advice I can give: learn HTML and CSS. :D And there's some JavaScript included, but that's not difficult to figure out.
Concerning fonts, if you look at the source it reads: font face="Arial,Helvetica".
[ This Message was edited by: Paul van der Laan on 2004-09-15 17:14 ]
I'd have to brush up my CSS though
Also, I'd need to create graphics for the page. I can see this is going to be a big undertaking.
I rendered the Speccy and WOS typography in a 3D modelling application. You don't want to know the hours I spent tweaking the buggers..!
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
Ahh yes. Clumsy Colin. How much I have to thank him for...
Colin
When I started programming, I used to try to copy other work that impressed me, until I was confident enough to use my own designs. Its pretty much the same with web sites. I would suggest looking at learning php & html.
I would also try to NOT use packages like frontpage. Most of my sites are coded with notepad. (Although Dreamweaver can be OK)
The Forums would be no fun without say; a huge argument about whether crisps/peanuts are better.
"Crisppy: the sound of crisps being eaten is far superior to peanut"
"KP384: shut up Peanuts are better and they always have been!!"
"Crispfan745: Is it a coincedence that KP384 has the letters "K" "P" at the beggining of his name, I think not :(
I think we have been invaded by devil worshipping peanut eaters"
[ This Message was edited by: guesser on 2004-09-20 17:20 ]
http://validator.w3.org/
Just copy and paste any URL into this page and it'll tell you if your site is decent HTML or not. The site also does similar checks for CSS and all that too. It's quite simply a must!
(As an example, try the speccyspoilers.co.uk URL in it, if you haven't seen the buttons at my site already, a very simply laid-out site by any means. Then try a few links from the numerous "web design" sites out there...)
I've found a lot of "cut and paste" javascripts from some dedicated sites on the internet are uncompliant with W3C's standards too and have to be changed.
When I started doing design for web, I didn't particularly want to learn HTML - I wanted to rely on WYSIWYG HTML editors. Eventually, thanks to the W3C, I discovered that making it look OK in Internet Explorer was not good enough, and I'm quite glad that Go Live is so inadequate in a way because this has forced me into learning some decent HTML techniques - the challenge to get it right made it much more interesting.
I still don't consider myself anything like an expert at web design, but I'm better than quite a few "professional design agencies" out there charging twenty times as much.
I took my old rubbish art/design site offline for a total revamp months ago, it looked crap anyway and was lacking content. It's about time I finished it and got it online again 'cos I'm skint and in need of work badly! :cry: (sob!) I need to get my head around PHP a bit better next, methinks.
At least now I've got a PC that's powerful enough to render my "3D gallery" that's been sitting complete but unrendered on my old Mac for over a year - that's gonna be my showcase :) ...
Got ripped off for the last couple of web design jobs I did (waah!), so I've taken a step back to plan it all a bit better this time before "relaunching" my freelance business - one obvious change will be that I've learnt not to do a website for anyone in future without some money up front. Can't trust anyone these days! :mad:
The advantage is that you can run an apache server on just about any OS, and install PHP with it. This way you can easily test the website on your localhost before uploading.
As for WYSISYG, it is OK for designing layout, etc., but something like frontpage adds sooo much crap to the HTML.
I would try to avoid template sites as well, unless you like to see how they are put together to do your own.