Teach me web design, web programming. I envision using msnbc.com, (or equivalent), as a sample and learn everything on how they made their website. I pull up msnbc.com and look at the source code and see many things I don’t understand. Also, I really don’t understand how they position “things” exactly into nice looking areas. I don’t understand CSS. I have to learn more script.
I’ve made many websites but I use a “where ever it falls it falls” attitude. I did the html coding myself. Recently I’ve started using Dreamweaver 4 which helps me position things but I don’t want to learn web coding like this.
I will pay for lessons. Cash or goods or English lessons. I have several sporting item goods which I would more than double pay you with.
You want to learn the right way to code HTML? Excellent. You’ve already made an important step that, say, 95 percent of people who make sites – including and perhaps especially the so-called pros in Taiwan – never take.
Taiwan has some great graphic designers and lots of great tech geeks. So why do almost all of its websites suck so badly? (Well, a lot of it has to do with Frontpage in the hands of hacks, I know.)
Before you shell out your money or hand over your catcher’s mitt, however, you might want to take a look at a few more resources.
Since you already know some HTML, you should probably focus first on learning CSS. You can start with the Webmonkey tutorial. It’s old but still a good introduction.
Once you’ve absorbed that, head over to Tenlong bookstore near the Presidential Office to buy a copy of the essential Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, by Eric Meyer. It goes for NT$1260. Asking for a discount should get you 5 percent off. (Not much, but it’s something.)
Don’t look to figure out framed, table-heavy sites filled with proprietary code like MSNBC. Find sites that follow standards, and start there. Beware anything associated with Microsoft – not that the company bears the mark of the beast or anything like that; it’s just that those sites tend to be coded for IE rather than for the Web. This is a crucial distinction.
You might want to read some of the articles (esp. those around No. 100) at A List Apart.
For an introduction to design, you could do much worse than something by Robin Williams (no, not that one).
Save scripts for later.
And be certain to get a copy of the free HTML Tidy.
All right Cranky! Thanks for the links, especially that Tidy one. I was just getting ready to post about my site which I created in FP2000… can’t figure out why a simple page would take 30 sec to load on 56k.
quote:Originally posted by cranky laowai:
Beware anything associated with Microsoft -- not that the company bears the mark of the beast or anything like that;
Of course it doesn’t bear the mark of the beast. It is the beast. I’m just kidding. Although barely. =p Seriously though, FP is definitely the worst thing you can inflict upon yourself when trying to build a decent website. Dreamweaver isn’t half bad though. But if you want to learn HTML or CSS, just buy a book, any book, and dig in. Both are easy to learn without really any help. You probably won’t need to get too indepth into CSS either since then you’ll start running into browser and OS compatibility issues. Ugh.
Oh, and you also might want to pick up a book on design. Creating Killer Web Sites by David Spiegel isn’t half bad. You can have your HTML and scripting down pat but if you’ve got poor design sense, your sites are still gonna come out ugly.
Unless Siegal’s revised that book in a major way in the past couple of years I’d give it a miss – unless you can look at it from purely a design perspective and not as an approach to coding. It’s full of pre-CSS hacks that do ugly, ugly things to your code and site’s accessibility. Siegal has admitted that himself.
quote[quote]You can have your HTML and scripting down pat but if you've got poor design sense, your sites are still gonna come out ugly.[/quote]
Yup. The nice thing about CSS, though, is that if the code for the site is clean, the look of the entire site can be changed significantly but easily.
quote:Originally posted by cranky laowai:
Unless Siegal's revised that book in a major way in the past couple of years I'd give it a miss -- unless you can look at it from purely a design perspective and not as an approach to coding. It's full of pre-CSS hacks that do ugly, ugly things to your code and site's accessibility. Siegal has admitted that himself.
Yup, my point was to get a book on design. I mentioned Siegal’s only cause I couldn’t remember my favorite design book at that moment. “The Non-Designer’s Design Book” is what I wanted to recommend. By Robin Williams (no, not that one). Short, sweet, and informative. I just noticed that she also has a Non-Designer’s Web Book which should be pretty good too.
I spent a long time taking my web page off FrontPage drugs, with heavy
doeses of html-tidy and the w3.org validator. I even got rid of any
tags, plus I decided not to learn style sheets too. Anyway,
now I’m back in control of my website, out of the clutches of
FrontPage, et al. Yup, hand crafted pure wholesome HTML 4.1 “strict”
mostly. No too. No added hormonal cattle feed etc.
My gawd, my post had angle brackets in it causing problems, I will try again.
I spent a long time taking my web page off FrontPage drugs, with heavy
doeses of html-tidy and the w3.org validator. I even got rid of any
FONT tags, plus I decided not to learn style sheets too. Anyway,
now I’m back in control of my website, out of the clutches of
FrontPage, et al. Yup, hand crafted pure wholesome HTML 4.1 “strict”
mostly. No SCRIPT too. No added hormonal cattle feed etc.
I’m just kidding. Although barely. =p Seriously though, FP is definitely the worst thing you can inflict upon yourself when trying to build a decent website. Dreamweaver isn’t half bad though. But if you want to learn HTML or CSS, just buy a book, any book, and dig in. Both are easy to learn without really any help. You probably won’t need to get too indepth into CSS either since then you’ll start running into browser and OS compatibility issues. Ugh.