Need to Learn Basic Web design

[kurt_der_koenig]

One thing you want to do also is do research on what screen resolutions your base clientele uses. One thing you want to avoid is having your users scrolling every direction under the sun.

You can use javasript to detect this and go to different pages. However, this is a lot of work and - from my experience - can fail depending on user settings, browser capabilities, etc.

What you want do is find a happy medium for page size that fits your intended clientele. This plays on what others have said here with trying different browsers, etc. Firefox has a lot of website editor tools to check out. Also, you can set up two different screens at different resolutions, two computers, or just change your resolution on desktop. However with the last one, I never find it to be the same as doing other options.

[JPnyc]

You're better off just writing dynamic width sites and avoiding all that detection. Where handheld devices are concerned you probably don't have a choice.

[HYBR|D]

You're better off just writing dynamic width sites and avoiding all that detection. Where handheld devices are concerned you probably don't have a choice.

for mobiles etc just use .js to detect if it's a mobile device or not, if it is then it get's "optimized" version if not then it get's the norm with all the bells n whistles and Ads slapped all over it.

[steve.milner]

Just for the record...

I use a mixture of PHP and raw HTML, with CSS for formatting and prettyness.

And it's all been written in vim.

However that's only for my personal photography sites (see sig below).

The web team I am in charge of at work are all mainly asp.net junkies, but that's a fairly large commercial site.

Regards,

Steve

[omin]

What you need to learn all depends on what you want to be able to do.
For web design all you need to learn is HTML and CSS (good graphics skills also help - like Photoshop, etc). These are only markup and layout languages so in order to do anything other than static pages that are always the same you will need to learn some other languages. In any case HTML and CSS are a MUST and you should learn them very well. Also try to link your css styles to an external style sheet, not add them inline.

You say you can set up an Apache server so I would definately recommend learning PHP. Along with this I would suggest learning about MySQL databases and how to set/retrieve data to/from them using PHP.
Using a mixture of HTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL you can create almost anything from simple sites to full blown complex web applications.

One of the first things I would recommend learning in PHP is how to include pages. This will enable you to, for example, have one file for your main menu and include it on any page with just line line of code. Then if you need to change your main menu you only need to change it in one place instead of changing every page.

The rest of PHP is like many other languages so if you have ever programmed in anything else learning it should be easy. You will find all the standard code structures there (if/then/else, loops, procedures, etc, etc).

There are lots of tutorials and LOTS of reference on the net. Start simple and learn what you learn WELL. There are so many examples of badly designed or badly written websites out there it would be a shame to add to these.

There are many more skills involved in producing a good site than just programming. Graphic design, user interface design, knowing how to keep your pages accessible to as many people as possible, database design, knowing which languages and technologies to use in which cases and, most importantly, being able to implement all these skills together will enable you to make good, useful websites.
Good luck.

[wiskic10_4]

Thanks omin.
Here's what I've got so far: http://www.jeremydean.co.nr

Questions? Comments? Things you'd like to think about?

I'm going to buy a domain as soon as I get a "real job" (This Geeks Mobile gig just isn't paying the bills!).
I've been looking at other sites using modded versions of WordPress, and they seem to be able to do everything I need to do, so I think I'm going to go that direction.

Thanks to everyone who posted.

[Alfonso20]

lots of programs on the internet good luck with it.