I want to try out web designing, but I have no idea where to start. I was wondering if there are people here that can help me out. With all basic stuff, as I couldn't find it on this forum yet. What are the basic stuff when it comes to web designing? What is the format you create (X*Y pixels), what are reasonable sizes for a banner, other specific things or must-know. Anything will help, I have plenty time in the coming weeks to make some web designs, later on I want to try coding them aswell, but that's for later. So yeah, if anyone can help me out on this, it'd be great. Thanks in advance.
There's a lot of great tutorials online, but most of them wont take you from knowing nothing (like I did when I first wanted to learn web design) to being able to create dynamic websites with CSS and HTML. I bought a book called CSS:The Missing Manuals. Takes you through from the most basic explanations of things (tags, selectors, divs, etc), to advanced stuff, and has guides to take you through making a really basic HTML website, and then adding layers of complexity until you have a really professional looking site (has all the content for the site available to download off the web). If you're looking to get good enough to make some money, this would be my recommended course of action. In 2 months I went from knowing nothing, to making designs I could make money off. I've made my money back x100 easily. However, if you want to do the entirely free option, I'd recommend you check out http://www.w3schools.com/, and read up on HTML and CSS, and once you have a basic understanding of how they work, look for some good tutorials on Tuts+ and other tutorial sites. However, it'll take a lot longer and be a lot less comprehensive.
I'll try to get my hands on that book if it's really good, and the websites would probaly help aswell. Thanks alot, are there also some tips on designing the website itself (i.e. by using photoshop)? The layout I mean? What are the sizes and stuff.
I started out by messing with geocities site builder and slowly moving to full html, then other languages after. Take your own pace. W3 schools was a good site at the time.
I was looking for some more insight on how to design a layout in Photoshop CS series, but thanks for your input, appreciate it.
i always start with a 1000x1000px canvas for designs and just start from the top and work down. i look from time to time on deviantart do get some inspiration. you need to have text that is readable and dont use a weird font and you dont want to have big pieces of text. the use of colors is very important too & the amount of gradients you use.
Well just start out with a blank canvas, I usually adjust it later, but start with about 1000pxs w&h. Mess around until you get what you like, through various tutorials and experimenting, and when it's all finished, Do File > Save for Web, and then you'll be taken into the slicing part of the program. From there you can slice the entire canvas into individual images. There's no real right way to do it, short of just trying it out. Save before you start slicing because you'll probably need a few attempts (if you're like me). When you're all finished, it just saves it as an .html file with all the images included in a subfolder and from there, you can edit the index to your liking (and that's a whole other story). That's how I do it, not sure if it's the average method, but it works for me. Hope this helped.
Well there's plenty of tutorials which will teach you how to make nice looking websites in Photoshop, although without knowledge on HTML and CSS, I don't know how much of it will actually mean anything to you. Understanding the back-end of your design dictates how you will design the front-end. These are a few good tutorials on how to make a template in Photoshop. A few have parts in Illustrator, so they may not be of interest to you, but most are just Photoshop. http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/d...ign-a-multimedia-website-layout-in-photoshop/ http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/d...textured-site-layout-in-photoshop-screencast/ http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/d...med-website-design-with-photoshop-screencast/ http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/designing-tutorials/creating-a-cool-3d-web-design-effect/ http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/designing-tutorials/9-essential-principles-for-good-web-design/
The most useful way to build a site would be to learn how to slice a photoshop template and bring it in to Dreamweaver. Any other way of making a site today is just a little primitive. Be sure to learn HTML otherwise you'll never fully understand what Dreamweaver is doing. I still work in CODE view, but the new Live View is REALLY nice. I've been toying with HTML 5 on mobile devices... webkit's where it's at now if you're looking to go pro... all those millions of websites out there are going mobile. JUMP ON THE BAND WAGON!
I Absolutely HATE dreamweaver lol. It always adds slashes in img src. and then i wonder for an hour why no images are showing up lol. Notepad++ is where its at!!
Yeah i agree dreamweaver is a good web development client, it's what i use. It's a great avenue for people who are graphic designers, and coders, because you have a split view and the new live view, which lets you see what your coding is doing in real time. Or you can code the website entirely in design view which is nice for people you are relatively new to html and css. Though i strongly recommend you learn html, cause sometimes even dreamweaver will screw up code, and without some html knowledge theres a lot of things that can potentially drive you nuts.
Dreamweaver is incredibly useful for beginners, as the Live view allows you to visually see changes as you alter code. Unfortunately, Dreamweaver isn't always accurate, and sometimes you'll get massive disparity between the Live view, and actual browsers. I have used a range of different text and web editors, and as far as being a beginner goes, Dreamweaver is probably your best choice. Anyone that complains about it messing up code needs to use less WYSIWYG functions, and needs to learn to organize their code better.
My idea was to start making a few templates in photoshop, and after I get the hang out of it I want to learn coding them. Not designing + coding in 1. But thanks again all for the input, this would help me get started.
