Web design...Getting started

[reiss]

So I've noticed a lot of people here interested in web design. I have 5 years experience running my own development company creating dynamic database driven sites, so I though I'd point people in the right direction.

Learning resources
W3 schools is a good place to start - look here
Lynda learning is probably easier as they host video tutorials - look here
They also have tonnes of videos on Torrent sites, but that's naughty!

Browsers
Internet explorer is a pain due to it's lack of standards compliance. What looks ok in IE8 may be broken in IE7 but it is the most popular browser, so you have to bear this in mind.
Download firefox, safari & google chrome to test your design in multiple browsers.

Resolution
This is a hotly debated subject - what size shall I make my site? My Google Analytics shows me the screen resolution of each visitor to my sites, they vary wildly of course, making sure your site looks good at all resolutions is a true art form! I generally design a site that will fit a 1024x768 resolution nicely as this is probably the most common low resolution used.

Software
Dreamweaver is by far the most popular design tool, for good reason; it's very good. Understanding what the code is doing though is vital if you are to become a good designer. You could also use any old text editor.
CoffeCup is a pretty good free editor. Get it here

You will also need FTP software to upload pages to your server. You could also set up an FTP folder on any windows or mac machine.
I use WiseFTP as it came free with my hosting plan.
FileZilla is free. Get it here
For Mac users, classic FTP is also free. Get it here

For the more adventurous that want to create database driven sites using PHP & MySQL, you will need to set up your computer as a web server (or localhost), either get an all in one package called XAMPP (windows/lynux or mac) or download Apache web server , PHP , MySQL & a nice database GUI tool called PHPMyAdmin
XAMPP will contain all the above tools and is a lot easier to set up.
I don't use ASP net, so can't help you that.

Image editing
You will no doubt want to put images on your web site, but first you must get these images down to the smallest possible file size whilst maintaining quality. Photoshop's 'save for web' is the best way to do this.
General rule of thumb:
Photos save as Jpg
Graphics save as Gif or PNG. PNG is much better at displaying images with transparencies. Remember to reduce the amount of colours used so that the image still looks ok whilst reducing the file size. You don't want 1MB images on your site unless your making a zoomed view; not everyone has broadband.

I'll start another thread called 'Web design...Design basics' so that you lot start designing standards compliant, proper CSS styled web sites.

Good luck, hope this helps.