Learning web design, HTML, CSS, etc...

[POWER]

When I first started SEO, I came from a sales position. Sales is not my strong suit. Im much more of a technical type of person. So we thought that I would do well in this type of work. However, the only thing I ever knew about the internet was how to surf it.

Now I learn pretty quick and I think Im more naturally skilled for technical stuff, I just need to learn.

What is the best way to learn web design, HTML, CSS, XHTML, etc... anything, EVERYTHING I need? Should I take college courses? Or are the online tutorials enough for someone to master these things? Or should I just do both??

Did you guys all go to school to learn this stuff???
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[adamgraham]

The best way to learn is to give your self a project. For instance I like the gradient effect of the windows update site atm so when I have a little time I will build a simple site that makes use of that effect. For your first project just build a website and try to make it look good. Html is pretty simple! I think at first it is probably best to craft them by hand using something like notepad++. Once your comfortable with the language then move on to using the like of dreamweaver because those tools will do some funky things with the language that are harder to understand.

Goodluck!

[bigdam]

am lookin at doing a web design night course too if u need dreamweaver give us a shout

[Callisto]

this is a great website to learn stuff for free:

W3Schools Online Web Tutorials

[cableguy2]

You tend to find that most professionals are Web Developers or Web Designers...

Developers create the backend of the site like payment processing and extracting information from databases etc

Designers are artists that paint the picture of what the site will look like and convert it into a HTML layout

Start with html, i have attached an example of a well-formed xhtml page...

Use the w3c validator on your pages, use firefox with the Web Developer toolbar by Chris Pederick, its great...

In my opinion you could learn everything you need to know without going near a college, or a "how to learn HTML in 30 seconds" style book, they teach many bad habits..

There are TONS of tutorials teaching you to use things like <font> tags which have no place in modern sites, the ONLY place you'd use them is for a site which had to be 100% accessible but we're talking things like the Barclays Payment gateway where they don't rely on javascript or anything...

All tags and attributes must be written in lowercase, don't use pre written scripts that you don't understand on a live production site, they are good for learning though...

Get yourself a copy of EmEditor, it automatically highlights the tags and attributes as you type and as you learn to use it you'll spot mistakes you've made purely because of the way it has highlighted a line of code, EG:

alert('I Love Javascript, It's Really Great');

Thats not valid and if you use IE you'll spend hours trying to figure out whats wrong, in EmEditor (or any other good syntax highlighting editor) it'd look like this:

alert('I Love Javascript, It's Really Great');

You'd notice straight away that it was wrong, as soon as you escape the apostrophe it'd look like this:

alert('I Love Javascript, It\'s Really Great');

Hope That Helps..

If you (or anyone else) need any tips or help with stuff feel free to PM me...

D.