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Kev Clarke

Member
Morning all,

Having studied design at uni, worked in the industry as a freelancer mainly, i now want to learn web design. So i have more to offer.

Can anybody shed some light on what i need to learn technically, what i need to pass etc... or recommend any courses ideally in Greater London that i can fit in and around work commitments, night classes or weekends?

Cheers guys,
 
Start with the basics of HTML & CSS and how the CSS Box Model is used to create stable layouts. Also make sure you understand semantic markup before you go charging in. Tags in HTML actually have meanings (often totally ignored by the 'drag and drop' or 'just grab a Wordpress template' brigades) and are not just there to make things look pretty. Once you've nailed these two concepts you can move on to some more technical stuff.
 
Would you recommend learning this off my own back, then looking at classes somewhere or do i look at evening classes from the off?
 
clarke creative said:
Would you recommend learning this off my own back, then looking at classes somewhere or do I look at evening classes from the off?
Click to expand...

I learnt what I know off the web and help from people in web dev forums - oh and with a lot of trial and even more error!

It is a massive subject and you can never hope to know it all but there are loads of decent resources out there for learning. I have heard some horror stories from so-called 'web design courses' but I've also heard that some are pretty good so, if that's how you prefer to learn and you choose carefully, then go for it.

Some resources I will recommend to get you started are HTML and CSS Tutorials, References, and Articles | HTML Dog and Stack Overflow but you'll find your own favourite websites I'm sure.
 
Can't add more to what Corrosive's already said other than read about responsive design and mobile design in general. I harp on about Treehouse quite a lot but I think it's the best resource out there at the minute and you'd learn a hell of a lot more on there than any evening school.

Also CSS-Tricks is a great resource.
 
I tried learning HTML a number of times from books etc.. but always gave up after the first few daunting chapters. This time round I started with the W3Schools tutorials and made myself a little idiots guide to HTML and CSS as I went along, I then designed a website and started coding. When I've got stuck I've tried to resolve the issues through google then when I've got really stuck (or really confused) I've pestered people who know what they're doing (cheers Corrosive :icon_biggrin: ). I'm finally getting the hang of it all now and the site's coming on nicely!!

If you decide to go down the route I've taken, make sure you don't make it too easy! Chuck some interesting stuff in there (like a twitter feed) to help push your learning. (on a side note, why is it so frikin hard to find a working twtter feed tutorial online? even the widget developed by twitter is awful).
 
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