Basic Knowledge - am I trying to learn the wrong things?

[Pursuit]

Hello everybody. I'm about as new to web designing as possible. I'm in school, and have started doing some reading on my own to try to prepare myself for my Web Graphic Design classes before I get there... and also for my own knowledge.

Anyway, I've started with w3schools.com, been looking through threads on forums like this one, and I have access to a book called "HTML, XHTML, and CSS Bible, Fourth Edition" by Steven M. Schafer. I thought it would be a smart move to learn the basics....I mean really learn....and then move on from there, but someone told me that learning HTML didn't even matter anymore because programs like Dreamweaver make it so that someone doesn't even have to know it to construct web pages these days.

I want to make this my career and my point of view is that I should know every aspect of constructing web pages and not have to rely on a program to do it for me.

So my question to all of you is do you think I would be better served jumping right into tutorials for Adobe CS3 and learning the programs, or should I keep reading and learning the codes / languages and learn the programs when I start class?

Thanks guys....

 

[philnolan3d]

This is the site where I originally learned most of what I know back in the mid 90's. Back then it was just owned by one guy, Joe Burns. He sold it years ago, but I believe it is still a good site.
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/

I believe that while you don't technically HAVE to know HTML it's still good to know because sometimes it's just easier to look at the code in a text editor or the code view of a program like Dreamweaver and quickly see a problem and fix it with a couple of key strokes. I was just looking at a site today where the entire page was one giant link. This is a classic problem where for some reason a link at the top of the page didn't get closed properly. In a text editor I could quickly jump in an add the </a> tag and solve the whole problem. Plus sometimes you may not have access to a WYSIWYG editor or don't feel like launching this whole thing just for one tiny edit.

I just redesigned my whole site this week and did it all with the "combination view" in Dreamweaver. It was often easier to cut & paste snippets of code from one part to another, especially when using features that don't come built into DW.

 

[webstream]

Although DW is a powerful design tool, if you don't understand CSS and HTML you will be clueless as too what code is actually being created by the tool unable to control it. Also , since there are a gazillion web sites today SEO is being very important to improve web site reach. SEO really needs a good understanding of HTML and the HTML element attributes. I often see DW pages that have a lot of unnecessary code because the designer didn't realize every time they clicked on something more code was generated. Good CSS designs require going under the hood to manipulate the styles and elements. IMHO, the days of simple HTML in web design are fading away and intermixing HTML, CSS and javascript are becoming the norm.

 

[Pursuit]

thanks...

thanks a lot for your input!! this gives me some direction, and makes me feel like learning the basics isn't useless. i think as i learn more, and actively begin constructing the pages, I'll see what's important to learn and where I should concentrate a bit more.

thanks again.