Recommend a web design course

S

simbob

New Member
I've been working in the design industry for 15 years, mainly in in Graphic & Product design, but in recent years have got more involved in designing websites (mainly fairly simple CSS led presentation type, front end sites, with some basic PHP/Java thrown in), which originally started several years ago as a hobby/interest, but is fast becoming my main motivation and i'd like to take this further, but as i am pretty much self taught i feel i need some formal education/training in order to do it credibly as a professional.

I work full time as a senior designer and have family so not really in a position to jack it all in and start again.

I don't feel a 10 week evening course at the local uni is sufficient and would like some suggestions as to any good distance learning (or other) courses, which would give me a good formal grounding to produce good quality websites to a commercial standard.

No sales based replies thank you!
 
Phreaddee

Phreaddee

Super Moderator
Staff member
Yeah, certainly would not pay for w3schools.

Your local college course will start you in the right direction (hopefully)
Just remember, if your teacher tries to teach you “table based layouts“, he is wrong, and challenge him to teach correct, modern methods.

Once youve done that course, its basically exp after that. If youve done a good stint as a gd, you need to get your head around designing for web and designing for print are miles apart.
Likewise graphic intensive sites might look good, but again bad practice. Minimal imagery with the design, use css as much as you can.
Oh and your client base will be pretty similar to what you are used to as well.
 
Frank

Frank

New Member
And some schools teach people to use tables. W3Schools is good if taken at a grain of salt and not warshiped as the word of web gods.
Click to expand...
W3 Schools doesn't recommend to use tables, other than for presentation of tabular data. And I can't believe that universities would teach otherwise. Also, I don't worship W3 Schools as web Gods. I even see omissions and an occasional (non-fatal) error, but it is the only site in its kind in terms of completeness and didactics.

Granted alot of the stuff on fools is nit picky and advanced
Click to expand...
Indeed. In terms of gravity and compared to the enormous size of W3 Schools, the weaknesses summed up on W3 Fools are insignificant. The authors of the latter are making fools of themselves, i.m.o.
 
Phreaddee

Phreaddee

Super Moderator
Staff member
And I can't believe that universities would teach otherwise.
Click to expand...

...well, it was only about a month or two ago, that i remember a guy coming to this forum needing some help with his website.

as part of the brief it stipulated that it MUST be made in a table based layout.

...need i say it again 2 MONTHS AGO!
so yes, they are indeed teaching such tripe.
 
S

simbob

New Member
Thanks for all your comments, i have done a few w3schools tuts and found them a great ref source. Upon delving into my first web design 'learning book' several years ago, I took the decision to skip the 'tables' section and that CSS was clearly the way forward.

My biggest problem is not knowing what is considered best practice when working in 'the industry' (having worked in in an industry where everything is subjective), but i guess when it comes to web sites it's more finite, they either work or they don't!

One thing i would ask is this; how much would i be expected to know as an individual? I saw a job advertised recently (not for me) asking the applicant to have skills in: HTML, XHTML, CSS, Java, JQuery, PHP, MySQL, Dynamic & static, SEO, Joomla/wordpress, Dreamweaver, photoshop, fireworks, indesign, flash and some others! Is this realistic/normal?
 
benjamin.morgan

benjamin.morgan

New Member
Probably not. Especially if they really meant Java and not Javascript. Java is a programming language based more with applications.
 
B

Brian Angel

Member
Frank said:
Indeed. In terms of gravity and compared to the enormous size of W3 Schools, the weaknesses summed up on W3 Fools are insignificant. The authors of the latter are making fools of themselves, i.m.o.
Click to expand...

*Sigh*.... Okay so, before you throw stones, that site was created by Paul Irish, as a web designer it’s a name you should make yourself familiar with. But hey, if you’re content with empty webpages and W3 validation on pages that DON’T validate, even though the site itself is a template, so be it. So before you call people fools who are light years ahead of your ability and call what they point out as trivial, maybe you should go back and read what I said and take a good look at the fools site unless you plan on being content as a mediocre web designer with no ambition to learn more and move forward correctly.
 
B

Brian Angel

Member
Yes and no. That list seems like a list I see allot now. Myself and at least ONE other person I know are anti-flash activists, so normally I don’t even look at that. InDesign is more of a non-web design package so again, don’t over worry about that. XHTML I wouldn’t lose sleep on since HTML5 is the future of the web. Java as mentioned earlier probably refers to JavaScript, different animal all together so you can put that in with Jquery, not the same but you can learn them together. So start with the big 3, HTML(5),CSS(3), and JavaScript(JQuery might be best for starters).

Don't let it overwhelm, learn to do it by hand and to rely more on CSS to make it look good than images everywhere. And learn to hand code before using software like Dreamweaver, it will help you in the long run to have a better understanding of the code.
 
C

che09

New Member
Phreaddee said:
...well, it was only about a month or two ago, that i remember a guy coming to this forum needing some help with his website.

as part of the brief it stipulated that it MUST be made in a table based layout.

...need i say it again 2 MONTHS AGO!
so yes, they are indeed teaching such tripe.
Click to expand...

Haha, I think I remember that 1. You even dared that guy to challenge his teacher! Lol. :D:D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top