Web design...

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Hey all,

A friend at work is interested in web design. Actually, he offered to pay me a fair amount of money to teach him web design. And as much as I could use the money... (or to phrase that more honestly "as much as I really bloody need the money right now..."!) the problem is, I don't have a clue about web-design. Not one. Well, maybe just the one. I remember a few html tags from back when I was trying to make my myspace page look tasteful (I believe this task is now the official Oxford Dictionary definition of 'futility'), but really, I don't know anything worth knowing about it.
And sadly, due to my annoying, busy-body sense of "integrity" (), I passed up the offer, and told him I really can't be much help.

But he's still quite keen on learning about this stuff, and was asking if I could suggest anything. So... does anyone know any good ways of getting training on web-design? Has anyone done any courses on this? Are there any recommendable entry level certs or courses or whatever? Any really good books?
Plus, I remember from my Linux days that there are some good free web design tools. Anyone got any recommendations or favourites in terms of web-design kits? (either free or paid for)

I think the guy really just wants to make a website for something.
Appreciate any help!
Cheers,
TZ


ps. I know I could google around for a lot of this info, and local courses and such, but a few good recommendations from a forum like this are worth about 30 pages of google hits. Honestly.

 

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You could do most of it in notepad rather easily, but what you see editors like dreamweaver for example just make the whole process easier. So you do not have to remember 1000s of phrases by heart.

XHTML Strict 1.0 with External style sheets is a basic starting point, it isn't too hard to pick up. In fact, the hardest part is alignment in my opinion, making sure everything is where it should be.

http://psdtuts.com/

Give him that link, I check it daily because it's incredibly helpful with not just graphics design, but literally everything, has a constantly updating RSS feed of the best quality blog posts you can find on everything from Website Development, to the Do's and don't of Web Design all the way to typography of movie posters.

A lot of the code used to make a basic web page to start from is pretty self explanatory, display - inline for example (that's pretty obvious what it does)

Develop your basic skeleton layout and develop from there, best method I found is to just dive straight in and have a bash at it.

Books aren't as much use for web design as they are for Certs, everything can be learned on-line, for free, with copy and paste examples as opposed to a page of code.

http://nettuts.com/

that link is a sister site for the one above, deals with everything from Jquery to Ruby on rails in 24 hours. Just dive straight in tell him.

PS

A portfolio speaks 50x what a certification will, when he has a few designs under his belt set up a cheap web page for his portfolio and include it in his CV for potential employers to visit.

Key thing I always found when doing web design was, don't try TOO hard, you end up constantly adding stuff until you reach the final result and realise "It doesn't look too good". There is no such thing as perfect, and if there is, it is by accident.

 

Thank you very much for the link and the helpful reply.
Just what I need.

Cheers!
(adding reputation)