CSS and WebDesign

[ColaDesigns]

I have fairly decent design skills when it comes to photoshop and building a custom logo or template. However, I never have been able to pick up how to use dreamweaver or other software to develop a website. What confuses me the most is CSS.

Does anyone have any tips or links to sites that gave them the first breakthrough in learning how to create a simple website? As of yet I have paid to get work done for me.

Thanks.

[mojojuju]

To me, CSS seemed perplexing at first, but after you learn it, you may never want to go back to using tables and old school html tags.

If you're a "learn by doing" kind of person, I think you may find the css section of the w3schools website (http://www.w3schools.com/css/) very educational.

In particular, I like their "try it" editor where you can test out all kinds of CSS properties. Here's one related to CSS background-color declarations (http://www.w3schools.com/css/tryit.asp?filename=trycss_background-color) . You can edit the html in the form on the left side of the page, click the button, and your results will show up instantly.

That's just one thing that might help you. Dreamweaver makes CSS editing really easy, so tool around with it with some basic documents. You can pick up CSS pretty quick with Dreamweaver.

[BoogalooDude]

Yep, you gotta learn CSS, it makes clean code light pages that can be changed easily and search engines are factoring it into the search algorithms more and more.

Check out Dan Cederholm's stuff, his Web Standards Solutions book is what finally cracked my CSS for me.

[wishmaster22]

My Problem is that I can build sites , but have a hard time building professional looking headers. I am not sure where to get the pics to edit and I cannot figure out how to change the shape of a stock pic to something that is rectangular, say 400px by 800px wide and keep the whole image without cropping it and keeping it from getting distorted and grainy. I have PS 6 and Corel 10 . Any tips on building good headers as well as a good hopefully free source of images, please let me know.


I would try the demo on this site for css. It comes with a great tutorial and is very helpful.


www.westciv.com

[ColaDesigns]

thanks all,

and wishmaster im not bad at header design, contact me for tips or i could even create some for you.

[DesignCrafters]

I definitely back up the post mentioning w3schools.com. CSS was intimidating when I first saw it but as soon as I dove in I realized it's all show ;) I definitely recommend going through their series of tutorials (or just going down their reference list works wonders too). I use them to reference languages and scripting I don't use that often.

:cool:

[mojojuju]

I am not sure where to get the pics to edit and I cannot figure out how to change the shape of a stock pic to something that is rectangular, say 400px by 800px wide and keep the whole image without cropping it and keeping it from getting distorted and grainy. I have PS 6 and Corel 10 .

Well, if you need images, take a look at stock.xchng (http://www.sxc.hu/) . They have free images, alot of them. Just make sure you read the license for each image, because some of them aren't free (most are). As far as cropping, learn your photoshop. You'll find many tutorials for PS - more than you'll probably find for Corel. It's pretty simple once you get the hang of it. The best way to learn most features in photoshop I've found is to just use it, play around with it. Test out all the tools to see what they do.

[Miles Baker]

Check out Lynda.com (http://www.lynda.com) for the best video tutorials on Dreamweaver and the like.

I have a monthly membership and if you're disciplined and treat it like classwork you can learn a LOT! What's also nice is if you just want to learn about a specific area within a topic you can do that also.

I am currently learning PHP and the videos are VERY professional.

[BoogalooDude]

I am currently learning PHP and the videos are VERY professional.

Hmm, might have a look at that too. PHP just won't stick for me.

How do you find it when you can't talk to a real person when you have questions?

[Miles Baker]

Hmm, might have a look at that too. PHP just won't stick for me.

How do you find it when you can't talk to a real person when you have questions?

The videos are so detailed that they really leave little, if any room for questions. If you do have quesitons, just go to Google or Ask.com or something I suppose.

[BoogalooDude]

The videos are so detailed that they really leave little, if any room for questions. If you do have quesitons, just go to Google or Ask.com or something I suppose.

ok, thanks for the heads up, I'll check it out.

[alien23]

I think w3schools.com will give all the details you wanted on designing a web page and it is also a very nice web site