Web Design Courses Help
jbonifacio (17 pencils) | Wed, 2007-10-03 00:38A lack of web design skills, in my opinion, can potentially be a limiting factor, especially for today's designer. My web skills right now are limited.
I am currently taking and HTML & CSS course as well as a Dreamweaver/Flash course. So far, I've found the courses really easy, especially Dreamweaver. I think I could have just learned from the book!
The school I am going to offers a program in Web Design and Development. The next two courses in the program are Javascript and Flash Advanced. This program isn't even for a certificate - just recognition - which I guess means I can use the credits towards some sort of diploma or degree.
So for the designers here (both web and print), do you think it's worthwhile to continue the program with Javascript and Advanced Flash? Are those skills especially valuable today? Is having a certificate or diploma really important when searching for jobs, or is proof of skill enough?
Looking forward into the future, what skills will designers need to meet any possible - and likely inevitable - changes in the industry? This is probably a question most of us will be interested in given how quickly things can evolve.
thanks!
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In my opinion, I think web design is not essential but it presents your work very well. When I look at someone's website and its done in flash, I go wow, it looks great. You can make a pretty decent website just knowing only CSS/XHTML with little Photoshop thrown in. Flash isn't essential, but it's good to know the basics.
I doubt they will really need you to do flash work unless you knew what you were doing. flash web design isnt too hard, it requires only little actionscript, some of the simplest looking flash websites look the best to me
Learn as much web technology as you can get your hands on. As a print designer, having web skills saved my job more than once! Now that I'm just a web designer (no more print hassles for me!) I get to focus on designing for the digital realm and I love it. It either works or it doesn't in this space and you are in control, for the most part.
Design your sites to work in Firefox and they will work in all other browsers. Firefox doesn't assume anything whereas IE tries to 'help' your designs work. Not good because it can cover errors, especially CSS errors.
I find no one cares what certificates I might have (only have a 12 year old desktop publishing certificate from an 8 month program!), they only care what work I have done lately, and can I get their jobs done in the future.
Some great CSS sites:
http://www.csszengarden.com
http://www.glish.com/css/
The second site is bare bones, but it's a great primer on how to start designing with CSS. Remember, tables have their place (to line up data) but CSS allows you to edit your entire site design with edits to just one file, so don't design your site layouts in Tables.
Also, Dreamweaver is good for some things (rollovers) but don't let it write all your code for you. It ends up adding a lot of html code you don't need.
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Powerpoint is not a design application
Boot in Single User Mode
Repair Permissions
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Dirt and Rust
Wicked. Thanks very much for the useful advice! I'll check out those sites you mentioned. The importance (or not) of a certificate was one of the factors I was looking at when deciding whether to take the course, or learn it myself.