Web Design Tools

Get a Free Page

Start small with a free web page offered by either your own isp or one of many web portals.  Most offer an on-line web site builder tool through which you pick the motif you like and replace sample text with what you want to say.  Dedicate the page to your favorite pets or whatever, you can even get daring and upload pics of them!

You do this all without knowing any HTML or any Web Dev tool.  You do get experience with uploading files and images should you decide to add to your basic page.

Once this page is completed, you can either View Source from your Internet Explorer toolbar or use File/Save As... to download the entire package (html & images) to your local hard drive.  From there, you can study what was created for you and get a basic sense of the HTML tags that form a Web Page. 

Top

Learn Basic HTML

Make some changes to that page in Notepad or similar, add lines, change colors, etc. You can get by in HTML knowing about 15-20 tags.  Check out this on-line tutorial or Ray's modest HTML 101 pages.

While one can be a Web Designer without knowing any HTML or even ever seeing any HTML, it is not advisable.  Knowledge of HTML will allow you to customize web pages with features beyond what most Web Design tools offer.

Don't be scared off by HTML!  HTML is not a programming language, simply a document formatting language. HTML is   similar in substance to the menu-driven options available in Microsoft Word^® like <B>old, <Hn>eading, <P>aragraph, etc.

Top

Start with Simple Tools

Now that you know how a web page looks from inside, it is time to investigate the WYSIWYG tools that are available.  Some are free!  Microsoft at one time offered Front Page Express as a simple web page editor.  It is still available here.  It looks and operates much like Microsoft Word^®.  Netscape® offers their Composer product free also.  Many free and shareware web page editors can be found at ZDNet.com and similar download portals.

Top

RAD Suites

RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools normally have something of a learning curve and are for the more experienced developers or one who has completed a course in their use.  The most popular tools, Macromedia's Dreamweaver (MX)®, Microsoft Front Page^® and  Adobe GoLive^® are but a few of the RAD tools available.

Working with built-in templates and page wizards, one can create professional looking pages in short order.  The most complete packages can run several hundred dollars.  If you are a student or teacher, look to academically priced software to spare yourself much of that cost.

Top

Play in a Sandbox

Wouldn't it be cool to have your own web server space with your own personal domain to experiment with?  Must be real expensive, right?  Not at all, with Doteasy.com simply by registering your domain name, e.g. yourname.com with Doteasy, you are eligible for 20mb storage space, 10 email accounts, ftp access, plug-ins and more for no additional cost (The preceding was an ad, by the way). They are hosting this site at present.

For a few dollars more a month, you get database access, server side scripting capabilities and a gig of storage with Doteasy.com.  Then you will feel like a real pro!  Other companies offer similar deals, though I have found none that match this price.

Get an ftp package from WS-FTP to facilitate uploading your files to your web hosting service.  

If you don't know what all the above means, you soon will!

Top

Graphics Packages

Graphics help to enhance the appeal of a site and at some point you are likely to want to add an image, animation or artwork to your website. 

Microsoft's Paint which comes free with Windows will allow you to work on gifs, jpegs and bmps, three popular web image types.

Jasc used to offer Paint Shop Pro Lite/Special Edition versions for free download but appear to have stopped. That is a shame, Paint Shop Pro 4 had pretty much everything that you needed.  Later versions are a bit bloated, but presumably offer much more functionality.  In any case, you can still download a timed trial version from Jasc.

If you ever bought a printer, scanner or digital camera, no doubt it came with some image editing software that you can use to resize and manipulate images.

However, don't overdo bandwidth clogging animations and large graphics, they are still a pain for those poor souls with 56k or worse!

Top

Programming?

This is a tough one....  Not everyone is meant to be a programmer, not everyone can program else there would be a lot more competition for those jobs not yet outsourced overseas! Some background with a programming language certainly helps in Web Design, but it is no longer a necessity.

After all, all the good JavaScript has already been written and appears to be available in the public domain.  All you need to do is copy and paste.  RAD packages write code behind the elements that you design and you need never be exposed to this code.  Nonetheless, an understanding of programming would be helpful.

 JavaScript probably is the best language for the neophyte Web Designer to tackle.  It is relatively simple to learn and certainly has its uses in web pages.  With all the overloaded OOP environments in common use now, there is really no easy starting language for new programmers to get acclimated to programming with.   Unless you want to dig out an old QBasic book...... Problem with Basic is that it has no relevance to the task of Web Design, though it will make VB, VbScript or ASP seem like a familiar cousin.

Top

Multimedia - Advanced Tools

Audio, animation and video do have some use on a web page provided they are not overused.  Again overuse is the key word.  A fancy Flash animation is not appropriate for every single site and your favorite song is likely to annoy me if it is forced on me.

Top

What Next?

What is next is to try to get some use out of your newly acquired skills.

Set up pages like I do just for the fun and experience.  Find non-profit organizations or schools without websites or whose websites have gone unsupported and offer to create/maintain a site for them for free.

Make sure your work is recognized by search engines, a whole other topic unto itself.

With your own domain, work on your server side skills so that you can interact with your visitors.

More to come.....

Top

Web Q & A

UvObjects

Pics Galleries

Terminals

Site Map