What to learn next?
I know HTML pretty good right now, and whatever I dont know I just look somplace and find it. I'm wondering what to learn next that would help me out with building websites and making them look cooler/more interactive. I can use Photoshop pretty good, and learning Basic and school right now.
necrotic posted this at 20:39 — 24th February 2003.
He has: 296 posts
Joined: May 2002
Hmmmm, I learned PHP after HTML. You might want to do that or JavaScript. I'm taking on JavaScript now, it can be really nice to add stuff to your page.
[James Logsdon]
Busy posted this at 21:03 — 24th February 2003.
He has: 6,151 posts
Joined: May 2001
Learn XHTML and CSS
the idea of a website should be informative, not "look cooler/more interactive" ok interactive is good, but a sites number one thing is content, learning to display the content, control it and maximise it's protential is the key.
Eye candy is fun and has it's place but without a solid structure it will all fall apart.
You say you know HTML pretty well, can you make a layout which will validate or come close with only a few errors (we all make them), is your coding clean and tidy, can you make sites accessibly by everyone including people with disabilities? these are the things that no one sees but is very important.
It's like a builder, he makes the frame of the house, makes the rooms etc then it all gets covered with walls and paint etc, no one sees it but without it the place would fall down.
Everyday is a learning day
necrotic posted this at 22:08 — 24th February 2003.
He has: 296 posts
Joined: May 2002
Wow! Glad you posted that, I have something new to strive for! Actually, I've been striving for it for a long time. I'm still a long way away. I can make a Valid HTML 4.0 site, but it doesn't always work in other browsers. That's my downfall. I'm stuck in this mode of "everyone uses my resolution and browser". It's hurting my design skills, and making my designs less useable. I've gotten better and making it compatible in more than IE now, but I'm getting into JS and that'll be another leap for me.
CSS is great. I learned it a long while after HTML. All I knew for awhile was how to change the color of links. That also hurt my design capabilities. But I was only 12 when I started, I just wanted to do what looked cool. So I used the most crappy WYSIWYG editor evar: FrontPage. They looked decent to me, but the code was horrorendous and only worked in IE 4+ (or whatever was out then 0.o). I assumed that when you said HTML you already knew CSS. But I didn't think of XHTML. I should start looking into that, too. I'll do that after JS, since I've already started with it.
Structure is the almighty ruler of your page, without you have nothing. Busy's analogy was a great one to use.
[James Logsdon]
paintballdude13 posted this at 22:35 — 24th February 2003.
They have: 42 posts
Joined: Feb 2003
Well I havent made any layouts myself, I'm been taking like free layouts and editing them to what I think looks best and is what I want for my content. My websites work in IE and Opera I know, dont know about any other browsers which is one thing I'm going to look into. So do you think I should work on like designs and layouts before I tackle something else?
TOBART posted this at 01:54 — 25th February 2003.
They have: 42 posts
Joined: Dec 2002
I'd agree with what most people have posted. Get your html skills as good as you can. I just recently started learning CSS and PHP this year. Check out http://www.w3schools.com and go through the learn html, learn css, and learn xhtml.
CSS is incredibly useful, you'll be modding things you hardly even thought about before and it leaves your coding incredibly clean.
paintballdude13 posted this at 02:16 — 25th February 2003.
They have: 42 posts
Joined: Feb 2003
Alright TOBART I'll go through the HTML one just to refresh my memory and make my skillz better, and then I'll go onto CSS then XHTML.
Busy posted this at 03:36 — 25th February 2003.
He has: 6,151 posts
Joined: May 2001
XHTML is a day lesson (just lower case tags, quotes, alt tags and '/' for single tags)
If you want to get really good at HTML, XHTML or even CSS make a web page then when your really happy with it, turn off css, tables and javascript (if you used it) - Opera has option to turn off tables or view in text only browser, does your page still look ok or is at least readable? If you can still make out your pages content then you have mastered the tool (HTML, XHTML or CSS) used.
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