If you’re a novice web designer, or someone who’s just getting interested in it as a possible career move, than this website is for you. Even if you’re a seasoned webpage creator you may discover a few nuggets of information here that will surprise you, or perhaps you’ll have some tips and tricks of your own that you’re willing to share with the rest of us. After all, the internet is a vast digital universe, and this intricate series of tubes is perhaps the most significant technological marvel of our time, at least in terms of it’s impact on our daily lives. And to think it was less than 20 years ago that the acronym WWW didn’t really mean anything to anybody until Tim Berners Lee invented the web in 1989 … and things just haven’t been the same since.
It was approximately four years ago when after being laid off from my job of 14 years, my wife brought home a book called “HTML 4 for Dummies” and suggested I try getting into a field that allowed me to flex my creative muscles for a change. That turned into a night class, which turned into more night classes, and before long I was making websites for a living even though the process of getting to that point turned out to be far more tedious and frustrating than I’d imagined.
As a profession, Web Design has come under some scrutiny with the presumption that anyone who acquires a textbook and applies themselves on weekends is then worthy of the profession, but there are a multitude of skills one needs to know or become familiar with in order to be truly successful in this complex field, and they include HTML (markup language), CSS (the code that styles and positions the page elements), JAVASCRIPT (client-side server language), PHP or ASP or COLDFUSION (server-side languages), and of course Graphic Design, utilizing programs such as PHOTOSHOP, ILLUSTRATOR, and FIREWORKS …
And unfortunately, there’s really no conventional method for bcoming a Web Designer, such as a 2-4 year college degree, but rather a combination of several knowledge bases all rolled into one. Essentially it’s up to you to decide what you need to know, and how you’re going to learn it, and although there’s a plethora of resources available on the web itself, you have to parse through a seemingly infinite amount of information, and how do YOU decide what’s relevant or not ? Usually by trial and error …
In the 3 years since becoming a professional Web Designer I’ve spent literally thousands of hours pouring over the vast array of resources available on the web, and it is a very draining and time consuming process … but what other choice is there ? After a while I began to realize I enjoyed researching web development technology and practices as much as designing web pages, so in the spirit of the global web community that fosters it’s rapid development, it seems only natural to share some of my favorite tools of the trade that the Wierd & Wonderful Web has so graciously provided.
Although you could probably find a lot of this stuff on your own, I’m going to consolidate it all right here, which hopefully minimizes all the unnecessary searching you’d have to do just to discover it for yourself. All you have to do is trust in my experience that what you find here really will help advance you as a web designer, hopefully giving you more time to create and less time endlessly browsing the net, unless of course that’s really what you want to do …
I hope you’ll continue to visit regularly and subscribe to my RSS Feed, because I will be posting new articles and updates as often as time permits, and because I’m plugged into more Feeds, Newsletters, and Community chatter than I care to admit, I don’t anticipate the demands of providing new content will be much of a problem.
There will be Video Tutorials made available by myself as well as links to scores of the best minds in Web Design and Development today, and with everything you need at your fingertips packed into this one website, you should have a generous headstart into the Wide World of Web Design.
Burnsy
