Which web-design tools and methods are right for me?
November 21, 2009 by
Filed under web design tools
How should I approach web design?
Suppose want to develop PHP websites and already have a good programming background. How can I make sites *look* good?
Do you recommend a tool? Should I use an Adobe product to design the front-end’s view?
I need to be able to quickly design good-looking, php-driven sites.
You first need to understand that php isn’t used to layout your sites. Its used to preprocess data such as images, html, css, text, etc.
To layout your site, you need to learn (x)’html + css, you do not need to use tools such as dreamweaver, all you really need is some text-editor. See also: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ai7sQCv2ekHo4t.nN17tDDDsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20080721140047AAZH38t&show=7#profile-info-k4kHfXcmaa
You should always write valid code, to the degree possible. Usuallu a few intended errors doesn’t matter, but you should avoid fetal mistakes such as not including a valid doctype.
You can validate your pages using:
http://validator.w3.org/... – General validator, I.E. (X)’html
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validat... – CSS Validator
As for recommended tools the lightweight editors will be to prefer. I simply suggest using notepad++ in bigger projects, and a standard editor like notepad in windows for small projects. Notepad++ has features like syntax highlighting and tapped editing, get it here: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
For CSS there would be tools like Topstyle, which might be of some use. But i must admit that i’ve never really used such tools seriously, see: http://www.newsgator.com/individuals/topstyle/default.aspx
The below collection of links may also be of interest.
http://www.brugbart.com/Tutorials/17/ – HTML 4.01 Tutorial
http://www.brugbart.com/Tutorials/18/ – CSS Tutorial
http://www.brugbart.com/Tutorials/21/ – PHP Tutorial
http://www.w3schools.com – Tutorials/References
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/ – Dave Raggett’s Introduction to HTML
http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/011/firstcss/ – Starting with HTML + CSS
http://www.phpfreaks.com/ – PHP Tutorials/Forum Etc
If you already have programming experience, you won’t have a hard time learning php, the principles are the same. Don’t forget about the reference at http://www.php.net/
Making a website look good is not as important as making it usable to your visitors, to many start building a site in flash, only to end up driving away their visitors, and later discover that search engines have a hard time indexing their sites.
if you have programming background, you chould just use NotePad to create clean PHP, HTML and CSS code. Learn a bit PhotoShop to create some graphics, graphics play an important part in dynamic web design.
you can search for available web template on internet and use those u like as a reference.
Some people prefer use CMS tools, I guess it just a matter of personal preference (like some want drive auto, and some want manual car, there is no clean cut of which is better, it’s personal choice mostly).
BlueBoden, I’m pretty sure the guy knows what php does, he pretty said he was good at it. He just wants to know how to make professional looking templates.
I know how you feel (i am the same way). I am good at programming and coding but as far as graphics go, i couldn’t make a nice looking image to save my life! Luckily for me, I have a talented sister for graphics design. I can suggest what she uses though. Adobe products are amazing for graphics design and templates. Try to get Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator and play around with them until you start to get a good feel for it. Photoshop is raster imaging and illustrator is vector imaging. they both have their advantages over each other but just play around with them to see what fits you.