Budget Ids

Budget Ideas (Instructional Design, E-Learning and things I love)

Web Design Resources

Web design is a very broad area and not the same as it was 10 years ago. Technology changes rapidly and thus changes the landscape of web design. In my experience it is very important for designers to be diverse in their skills.

Recently I took an updated class on general web design because I was interested in hearing what is considered web design today (2014). The instructor broke down web design in a few categories:

  • Generalist – Someone who has experience in core web design concepts in designing a site from the group up.  These skill will also include design skills, planning, building and testing phases of developing sites.  The generalist would understand HTML, CSS, JS and UX.  As a generalist you can be more commercial, you see the big picture and a one-stop-shop.
  • Visual – Someone who specialize in the visual aspect of web design including color, typography, layout and graphic creation. The visual designer would understand HTML CSS, fonts, Photoshop and Illustrator and or other graphic programs.  As a visual designer, you may come from a graphical background.
  • UX (User Experience) – Some one who focuses on human behavior and interaction based on user experience.  These designers have studied human behaviors and designs accordingly.  Some do not have core designs skills at all and can be consultants brought in to help design a site.
  • Interactive – Someone who focuses on creating interactive interfaces with website users.  The Interactive designer core skill set would be HTML, CSS, JS, JS Framework and UX.
  • Motion – Someone focused on creating interfaces that are also interactive. Motion designers would have a great understanding of animation, CSS, JS, Flash.
  • Front End Developer – Designer/developer hybrid who controls site logic and behavior through client-side scripting.  Core skills would include HTML. JS and JS Framework.  There is a blurred lined between designers and developers because of changing technology.
  • CMS Specialist – Someone who specializes in Joomla, WordPress or Drupal. Core skills would include HTML. CSS, JS, CMS and PHP.

In my experience very few web designers specialize in one area. Over the course of your career you’ll pick up new skills and adapt to your work environment. I’ve included some general resources. This is not every resource I use because I have bookmarks all over the place.  As I update my blog, this will grow to include sites I find most helpful.

What now? If you want to get online, start a blog or use an out of the box web hosting site. They are easy to use and mostly no advanced technical skills required. You can expect them to require you to sign up.  Once you sign up, add content, publish and BOOM you’re online.  Some of these solutions are free, but are limited by features, templates, may be ad heavy and limited URL address.  Some will also charge a monthly fee to upgrade all features and may even include a free domain name.

One other thing to consider is social media accounts like Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn and Facebook.  Remember to use your social media wisely.

Blog/Easy Hosting

  • Squarespace
  • Wix
  • Weebly
  • Go Daddy
  • Blogger

CSS – A presentation language, not markup, contains rules that control styling and position of HTML elements, uses selector used to target elements on a page and declaration contains property and values the web browser uses to style an element   p (selector) {font-size: 16px; color: black; } is the declaration box.  The property would be color and the value black.  color: black;  property: value;.  Learn as much as you can about selectors and properties (for specific elements).  Specificity, Inheritance and The Cascade guide how rules are rendered and what happens if there is conflict.

  • http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Overview.en.html
  • http://docs.webplatform.org/ – CSS Guide
  • http://caniuse.com/ – Browser specifications
  • http://css-tricks.com/

Design

HTML5

HTML/Browser Testing

Learning

Web Browsing

Web Hosting

  • Uptimeeobot.com – Monitors website up time
  • Axandra.com – Reverse lookup for domains

Web Validation

  • http://validator.nu/ – This site validates HTML pages.

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