Webdesigners

[phacker]

I think some of the skills, you youngsters should learn before applying for a job are: spelling, grammar, and basic language skills. Some of these posts are almost unintelligible.

[koen.mertens]

Originally posted by phacker
I think some of the skills, you youngsters should learn before applying for a job are: spelling, grammar, and basic language skills. Some of these posts are almost unintelligible.

Great! Another language remark! Have you noticed that there are like, people from all around the world in here. Why not all speak French, German, Japanese or Russian. See how you would do! People who come in here want some advice or want to give some advice and I think we should be greatful that they all WANT to speak English! It may be the universal net-language but that doesn't mean everybody has know it like their own mother-language.
And I haven't read a lot of posts where I couldn't figure out what the poster wanted (maybe thát's your problem...)

I'm realy sorry that I'm a bit harsch and personal on this but I realy thought that was a lame remark!!!

-Mettes

[monthigos]

I dunno, my wife is a native born Romanian speaker who picked up English just five years ago, and her typing is easier to understand than some of the messages I've read here. hehe - no offense, of course.

I agree with the changing of the industry. My opinion is learn a skill that is adaptable with the future market and stick with it. It is getting to the point where people are not looking for a jack-of-all-trades, but rather people who are specalized in one area. Why?

Well, lets take a look at the projects people are working on. Today, web design (and most other technology related fields) are massive projects that rarely involve just one person. This is the era of the large team, just like any other field (such as movies or video games). To have just one person do a real money making site anymore is almost ludicrious, considering the immensive amount of time it takes. Almost always the employers split the jobs up between several people.

Right now I do professional graphical web design, as I work with various programmers. But to me it is just a port to other jobs that I want to do, I don't expect to be doing this my whole life.

BUT, that's just my two cents on the whole scope of things from my perspective. And the industry may be in a slump, but there are many people looking for low-cost solutions to market their product. And you, my web friends, are the key. =)

[Witch Dr.]

Originally posted by richp
dont worry about writing it from scatch, i recon thats a waste of time, it takes a few minutes in dreamweaver, it would take u all day to write it by hand, not to mention the amount of mistakes u would make! learn perl or php, thats where u get true value for money!

I agree/disagree with richp. Dreamweaver makes it a heck of alot easier to create fantastic pages. I've been doing HTML from scratch for about 4-5 years and find it quite simple, but like richp sais you can make mistakes alot easier too. Now the thing with Dreamweaver is that not all companies use the same progs and having the basic HTML writing skills is kind of a nice plus (thats just from my point of view). But I think most people here have said the key phrase "The more you know the better". I think it's good to have a little bit of everything under your belt, just incase one thing doesn't seem to work for you you always have another to fall back on.

[richp]

definitely knowing how to write html from scratch ius better then not being able to but i recon if ur gonna learn to write a language ud be better off learing something more powerful like perl or php, just my view

[aversion]

i would definitely recommend learning html or any language well enough that you can write it using notepad, even if you don't. It makes a big difference.

i use dreamweaver/homesite for pretty much all my html editing, but i use notepad for javascripting everytime, just feels better to me.

[richp]

what use is javascript if dreamweaver does all u would probably ever need to use it for?

[AGENT 02]

I guess it doesn't matter what you really use. Pro backend guys (that I know of) tend to use Visual Interdev. Frontend people tend to use Dreamweaver. Either could use Notepad - and many still do. Heck, when I started making sites in 97, there was no Dreamweaver or GoLive. I was forced to learn HTML from scratch and code in Notepad. Nowadays, Dreamweaver has become a wonderfully powerful tool - and has allowed for one to make good coded pages without having to code from scratch.

The reason I urge people to learn to code it in Notepad or without a WYSIWYG doing all the work is much akin to why I wish more designers would look to the roots of design itself. I feel that the more you know the basics of something - the better you'll be in the end. Will it make you or break you? Probably not. Could it be instrumental in taking you to the next level? Hmmm......

-A02

[richp]

yea thats true, i have a working knowlegde of both javascript and html, so i can look at the source and edit bits i want also when i see a nice java script on someones web site i can steal it hehe. mind u i never seem to do that because i find all that stuff to be cheap gimics, but yea its better to know it then to not, i just feel if u dont already know it, then theres always other more powerful stuff to learn, just my opinion.

[aversion]

Originally posted by richp
what use is javascript if dreamweaver does all u would probably ever need to use it for?

what do you mean, are you talking about the behaviours that come with dreamweaver? That's a small part of what i would use javascript for, most of the js i do is custom functions for form validation and calculations, using the date object etc etc.

dreamweaver's a good html creator, homesite is the best html editor but neither of them write your javascript for you wish they would sometimes!

[clowe10]

I've only been in the industry for about 9 months, and I'm mainly flash, Director, Front-end webpage and graphics and I think that I've been really lucky. I came straight out of a degree into a full-time job.

The demand for designers in Aus is probably a little better than in America, because that's where most of our best designers go but things are still not great over here. I've been looking at jobs in the paper lately and the number of IT jobs has been hardly worth a look. Most of them are contract anyway.

[richp]

oh yip i see, i do my form validation through perl script, what if u were gonna do a dynamic menu, would u write ur own javascript for that? there like 150-200 lines long, thats alot of time!

clowe - im from new zealand, im not real sure what demand is like in new zealand for web sites, i wanna get a job but im not sure i have enough to offer right now, theres no companies in new zealand that i could say i particularly wanna work for anyway, they dont seem to make very exciting websites. sometimes i get a little bit worried about where ill end up in this industry, probably should have stuck with engineering.

[aversion]

Originally posted by richp
oh yip i see, i do my form validation through perl script, what if u were gonna do a dynamic menu, would u write ur own javascript for that? there like 150-200 lines long, thats alot of time!

granted, i just get my partner to do back-end stuff , but dreamweaver is still along way from being able to stuff like that, if i'm writing simple form validation or using dhtml i use notepad.

[monthigos]

I'm more of a front end guy myself, but when I started doing webpages, the only thing really available were the designers that came with MSIE and Netscape. Those were frusterating it was hard to get the effect that you wanted.

So I learned HTML (which is incredibly simple). I've tried to use dreamweaver, but I always spend my time working in the code rather than using the graphical interface. My approach is to have my text editor open, edit, save, go to my browser window and refresh.

Often times when I do a site design, I will pull out a rather large image (usually 800x500) and do a complex multi-layered design, then slice up the image and layout in tables. When ever I tried to do it with a graphical end, it was almost more difficult to mess with everything than it was to do things straight in the HTML code. heh.

Of course for tedious tasks, like javascript mouseovers, I use a wizard 'cause that takes me forever to do in the code. So for me it depends.

[tommy_boy_33]

I'm currently reading a BA in design for interactive media, and a minor in digital animation in the UK.

Web design jobs come and go a fair bit, every company thinks it has to have a web site these days.

I'm lucky in the fact that while im studying i've landed myself a couple of clients, who want flash and html site.

I don't think it matters if you know how to program html, java script, becasue more user friendly programs like dreamweaver are coming out which give designers more felx.

If you have good ideas and design sense then all you need to know is photoshop or a vector package.

how do other countrys view UK design by the way?

tom

[richp]

not sure, cant say i know a site ive seen from the u.k, give me some links and ill tell u what i think.
-rich

[calpomatt]

This is a very interesting thread.

I myself am majoring in Civil Engineering. I hadn't created a single web site until earlier this year. Now I am considering web design freelancing as a side career. I am nowhere near the level of most proffesional designers but have had a lot of compliments on my work.

I am just beginning to work with some of the backend stuff. All I have messed around with so far is a lame PHP email form. What is the best language to learn for all the backend work????

[richp]

php or perl, not asp, i dont care what anyone says, it was made by microsoft, so that there tells u it sucks.
hey got any links to any of ur work?

[calpomatt]

What about CGI?

Here are some of my links for ya:
Main Site
Project 1
Project 2

[richp]

perl is cgi, ill give u a quick rundown on some languages how i know them.
perl has been around for like 15 years, wasnt orginally designed for web stuff, but has been developed over the years to be able to, works on more platforms then most languages.
php is designed for web applications, probably slightly easier to use then perl. works on a few platforms.
asp was designed for web applications but only works on NT servers (20% of servers), asp isnt open source so it can only be developed by microsoft, this is why it sucks.
i only know perl, if i was gonna start again, id probably choose php, but still perl is damn good, can do everything php can do.
cheers for the links, ill check them out.