[iluvmypowerbook]

I want to design my own website for various business purposes. Here in Australia it's a popular belief that you really don't know what you're doing unless you have a piece of paper saying that you do

But for me to do such a course I must first do a 6 month course studying general peecee skills made up of networking, hardware, MS Access, MS Visual Studio.net (and this is in MS window$ as there are no schools using Macs here).

If I have Go Live or Dreamweaver is it not possible for me to learn via tutorials, books etc and avoid this waste of time?

[mdc]

i have not upload my 'site through the ages' page yet, but it pretty much shows my site in its many different styles. from about version 3 back in 1998. it is amazing how much you learn just from playing around with the code, the programs, and looking to see how other people's code works.

i have not had any webdesign training, no graphic design, nothing. right now i am sitting with [ http://mike.cosentino.com ] from a few years worth of looking at code and just playing around with the software. that is, imo, one of the best ways to learn. just do it.

there are lots of books out there that you can get. i would definitely suggest a book on css since it is such a useful thing to know.

and always, post messages on online forums. lots of people are very willing to help you out. if you get stuck with a piece of code, it would help if you could upload the troublesome page to the internet somewhere and post a link to it for everyone to troubleshoot.

good luck.

[Millennium]

I would not recommend that you learn HTML through a class, at least not the first time. Any class that focuses as heavily on Microsoft products, as you describe, probably would not teach you Web development anyway. They would teach you FrontPage, which is as far from Web development as you can possibly get.

Start here instead. The tutorial there is the best I've ever seen. It's very basic, but you'll come out with a basic knowledge of both HTML and CSS. You can then build on that. If you feel you still need the piece of paper after this, then you can take the formal class; by then you'll know enough to be able to cut through all the FrontPage crap they're likely to throw at you.

[iluvmypowerbook]

Thanks for the advice I really appreciate it

That's the thing, I don't care for the piece of paper I work for myself. I mean I taught myself art using Corel Painter and a Wacom tablet and how to use Photoshop.

I guess I was concerned that web design would be a seriously complicated issue that only formal education could address. I don't want to deal with the microsoft stuff at all.

Of the two which would you recommend Dreamweaver or Go Live?

[Mafia]

i personally don't use any big web design app. but i have used dreamweaver. and it was extremely good and pretty easy to learn.

[James L]

Well, it all depends on the program.

the program that I took stressed valid, hand coded, XHMTL, all pages had to be validated on the W3 site, CSS use was stressed.

I learned scripting in both JS and PHP, as well as MySQL DB stuff.

They covered Photoshop and Flash extensively, as well as encoding audio and video for the web.

So, it all depends. A good program will take years off of your learning curve. You will get much better, much faster, than if you are self taught.

Having said that, if you don't mind doing the work and learning through trial and error then you can do quite well. Just not as efficiently is all.

Cheers!

[Simon Mundy]

Just as important as the rules of markup is the approach to web design itself.

I'm a designer who became a self-taught programmer (who had the same learning curve James described!) but I found that in some ways it can be a less-biased and eye-opening approach than a formal course.

Some teachers are brilliant ( < 5%). About 30% are very good and the rest will simply teach what they know to get by (that's my rule 'o thumb, anyway). Finding the right teacher in the right course with a good group of peers is very time consuming and hit-and-miss.

But learning on the web in some of the very popular coder sites, you don't just get 1 person's opinion but hundreds of opinions and some with very lucid arguments. This forum is a perfect example - Arkham C, Philzilla, Black Book, Millennium (the names come to mind because they are prolific posters!) all share a passion for the medium but can provide extremely varied answers to a set solution. So I get to form my own opinion by exploring each of their solutions and see which best fit my own philosophy - even sometimes completely altering my original beliefs/habits.

So while a course can be beneficial, I believe it's vital to go out and discuss what you've learnt or are learning, or share your findings with a like-minded group of people as you're working through a problem. You'll most likely get a much more thought-through and reliable solution than if you worked in isolation.

Good luck iluvmypowerbook

[iluvmypowerbook]

There are a couple of Universities here in Australia that offer short online courses for a very good price (AUD $120). The courses are an introductory to Macromedia Dreamweaver MX and they also have one for Flash MX.

Each are about 6 weeks in duration and take you through the application's interface and how to use it. Not only that they told me that they only use Macs.

They seem like a good idea to me so I will probably go down that avenue coupled with what ya'll suggested here in this thread. I also have a couple of very good books specific to Macromedia as well that I can lean on and Macromedia themselves seem to have a very good site for newbies to use.

Over the weekend I was perusing Dreamweaver and it all seemed very logical to me so I don't think it will be too much of a challenge

Thanks everybody for your kind advice I really appreciate it.