Website Design Books

[BusinessAdviser]

I was in Barnes & Noble today and came across Website Programming for Dummies. As someone with no IT knowledge but who would like to begin to learn to program simple websites, what do you all think of this book? Are there better books out there for a starter?

[ProLogic]

Online tutorials are far cheaper and can save you time.

[Kaz]

Yeah... online is the way to go for starting out. Most of the books only get worth while when you are more advanced although these days they are out dated very quickly aswell so online is the way to go.

What sorta thing are you wanting to do?

[BusinessAdviser]

Yeah... online is the way to go for starting out. Most of the books only get worth while when you are more advanced although these days they are out dated very quickly aswell so online is the way to go.

What sorta thing are you wanting to do?

Just begin to learn.

[hockey97]

what web programming do you plan on doing??

html is basic. <a>somthing</a> lol

if you need help finding good websites for help on html and others.

you should see: HTML Tutorial

it will teach you html.

this site has other stuff to learn not just html.

Hope this can give you a start.

also you can just copy existing scripts and paste it in notepad and save the file as save all and name the file like website.html this will make the html file.

that's if you want to practice html coding.

Hope this helps.

[Kaz]

Just begin to learn.

I meant what sort of coding cause theres loads of different types.

[hockey97]

KAZ I think he just starting out he wouldn't know what langos their are.

I advise him to first learn html it's very easy if he can't grasp html he then can't learn other languages.

html gives you the start feel of how to write scripts ect.
and yet it's easy and simple.

I suggest him to start their so he can gain experience on how to create a website.

After. If he knows html well he can go onto other things like javascript or such.

It sounds he just wants for begin to make and design a website.

so html is a good start to get into making websites.

[criniit]

What I did to learn was go to a web site right click "view source" and then look at the code and the site and figure out what does what. Thats how I learned it.

Oh and I own How to build a website for dummies not a bad book..but not that great really...

[justy540]

I would definitely start with HTML, then maybe a little css. Though if you're a logical being and like solving puzzles etc, then Javascript may be a good second step.
Cheers,
Justin

I forgot to agree with the poster that said online tutorials are best for starting out. If you do get a book, try to find one that involves a project you can follow along with. This is definitely the sort of thing where doing is way better than just reading. If you follow along with a book and build the website yourself, you can play around, switching things out and seeing the result.

[ourcreation]

I'd recommend Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML (Sorry, I'm a noob and can't post links).

I too knew nothing about web design but wanted to learn the basics. The book starts off with HTML, moves into XHTML and then CSS. It's a very easy read and teaches almost exclusively through projects, which is a lot more entertaining than text book style memorization. You start off building a an ultra basic website and then gradually improve upon it each chapter as you learn additional crap.

If you have an idea for a simple website already, I'd recommend gradually building it as you proceed through the book. Read chapter -> Do Project -> Apply what you learned to your own website -> Repeat.

[Hooman]

hockey97 made a great suggestion: w3schools is the best resource for learning web dev code. Start with HTML, and also learn some CSS. Then once you get the hang of that, get a copy of Dreamweaver to simplify things.

Also install "Firebug" for the Mozilla/Firefox browser. It will let you easily look at the HTML of any website you are on, and it shows you what part of the site corresponds to what part of the code.

After that you may want to learn some very basic PHP to make contact forms and such.

[Computer CPR]

If you want an actual book, I recommend "e-business and e-commerce how to program". It takes you from the basics all the way up to advanced, and the whole time it's from the perspective of websites for business, so it's quite relevant. There's tons of code examples in the book and it comes with a CD that has ALL the examples on it, so you can mess around with the examples in the book without typing it all in. I have the book, and I'd recommed it to anyone who is a beginner that doesn't want to stay a beginner. If you want to see the stuff on the CD let me know.

[CiD743]

It depends on what program you plan on using and what you mean my "programming"
But the best series of books is called Visual Quickstart Guide. They have a book on just about everything. These books are awesome for beginners. They tell how to do it and show screen shots of how to.

The dummies series is ok, but I wouldn't start with it.

[hockey97]

hockey97 made a great suggestion: w3schools is the best resource for learning web dev code. Start with HTML, and also learn some CSS. Then once you get the hang of that, get a copy of Dreamweaver to simplify things.

Also install "Firebug" for the Mozilla/Firefox browser. It will let you easily look at the HTML of any website you are on, and it shows you what part of the site corresponds to what part of the code.

After that you may want to learn some very basic PHP to make contact forms and such.

your right but just a word of caution. Watch out with Phip you may learn it but remember you need a web server to apply Phip in your websites.
That means if you don't host your own web server then find a hosting service that will allow you to store Phip scripts on their server on your space.

after learning HTML and Cass and also Phip then if you want to get fancy then I say learn some java script or flash depends on what you want to do.

good luck. Just to remind you that HTML is the easiest if that is hard for you then the stuff we said to learn after you will have much harder time understanding it so take small steps master HTML and Cass before you go into anything deeper.

and also you can look at other websites HTML script by IE 7 you would go into the page tab and then on the drop-down list click view source.

you can then copy the website HTML script and then mess around with it so you can really understand which tags do what and can lead to mastering HTML quicker than reading a tutorial or a book.

Remember their is a difference in knowing HTML from a book and knowing it by applying it.

How I learned it was really on my own taking scripts and playing around I even look at free scripts and then tried remaking them to get the same effect when I made those effects I then looked at what I done and how I got their and then tried making my own custom version.

I think based on my experiences that to fully master any programming you have to really practice at it and gain alot of experiences then your on your way.

I don't think you can master programming just by reading a book or a tutorial but I think in programming to really learn and understand it you have to try it yourself and mainly learn from trial and error.

that's really how I learned it and that's how I got from HTML all the way to c++ I never took a college class on it nor any kind of classes on programming.

good luck on your journey.

[pentupentropy]

J: start with what everyone is saying. Go to devshed Open Source Web Development Tutorials - Dev Shed or W3Schools Online Web Tutorials and don't learn how to use ANY editors. NONE. Do everything by hand in VI... err... windows.. notepad. Learn how to code by hand first so you can see what goes on when editors don't do what you want. Definitely, as they said too, HTML, CSS and a little PHP and MySQL.

I had a question though... if you are not an IT person, why do you want to learn this? It takes a great deal of time and unless you have nothing better to do, you may as well just use outside resources. Not saying don't do it, I would applaud any effort of anyone to increase your own knowledge, but if it's for business, you're just as well off getting someone to do it from elance or scriptlance.

Anyway, if you get learning and have a direct question, aim me (same sn) and you may also want to get familiar with IRC, but the big thing to remember is to read first, otherwise you'll get a lot of RTFM's