Learning Web Design: How Css Almost Ruined My Life

By Author: Alex White
Total Articles: 2
Comment this article

Yes, who would have thought that a web concept called Cascading Style Sheets would threaten to ruin my life? Well it almost did
Hi, I'm mainly a self-taught web / graphic designer. Right from the beginning I was very determined to avoid hand-coding. Hand-coding is for geeks! Imagine wanting to alter a (photo) graphic image by hand-coding? You just wouldn't do it, would you? Absolutely not!

FrontPage v Dreamweaver?

Anyways, my main WYSIWYG web design axe has been Microsoft's FrontPage 2002 - 2003. What drew me to FrontPage is that it has some cool stuff such as a way to create a simple forum, form processor, scheduled picture / page updates and so on. However, this technology is Microsoft's very own and that means that one has to find a hosting service specialises in Microsoft hosting. Therefore when I create sites for others I have to avoid using Microsoft's server technologies (FrontPage Extensions) - unless their hosting provider caters for FrontPage Extensions. What's the point in that? It's too limiting. I used to use Adobe Dreamweaver up until version 3 - or should I say under use to the point where ...
... I felt it was beyond my scope.
It wasn't until recently that I have decided to return to the king of WYSIWYG web design programs mainly because of the outbreak of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and compliant web standards which have changed the way web pages are designed forever - that is, if one is to be serious about web design. The only time I ever used CSS was to change the scrollbar colour (only affecting the Internet Explorer browser) and to create simple text roll-overs (when one creates a link to another page and / or site the colour of the text changes when the mouse is over it). Web page layout using CSS rather than tables just blew my mind! I needed an Adobe Dreamweaver Course in London pronto!

Relenting

Now, there was another problem with this: I didn't want to fork out nearly £400 to buy the Adobe Dreamweaver software...and possibly another £400 for an Adobe Dreamweaver Course in London. NO! So upon reading an ad in my local newspaper I signed-up for a course in Web Design coding by hand, would you believe? Why not? After all I do aspire to call myself a Web Designer. The prospect of re-educating myself to meet the new standards was exciting and that excitement soon turned to frustration with regards to CSS, JavaScript and the way in which these technologies were taught: Structure? What structure? I ended up dropping out of the course, but it wasn't a complete waste of time. I did come to appreciate knowing about the basis of hand coding, JavaScript and CSS. But my knowledge was still incomplete. I spent a lot of money on books in an attempt to teach myself the wonders of CSS. I just wasn't getting it. Searching the Net for a tutorial that I could understand was time consuming. Without knowing CSS I may as well forget about calling myself a Web Designer. I didn't feel that I could achieve my dream of becoming a freelance / self-employed Web Designer. I became depressed. How could I charge people money if I'm not able to build sites using CSS? I've got a conscience, you know.

Chance?

In life nothing happens by chance. Things happen for a reason. Upon my quest to learn CSS a Google search brought up the Futuretrend website. The Adobe Dreamweaver Course outline had me salivating: CSS, Website Accessibility & W3C - amongst other juicy stuff! I previously balked at the price of Dreamweaver... But, hey, why hand code everything when Dreamweaver can make life a little easier?
Another thing I noticed immediately was the generous prices for the training, so I booked the following: Adobe Photoshop course, Adobe Dreamweaver Course, Adobe Dreamweaver Next Step Course and Dreamweaver & PHP Course. Upon completing the courses I have come to have a much better understanding of Adobe Dreamweaver, design ethics, How Adobe Dreamweaver Integrates PHP and MySQL databases, and the elusive CSS. I'm such a happy sausage thanks to Futuretrend and their fantastic tutors! Now I can call myself a Web Designer.

The Winner

Unanimously, the winner is Dreamweaver and I (or anyone who goes on a Futuretrend Adobe Dreamweaver Course). Soon after the training I went out and purchased Dreamweaver CS5 with the money I saved with Futuretrend, my research showed me that I could have easily spent over £1500 through other training providers on Adobe Photoshop courses, Adobe Dreamweaver Courses and Dreamweaver & PHP Courses.

www.futuretrend.co.uk