Dreamweaver tutorials

[armadillo1111]

Hi

I'm new to web design and I'm looking for some tutorials which talk me through the basics of dreamweaver. Can anyone suggest any easy ones to follow?

More generally, is it a good idea to begin with a program like Dreamweaver, or are people of the opinion that it's better to learn HTML from scratch.

It's a little difficult knowing where to begin!

Thanks
Joe

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Dreamweaver/1

do you know html?

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

i would first learn correct markup, so eventually you're gonna dislike WYSIWYG programs! :p

[armadillo1111]

No, apart from the real basics, I know very little HTML.

Is the best thing to do to learn HTML do you think? And if so, what's the best way to go about this?

[JPnyc]

I don't think there's any substitute for coding yourself. As far as how to go about learning, ya might start with htmlgoodies.com, and/or by a book by peachpitpress. Most of theirs are good.

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

you should go for the html primer at htmlgoodies..well thats were i learned ;)

[armadillo1111]

htmlgoodies looks awesome. Thanks for the pointers. I'll let you know how i get on!

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

well, it didnt look awsome back when i first learned markup over there, it had this very ugly orange curly background!

[Stephen Philbin]

They got rid of the orange wavy background? I'll have to hop ever there and take a peek for old times sake. (He says after only actually starting out with web type stuff 2 years ago).

If you want THE definitive manual for html then the W3C (http://w3.org) is the place to go. I must warn you though that if you're new to the place, finding what you want can be a bit of a nightmare and once you've found what you're looking for, reading it could well bore and depress you to death. The language used there is rather technical and anal. Keep going there though and keep at it and you'll eventually get the swing of what exactly it is that they're gibbering on about.

The thing you'll be looking for are called "Recommendations". Those are the official specs of the languages documented at the W3C. The HTML recommendation (http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/) is one example. I would also strongly recommend learning the CSS recommendation (http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/) too. But like I said, these are extremely heavy reading for a beginner, so don't feel stupid when you find you don't have a clue what they're on about. It'll probably be a little while before they become of any real use to you.

The way I did it was ease into things with HTML Goodies to give me a clue, then start on those recommendations afterwards. Chipping away at them bit by bit untill they started to make proper sense.

Oh and of course there's always ourselves here to help too. Welcome to the forums. ;)

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

reading it could well bore and depress you to death. The language used there is rather technical and anal.

so true!

[armadillo1111]

OK. So htmlgoodies doesn't look awesome - but i loved the html primers. Have just spent three hours going through them and feel like I understand a hell of a lot more than I did three hours ago!! No longer scared of html...

Will check out WC3. I'm concious of not running before I can walk but have got a fire in my belly to learn! I've spent the last ten years in marketing, travelling, running restaurants - but I haven't been this excited to learn something new in a long long time.

It's good to see that people feel like old pros in a couple of years (Hi Mr Herer!) - gives me hope!

Anyway. Today I did the following things - posted some pages onto the big scary www using a FTP programme (for the first time!!) and learnt some basic html. Good start hey?!

Thanks for the support. I've got a feeling I might be hanging 'round here quite a lot...

Joe

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

OK. So htmlgoodies doesn't look awesome

well, i like the design, in comparation to the old one, it does look awson

Anyway. Today I did the following things - posted some pages onto the big scary www using a FTP programme (for the first time!!) and learnt some basic html. Good start hey?!

yeah! good start!

and good luck btw!

[armadillo1111]

by the way - are most websites (for eg, vagusnet.com which Mr H mentions above - is that yours btw??) scripted by hand or using packages like dweaver. Or is it a bit of both.

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

err...maybe some advices: dont take the habit to write your tags uppercase (<HTML> instead of <html>) and visit the w3c ASAP to learn about how to correctly code html(doctype/meta/etc..)

i just went to htmlgoodies and saw that the dude is writing his tags uppercase, bad

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

about uppercase tags, you might ask yourself, why not? read this -> http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_elements.asp

[armadillo1111]

yeah i was wondering about the upper case thing. glad you pointed that out!

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

;)

[Stephen Philbin]

It's good to see that people feel like old pros in a couple of years (Hi Mr Herer!) - gives me hope!

Hehe. Oh I'm still a long way off of what I would consider a professional developer. I'm reasonably confident in my abilities, but far from what I would consider as a professional standard.

Oh and that vagusnet I have a link to, no, it isn't built by me I used to be the editor, overseeing content etc, but I have not had anything to do with it directly for over a year now. I stopped to learn this "web type stuff" as I call it. They've never had a decent (or even finished for that matter) site (as you can see from the one in current use), but I intend to provide our first fully finished site within around 6 months. The thing I'm working on in its current state is on my home development server at http://www.dootdootdoodydoodydootdoodoooo.com/ You won't be able to see anything there though I don't think. I've mostly been building the background and administration parts of the site. I don't think you can even register either. I built the user registration section and user cp, but realised it might not have been a good idea to have leave it open and threw some errors into the user sections to prevent it from working. Thanks for reminding me though. I'd better start re-enabling it so the staff at vagusnet can register and have a look. I've finally built enough backend stuff to be able to handle the first news articles. that'll appear on the first page (for now it's just place-holder crap).

But I did build all of what you see on my test server by hand. I used Bluefish (http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/) to start building it, then recently switched to jEdit (http://www.jedit.org/).

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

how can you remember your url?!

[Stephen Philbin]

lol. Easy. It's the melody of one of the nicest tunes ever! :D Plus there's a pretty simple pattern to it too:

(doot) x2 (doody) x2 (doot) x1 (doo) x2 (oo) x1. ;)

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

huh! crazy!