How to start web design


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	How to Start Web Design? Good Websites don't start in a Web creation program; they start in your head. If you have an idea for a Website, learn all about from Web Guide and its links… First, Web basics in 6 steps Life was just going on fine, when along came the Internet. And just about everything changed. You just have to look back over the past year or two and think of how different things were before that. Today, everyone’s young, smart—and online. Oh yes, we’re well into the Net Age. Whether you’re working in a high-tech corporation or setting up your home office, trying to learn a thing or two at college or having a whale of a time at school, life’s on the Internet. Just how’s that? Find out at PBS Online’s Life On the Internet at http://www.pbs.org/internet. From a historical timeline to stories and links, from beginner’s guides to trivia, this Website will fill you in. If you plan to start a business on the Web, take up an online career or even just make your homepage, a basic understanding of the Internet is inescapable. If you’re largely clueless about how the Internet works and wish someone would tell you—minus the jargon—the perfect place to get clued in is at BBC’s Webwise site at http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise. This plain-speaking but very practical guide walks you through the Net teaching you what it’s about, how to find your way about and how to get things done—in 6 steps. It uses small bite-sized chunks and is just right for a newcomer to the Net. The beginner’s guide at http://www.webnovice.com/ will help you find what you want on the Web and understand the jargon. The site provides good basic advice on how to surf the Net faster, join newsgroups, download software and create your own homepage on the Web. There are many other beginner’s sites such as the Internet 101 at http://specials.about.com/channels/internet/net101/ from About.com and one from Oprah Winfry at http://oprahgoesonline.com/. To keep pace with Internet related jargon, visit http://netlingo.com. Content is King No matter how great your site looks, no amount of design will ever make up for poor content. This is a fact that many Web authors lose sight of. That’s why so many sites around us that offer the visitor the same old thing—a bit of this, a bit of that. A really good site must have solid, unique content. That’s why experts recommend that when you build a Website, you should start with strategy and purpose first—not with design. First off, you must be quite clear of the purpose of your site. This holds true for any type of Website, whether it’s a personal home page, a small business set up, a hobbyist’s page or anything else. A Website without a purpose just takes up space and pleases no one but its own author. So, unless you’re just using your site for storage, start with putting down your purpose, your objectives, and the message. About.com’s Web Design section at http://webdesign.about.com, has a subsection entirely on Web content. There are extremely useful links to experts’ sites on creating and managing content. This is probably the biggest collection of links on content, specifically. Get your Web planning basics in order too from http://effuse.com/plan. Easy-to-read articles from experts will help you zero in on your content and basic purpose. A comprehensive guide that covers in some detail the basics of content and authoring for different audiences is at http://www.learnthenet.com/english/section/webpubl.html. How to write for the Web Writing for the Web is in many ways different from writing for print. For one, the reader’s purpose in reading may be different. His attention span is different. The reading experience online and the way the reader’s eye moves across a page is different. With a printed page, there is only one sort of navigation—turn the page. But on a Web page, there can be dozens and dozens of options all visible at once. And there’s your reader, finger poised over the mouse button, ready to click away. A printed page doesn’t need to be interactive. But with a Web page, interactivity is important because readers want to do something. All this means that information has to be tailored and arranged specially for online reading. Writing for the Web skillfully, involves learning how to keep in mind new online reading habits and patterns. It means being able to put forward information in a way that draws the reader in quickly and keeps him at the Website—or at least that it gives him what he wants so that he comes back again and again. About.com’s Web design section has a large number of links on writing for the Web. The articles and sites there explore how to write micro content, how to tailor headlines for the Web, how to write so that the site is reader friendly, how to liven up your prose, and lots more advice from experts and columnists. To get to this wonderful resource, connect to http://webdesign.about.com and click on Content. At http://www.efuse.com/Design/, columnist Christopher Meeks gives you six lessons on how to write for the Web, exploring outlining, how to start, special measures for online reading, and arranging information. One long-standing site that will tell you how to keep online reading patterns in mind is http://www.usableweb.com. It’s an extensive resource, but explore the topic index to get to the guidelines and tips on how to write well to make up a user-friendly site Learn HTML, the language of the Web What makes the World Wide Web browsable is a simple programming language called HTML or HyperText Markup Language. It is the authoring language that is used to make documents on the Web. HTML defines the structure and layout of a Web document by using a variety of tags and attributes. The correct structure for an HTML document starts with (enter here what document is about) and ends with . All the information you’d like to include in your Web page fits in between the and tags. Learning HTML is really pretty easy. Although there are programs that just do the HTML’izing for you, most people who take up Web authoring as a job, prefer to write their own HTML for better control over the pages they create. There are tons of places on the Web where you can learn HTML. There are tutorials for all levels. Quick first timer’s guides are available at http://www4.ewebcity.com/pcbill/ and at http://www.etips.net. A guide that claims to be the easiest of all can be found at http://www.tips-tricks.com/begin.shtml. Also http://www.angelfire.com/ct/dillane. Simple tutorials are also at http://www.bfree.on.ca/HTML. Try http://www.htmlgoodies.com for different levels of lessons. Both basic and advanced HTML can be found at http://www.htmlwizards.com. From basic to advanced lessons are at http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html. If you want a quick reference handy so you can find out which HTML tag to use, go straight to http://www.tagreference.com/ If you want to download an entire course and study it offline at leisure, connect to http://www.trainingtools.com. Your course will be in PDF format. Use a tutorial that suits you from the resources above. Pick one that makes you feel comfortable and you should soon get going with your first page. Get the Web tools You can use different tools to help you spruce up your Web pages. And what’s more you could get shareware and even freeware versions of these tools. Some of the places where you could get them are: http://www.nonags.com and http://www.tucows.com.