web design equiptment

duncanb

I am just starting a web design course...and do not know much on the topic to be honest.

Upon completion of the degree course, i hope to set up a small business designing high quality web sites.

What equiptment and software does a web designer need to make good quality websites commercially....and how much would it cost to set myself up with this equiptment??

thanks in advance.

duncan

yoyo

A decent text editor with syntax highlighting such as the free Notepad++ should do the trick, If your looking for a wysiwyg solution, Kompozer is decent and free, both these software are free, using these the only payment you will need to make would be for the web hosting & domain registration

Nick

duncanb

yoyo wrote: »

A decent text editor with syntax highlighting such as the free Notepad++ should do the trick, If your looking for a wysiwyg solution, Kompozer is decent and free, both these software are free, using these the only payment you will need to make would be for the web hosting & domain registration

Nick

Hey

Nick could such software create a website that has every possible feature like for example flash videos and proper headings and a professional look?

Also as i said i am only starting out.. what is the diff between notepad and a wysiwyg solution?

is it when you do not create the website manually thru notepad?

thanks nick

yoyo

duncanb wrote: »

Hey

Nick could such software create a website that has every possible feature like for example flash videos and proper headings and a professional look?

Also as i said i am only starting out.. what is the diff between notepad and a wysiwyg solution?

is it when you do not create the website manually thru notepad?

thanks nick

Wysiwyg is what you see is what you get (A editor like Microsoft word for example), Notepad would be used to code the site using the html, php etc code. Flash videos can be embedded on a site using the <embed src="*.swf" /> html tags, A wysiwyg editor may have a button to do this without code, for designing the actual page, you can use a wysiwyg editor to create tables, layers etc to structure the webpage

Hope this helps

Nick

duncanb

thanks nick.

can anyone else tell me their thoughts on this.

also what specification of computer is required or best for this??
can anyone reccomend this?

btw what expenses does a web designer have???i do not rewally understand the whole web domain buying and maintanance aspect of web design.

Gauge

What is this web course going to cover? Is it going to teach you Flash as well?

duncanb

Just web design. thats all i know

i dont know much about flash

squibs

tbh if you are looking at doing it for a living, buy adobe cs4 web premium. It costs a lot, but you'll make it back quickly. Once you know your way around those industry standard tools, you will design better and faster. I've tried freeware and cheaper software, but the investment in the adobe stuff has definitely raised my game in a big way.

duncanb

How much are talking for the adobe??

I would be prepared to spend alot if it gave good results.

So whats the best package available nowadays guys??

EKRIUQ

Upon completion of the degree course

Can you tell me some information about this course because to become a web designer doesn't need a degree to do. But if the course is more software development now that could take a degree course and a couple of years, but would also involve web design, applications and development.

galwayguy22

squibs wrote: »

tbh if you are looking at doing it for a living, buy adobe cs4 web premium. It costs a lot, but you'll make it back quickly. Once you know your way around those industry standard tools, you will design better and faster. I've tried freeware and cheaper software, but the investment in the adobe stuff has definitely raised my game in a big way.

A good craftsman never blames his tools.

It never ceases to amaze me the idiotic advise some people give out on forums.

Recommending a very expense suite of software of which he'll never use half of whats in the suite, to be honest, is just plain stupid.

The only product you'll have to buy is Flash CS3/4. Everything else can be gotten for free.

stevire

Why double post?? Bit annoying...

Anyway... For starting out I'd go open source cause you might never use some of the programs you'd pay for. Then when you get to grips with the technology, go for a 30 day trial of the commercial software, most commerical software offer it.

I replied to your other post with a list of open source alternatives: :rolleyes:
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055419943

duncanb

Namesco wrote: »

Can you tell me some information about this course because to become a web designer doesn't need a degree to do. But if the course is more software development now that could take a degree course and a couple of years, but would also involve web design, applications and development.

Heres what they say about it: (it seems to be just web design)

Course Aims & Objectives

This course aims to give participants the skills necessary to design a website. Windows skills are assumed but no previous web skills are required. On completion of this course, students will be able to:
- Search for, evaluate, and use information from the Internet
- Read and edit HTML
- Use style sheets to maintain a consistent look to web pages
- Integrate images into their web pages
- Plan and design a complete website including content, page layouts, site map, user-friendly navigation and other features
- Demonstrate good web design techniques
- Discuss search engine marketing
- Use other similar graphics editing software to create/edit and optimise graphics for the web
- Create special effects with their own graphic images
- Optimise images for export to the web and between tools
- Understand different web graphic formats and their limitations.

duncanb

galwayguy22 wrote: »

A Good Crafts Man Never Blame his tools.

It never ceases to amaze me the idiotic advise some people give out on forums.

Recommending a very expense suite of software of which he'll never use half of whats in the suite, to be honest, is just plain stupid.

The only product you'll have to buy is Flash CS3/4. Everything else can be gotten for free.

Hey GALWAYG

If thats the only software i have to buy then why is the first poster (YOYO) saying i can get everything free?

Does anyone know what the big web design companies use?

duncanb

stevire wrote: »

Why double post?? Bit annoying...

Anyway... For starting out I'd go open source cause you might never use some of the programs you'd pay for. Then when you get to grips with the technology, go for a 30 day trial of the commercial software, most commerical software offer it.

I replied to your other post with a list of open source alternatives: :rolleyes:
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055419943

Sorry for double posting, i just didn't know which thread would get aa better responce....apologies

Thats a good point in regards of trying out the software.

Does anyone know what the big web design companies use out of interest??

yoyo

duncanb wrote: »

Hey GALWAYG

If thats the only software i have to buy then why is the first poster (YOYO) saying i can get everything free?

Does anyone know what the big web design companies use?

You will need Adobe Flash or simular to create flash based content, for the web design bits Ie html etc you can do it for free, there are also alternatives to flash for generating flash content...

Nick

Malice

Get yourself a HTML CSS inspector. You will be thankful when trying to ensure a consistent layout across different browsers.

For Internet Explorer go here.
For FireFox, get Firebug.
For Opera, get Dragonfly. It's already installed on version 9.5 and above. Just go to Tools->Advanced->Developer Tools.

I am assuming you're developing on a Windows-based PC.

squibs

A good craftsman never blames his tools.
It never ceases to amaze me the idiotic advise some people give out on forums.
Recommending a very expense suite of software of which he'll never use half of whats in the suite, to be honest, is just plain stupid.
The only product you'll have to buy is Flash CS3/4. Everything else can be gotten for free.

I make a living from this and I know what I'm talking about. I use almost all of the suite, and you just plain cannot do everything else with freeware. We use illustrator, filreworks and photoshop for mockups, acrobat for quotes, photoshop and fireworks for web graphics, dreamweaver for coding, and flash for animations. I've tried the freeware and the cheapware, and wouldn't have spent the cash without doing my research.

The OP is setting up a business to do web design. Open source software is a superb resource - I teach a web design course using Kompozer and paint.net. But why is it so hard to believe that a suite of software with decades of pedigree and paid programmers might be superior to open source software with less development time, programmed and supported mainly by enthusiasts in their spare time?

hobochris

duncanb wrote: »

Heres what they say about it: (it seems to be just web design)

Course Aims & Objectives

This course aims to give participants the skills necessary to design a website. Windows skills are assumed but no previous web skills are required. On completion of this course, students will be able to:
- Search for, evaluate, and use information from the Internet
- Read and edit HTML
- Use style sheets to maintain a consistent look to web pages
- Integrate images into their web pages
- Plan and design a complete website including content, page layouts, site map, user-friendly navigation and other features
- Demonstrate good web design techniques
- Discuss search engine marketing
- Use other similar graphics editing software to create/edit and optimise graphics for the web
- Create special effects with their own graphic images
- Optimise images for export to the web and between tools
- Understand different web graphic formats and their limitations.

It doesn't sound like there is enough here to cover a degree level course.
a cert maybe..

The cs suite is more then enough...

notepad is all you should need for Html.

good luck with the course and business with the level of competition in web design you'll need it.

tba

Stick with the free stuff first, then get the buy options if you want to, when you know what you need.

The most valuable tool will be a syntax highlighting text editor,

images (there should be as little as possible) can be done in something as simple as paint, as free as the gimp or as professional as Photoshop.

Expensive tools will not produce a good website, good design ability (backed with a competent technical knowledge) will produce great websites.

You should really get a crappy computer to test out your web pages on, its the internet, often people will go onto your website with pieces of crap machines with low resolutions and tiny amounts of memory.