Argh! Theres Too Much To Learn!

[AndrewCooper]

Why oh why did I get myself into this mess?!

Web Design

You look at it, you read it, you say it, wow...Web Design...Pretty simple, eh? Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

There's so much to learn surrounding the Web, Web Design, Web Development and so on that it's just all biting me back in the ***!

• I'm doing a BTEC National Diploma - Web Design & Digital Media at college [UK] but that's nothing big and the Units on Web are finished.
• WaSP Education Task Force have just released their Interact Curriculum.
• Opera have the Web Standards Curriculum.
• Adobe have their Digital Design Curriculum.
• I'm trying to create my own Web Tutorials on my own Tech Tutorial Website and sometimes I wonder: Why bother? and Is my content good enough to compete?
• I've got pretty much all of the books from SitePoint, both Hardback and PDF copies.
• I've got to read through all of the core technologies from the W3C Technical Recommendations.

And more!

Where do I start?! Where do I stop?! What do I go from?! What do I do?!

At the same time I'm trying to design and develop many more Websites as well as learning at the same time and hoping to earn money doing my own freelance Web Design / Development work.

I need Careers Advise and Help immediately. From someone that knows what their talking about.

Please help, I'm on the verge of pulling my hair out...And I'm only 18!! =[ I like my hair.

Much appreciated,

Andrew Cooper

[Evoken]

Hmmm, you seem to think that you must learn everything related to web design. You want to do it all and at the same time. That is your problem right there.

Nobody knows all the programing and scripting languages there are nor is there a need to have and read all of SitePoints books or through all the core technologies from W3C or do every curriculum there is. You must focus on some particular and learn and get experience in that and then move to something else depending on what path you want to take.

Quite frankly, if you try to learn it all ultimately you'll just be a jack of all trades with basic knowledge about many things and no expertise in any.

[amf45]

Where to start? Create a web site. Explore the underpinings of other web sites you think look good and figure out how they did it. Basically, stop worrying about the manuals as a standalone set of documents and use them for reference as you explore a project.

You aren't going to learn everything in a day or a week or even a year, so relax and enjoy the ride.

[ferrari_chris]

By the time you learn everything you want to learn they'll be obsolete as new technologies and standards will have come along.

Now there's some food for thought...

[AlexDawson]

AndrewCooper, while it is admirable that you want to become a web designer skilled in all areas of the process and it does seem daunting because of the vast number of languages and obtainable skills, there is just too many different things you would need to learn to become a master of everything. What I would recommend is focusing not on the curriculums that exist on the internet but on the core technologies in which we work. Learn HTML and CSS inside out so that you will be able to put together a website with ease, then as and when you require them (or want to learn something new) you can just attach a new skill such as JavaScript on top. It is not about trying to learn everything at once, you need to start from ground zero, learn what will bring you the most initial benefits and then once you have gained those skills, you can look at the other elements.

[tanicos]

start with video tutorials..books are old now

[AlexDawson]

start with video tutorials..books are old now

That is a rather redundant comment considering new books are released all the time.

[tanicos]

That is a rather redundant comment considering new books are released all the time.

i am not saying that books are old from the release or content point of view..i am saying it's an old way to learn things..video tutorials where you actually see and listen too and also apply what you learn is the best way to do it...that's how the brain works you know

[AlexDawson]

No it isn’t, the brain works on a matter of input and output, books are just as effective as video tutorials. There is a reason academic institutions consistently use books to teach students, because they are highly effective. And just because something has lots of flashy gimmicky images and audio files does not inherently make it better. When learning to physically produce code a book would actually have more benefit because code is rendered in a textual format, reading out code makes less sense than having a printed book with it all laid out to reference where you can physically examine the content and construct of the code.

[G.Schuster]

What helped me (and still does) - learn nothing when you don't need to!
Some years ago I bought lots of books because I thought I'd have to know all those techniques.
Didn't enjoy it, didn't really learn anything, don't remember much of it.
I then started to think over the situation, left the books where they were and just looked for things that interessted me.
Got a nice little project, started developing as far as I could go with my skills.
Seen that the skills didn't match - looked what helped, learned it.
I killed two birds with one stone - I enjoyed what I did and I learned something new that improved my skills.
So the conclusion is: just learn when you can enjoy learning, which ist most likely to be the case when you can apply what you learn and don't do it just for exams or to have "learned" it.