Someone suggested I get current with my web design skills.
What do you think is the current trend in website design? By that I mean the code and tools.
Thanks for the reminder Black Max.
I didn’t want to say Web 2.0 is equal to Social Networking. So, if my post gave that idea, perhaps I wasn’t clear with what I desired to convey.
I wanted to say that more and more people are beginning to ask for sites with Web 2.0 functionalities that help users to interact and contribute, as against the past when communication was one sided. Perhaps that’s why we see more requests from clients for their own wikis, business blogs, functionalities that lets them share images or videos, much like YouTube or Flickr etc.
Web 2.0 is already popular as we can see how users are enjoying the interactive information sharing nature of social-networking sites (the leaders being Facebook and Twitter), wikis, video-sharing sites, Q&A sites, blogs etc. I think that more and more people would be joining the party in the near future to get their own social networking sites etc.
Doug, you might want to do some forum searches about Web 2.0 before you start making these kinds of claims. “Web 2.0”, whatever that is or isn’t, doesn’t equal Social Networking 101. Your post skirts the edge of fluffdom…
Some good advice has been given already. You can also participate in popular design forums to have an idea of the latest trends, software etc that will help you keep abreast of changes.
Taking ‘web design’ as more having to do with graphics and less with code, there are a few good sites to catch up with. But I have to say, take current trends with a grain of salt. Trendy web design is subject to fickle popularity just as fashions are in other visual arts.
For reading up, check out sites such as Smashing Magazine and A List Apart.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com http://www.alistapart.com/topics/design/
For daily doses of inspiration, bookmark 20 or 30 CSS gallery sites to see what other people are publishing…
- http://www.creativecssgallery.com/
- http://www.csszengarden.com
- http://www.cssdownunder.com/
- http://designsnack.com/
- http://www.nicestylesheet.com/
- http://www.avenuecss.com/
- http://www.bestcssdesign.com/
- http://bestwebgallery.com/
- http://www.boxedcss.com/
- http://cartcraze.com/
- http://creamycss.com/
- http://css-imagine.com/
- http://www.cssbeauty.com/
- http://csscollection.com/
- http://designawardsgallery.com/
- http://www.csstea.com/
- http://www.css-design-yorkshire.com/
- http://www.cssdrive.com/
- http://cssflash.com/
- http://www.cssflavor.com/
buying updated software could be just what you need to boost your inspiration for a fresh new outlook on design. Adobe CS5 has some great tools:
I think you need to be updated on different design style. Style changes as to the design as well. You need to be more creative and unique.
No need to bother with fancy and expensive new software. A copy of Notepad++ and some time spent with tutorials and books will work for you. One place to start is the “best practices” link in my sig, but there are plenty of other resources out there as well.
Also note that it’s not about staying current with all the technical stuff - you need to surround yourself with good web designers as well. SitePoint is a great place to hang out, so you’re in the right place. Are there there any groups or organizations in your area that you can join? Sometimes I can get incredibly inspired just talking about design (face to face) with other good designers.
Don’t use deprecated code, try to keep to modern specifications (like HTML4 and XHTML1 and CSS2.1), separate style from structure (behaviour too). 
As for the other stuff, accessibility and usability are great to get the hang of, you want to consider the end users needs and expectations. Most of the theoretical stuff you can find references too in books like Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think”, Nielsen’s “Designing Web Usability” and “Web Accessibility” (Publisher: FriendsOfED). However if you’re looking for a good starting point… read the specifications… they exist for a reason, there’s nothing better than the source.
Well, that depends upon where you are at the moment and as to whether they were meaning; design as in aesthetics and trendy layout or solid foundations.
For some of solid foundations you should have good command of semantics and a markup language such as HTML 4.01 using preferably Strict, and good command of CSS 2.x for layout.
As for images; that’s horses for courses and generally you need to know when to use PNG or JPG.
With Scripting it depends upon what you are intending doing but hopefully it should be unobtrusive. Also you should have a basic grasp of the fundamentals of Web Accessibility.
They are just some brief pointers but it would have helped if you have given some more background as to whom said; you were lacking skills, etc.
Ethan, there’s very little on that site’s blogs that pertains to general Web design and a great deal that pertains to WinWorld’s services (which seem to center on Joomla and Magento). It’s perilously close to a promotional link. In general, we don’t do a lot of promotion here.
Other than that, thanks for the info and welcome to SitePoint.
I agree with everyone’s advice but one thing I think that no one really capitalized on was getting to know as much as possible about Joomla and how it works along with online stores like Magento. These are things that I use almost daily with my web designing.