Where Now?

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1

Firstly, I’m a trained graphic (print) designer trying to transition into web design/development.

I’ve been working hard over the last few month to lean as much as I can about html and CSS, and I’m wondering what to get my teeth into next.

  1. Some people have suggested Flash, but my concerns are that with Apple dropping support in Lion and iOS that it may soon be obsolete. Also I’ve noticed a trend away from long-loading, all singing and dancing sites over the past few years.

  2. Others have said PHP, but is this a bit too heavyweight for every day web design.

  3. Others have mentioned Javascript.

I realise that these examples all do different things, and that it’s really about what I want to achieve. I guess that I’d really like to be able to offer a one-man self sufficient solution to clients, while at the same time avoiding the type of programming that might go into creating databases, shopping carts from scratch.

Yes I realise this all sounds a bit confused, but what I’m really asking is, what do most people go on to study having attained a reasonable grasp of html and CSS?

Thank in advance,
simon

2

I would concentrate on putting those skills into practice and building some websites with them. Then, as you start to expand your portfolio, you’ll see a natural need for which way your learning curve is turning. Do your sites need more interactivity and functionality? If so, dive into Javascript. If you need programming and structure, PHP might serve you better. If you decide to go down the route of building websites for inattentive 6-year-olds that drive everyone else nuts, Flash is the tool for you. (OK, there may be a bit of bias in there but we’ll gloss over that).

As you say, the different tools work in different ways to do different things. It depends a lot on which way you see your design career going as to which one will serve you best as a next step. For a lot of simple websites, you don’t need anything much at all on top of what you’ve got. I know next to nothing about Javascript and PHP, but I’ve built several sites with minimal use of them, just picking up odd bits of code as and when I need them.

Another productive route to go down is accessibility and usability. Learning about how to ensure everyone can use your site might not seem quite as sexy as making rollover animations and funky flyout menus, but more and more companies are realising that people don’t want frippery, what they want is to be able to get to the content easily, whatever device they’re using at the time.

3

Thanks very much Steve, that all sounds like very good advice to me. I’m glad that I’m not the only one that doesn’t see much use for Flash - I notice none of the high-profile sites have things flapping all over them.

So do you think it’s possible to create commercially viable sites for paying client (mainly small businesses) using mainly HTML/CSS?

Can I implement things like shopping carts on a “cat ‘n’ paste” basis without getting my hands dirty?

simon

4

HTML and especially CSS are like Go: an hour to learn, a lifetime to master. :slight_smile: Make sure your skills are honed in those two before leaping into JS or PHP or whatever.

Absolutely.

To an extent, though to do anything really sophisticated will require some PHP and/or Ajax knowledge.