I am a real novice at doing websites, and I am often embarrassed at the questions I ask here. I just want to thank you all for bearing with me, and
for helping me each and every time. I often feel out of place on this forum,
and just perhaps there is another forum where I should be posting, but I can
always count on someone helping here, and that’s very much appreciated.
Much of what I know (and that’s really very little) I have learned from books, and from this forum. Thank you.
No one on these threads was born knowing Web design. Everyone starts from scratch and figures it out as they go along. If you have the desire to learn design, the patience to slog your way through a thousand mistakes and missteps, the ability to accept constructive criticism, and the willingness to ask “dumb” questions in order to learn something, you stand to accomplish a lot and learn more.
I often feel out of place on this forum, and just perhaps there is another forum where I should be posting
You’re welcome here. As long as you’re learning, you’re in the right place. All we ask is that when you learn some things, you help out the next guy coming behind you who is where you were a month or a year before.
The question you need the answer to; but decide not to ask about is the only foolish question you can pose.
The words ‘thank you’ are always appreciated; most OP forget, or don’t mention they have found a solution themselves, etc.
Thanks for taking time for expressing your opinions and telling us you are progressing with your learning aims, objectives and targets.
Thankee. 
Maybe you don’t see it, but I’m still asking stupid questions.
Also, it’s easy to feel dumber when two or three people have explained something to you and you still don’t get it. I figure, if you keep asking, someone else will come up with some other way to answer that makes it clear to you.
That you are here and ask questions and participate is good. It makes you better, it makes the rest of us better, it makes little multicultural children hold hands and sing kum-ba-ya… or something. It certainly improves the visiting experience of your website visitors!
Many of us around here have learned what we know from these and other forums.
I’m no web ninja, and enjoy answering the simple questions. If the questions were all really hard and complex, I’d have no role here!
And besides, most people like that warm, fuzzy feeling of helping someone in need. So you’d be doing everyone a serious disservice by not asking your questions. Plenty of other people read these discussions and learn from them, too.
Ralph’s right. These threads are read by who knows how many wannabe design ninjas (good word, Ralph 
), and every time you, or me, or Ralph, or anyone asks what they fear is a “stupid” question, not only do we learn something new, but some of them do, also.
If you name your thread well, google brings it up too.
I think your right:
http://www.google.com/search?q=your+help+and+patience&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Okay, still having real difficulty understand drop down menus. Is there an example out there that might help. I have a good menu on the left, but want a drop down on one of the categories.
Good question. The last time I looked into it (couple years ago now) I couldn’t find anything good cross-browser so I abandoned the idea and modified my navigation accordingly. But a good drop-down would still be nice in a few places rather than the extensive long list of links I now have on a few pages.
Hopefully the cross-browser issues have been worked out by now and someone can provide something we both can use.
Barnum, you asked about dropdowns in another thread and I gave you a few things to look at. I probably learned more about making menus from [URL=“http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/”]Listamatic than any other single site on the Web. I don’t think they have any dropdowns or flyouts in their listings (check both that page and Listamatic 2), but seeing so many different menus done in so many different ways is very instructive. And [URL=“http://www.tyssendesign.com.au/articles/css/dropdown-low-down/”]here’s a roundup of a lot of dropdowns, some with JavaScript and a couple without, including a nice pro/con review for each.
Tyssen’s list is excellent.
I actually learned how the things really worked with the Sons of Suckerfish menus… mostly because the CSS was pretty clean.
You can take a clean, readable dropdown and play with it… initially commenting out all the css, then slowly letting some CSS get uncommented from top to bottom, to see what it all does. One of my first dropdowns was one from Stu Nichols, and I just couldn’t read the CSS and while I was able to eventually style it to my needs, it was something I didn’t understand (I supposed that’s partially because of the order he writes his CSS). Suckerfish saved me because I could read it… and then it clicked.
Think I will pass on the drop down menu idea. I am a real novice, and find much of this way beyond me as this point. I took one class on html at local community college, and did one website for my wife (www.theinquisitiveeye.com). I am now working on one for myself, and know it will be better than the first, but a long way from polished. I enjoy trying, and learn a lot each time I sit down.
I hope to take a few more classes this year, and perhaps someday I can understand much of what you offer. Will let you critique my website when I
get it up, but please be gentle.
Do you do well with books?
I got started on Ian Lloyd’s book, and got “positioning” fairly straight in my head (in a basic way) with the HTML Utopia book (they only happen to be Sitepoint books, I swear they’re not paying me in tasty bon-bons to pimp 'em or anything)… after that, learning through doing more sites and from forums and online articles (stuff like they have at A List Apart etc) was possible.
I was drawing pictures of websites, when my husband said “hey why don’t you just learn HTML and CSS? Any moron can learn that.” (lawlz, but he struggles with CSS) I didn’t even know what CSS was, and googled it. I ended up at DigitalPoint forums where, luckily for me, Dan Schulz and deathshadow and Gary Turner were there to start me off in the right direction (“don’t go to w3schools.com!”).
I made my username based on how stupid I felt learning this stuff, and I’ve lost plenty of hair over both. It seems there’s a sort of “hump” that, once you get over it, you feel confident to tackle any layout, while still finding you’re learning something new rather regularly.
I found that going through Ian’s book, where you build not your own web site but his, step-by-step, helped me get a hang of HTML and really basic CSS.
HTML Utopia I was able to mostly read, as the code was already making sense. I ended up using the appendix C thing in the back for a long time for quick lookups.
Not everyone is a book person, but those two made what I was seeing online make a lot more sense.
Both the books I mentioned are old enough to be sitting in a (decent) public library. Ian’s book (Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way Using HTML and CSS) does have a new second edition out, but I don’t know what all has been changed.
Poes, paragraph C, subsection A4 (just below the Speed Racer clause) clearly states that mentors will share bon bons with one another. I’m waiting… 
Barnum, the Head First series of books (one on HTML/CSS and one on Web Design) are excellent also. They’re designed for novice learners. I’ve used them to teach middle school students and have used them as resources for my own learning.
[ot]Uh, sorry but, if I do get any chocolate of pretty much any kind (unless it’s peanuts too), it stays with me.
I’ve been known to eat an entire chocolate bunny in one sitting, one that, on the floor, could reach my knee. As a teenager.
Nobody takes mah chocolate. Nobody.
Dammit now I’m drooling on the keyboard. ew[/ot]
One of the things I found useful when teaching myself was an “HTML Quick Reference Sheet” on one HTML page with a basic explanation of each element and the possible attributes.
Since the majority of any web-page ‘visible content’ will be consisting of mainly; Hx, P, A and IMG tags you have already briefly covered over 5% of all the HTML Elements. You will have used; HTML, HEAD, TITLE, BODY so that means you have already looked at around 10% of the tags so at least 1 in 10 you know a little about already.
Although this is the official list of ‘Elements’ (or you may have heard the term tags) it may be of some use even though it is not designed as a learning tool: http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/index/elements.html from that it will give you an idea in the “Description” column what each one means. The Following: http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/index/attributes.html shows the ‘Attributes’ where they can appear in the “Related Elements” column. You can basically ignore the other columns to begin with and remember a lot of them you won’t ever need to use.
It’s probably a little too hard to follow at the stage you are now but if you do find a good quick-reference (with brief examples) it should help you pick things up faster.
I am not even allowed “bon bons”, and have to eat with my fingers; scraps of code.
Chris Coyier created a nifty chart that I’d like to be able to turn into a poster. And Robert Nyman wrote a [URL=“http://robertnyman.com/2007/10/29/explaining-semantic-mark-up/”]good post on semantic vs. icky HTML.
Robert, I don’t see any bon bons coming over my transom, either. Try some ketchup on those code snippets, they tend to lack flavor… 
Robert, don’t worry about offending my one website. I know it’s basic, or probably sloppy is a better description. Any suggestions are appreciated. I try and retain things, but unless I work at this daily, I often forget. Trying hard to put things in a notebook for future reference.
Thanks for looking, and thank you all for your suggestions. I have indeed ordered a couple of the books you recommended from Amazon.