Beginner Web Developer

Hello All I just joined this forum in search of some help.

I have been a programmer for some time now, but would like to reach into web development.
I know a little HTML, CSS, VB.NET, C#
I know a lot SQL Server, VB 6.0.

I would like to know what are some good tutorial sites/ books on HTML, CSS, XML, ASP.NET.

I have an idea of what I want my first website to be, but have little idea how to create it or where to begin. I do own DreamWeaver, Macromedia Flash, and Visual Studio.Net 2005.

There are loads of sites on the Internet covering the topics you are looking for.

You might like to start with: http://www.w3schools.com/

www.tutorialized.com is a useful database of tutorials too.

I suggest not using Dreamweaver although people argue to use it for Experience. I always hand-code:

Sites:

http://w3schools.com
http://good-tutorials.com
http://pixel2life.com
http://sitepoint.com (books & awesome forum)
http://neowin.net/forum (they have a web dev part)

Dreamweaver is a must. It automatically puts in all the basic stuff plus its much quicker to insert functions into the website than clean it up by hand afterwords. Less prone to syntax errors.

I disagree. Dreamweaver is most definately NOT a must.

Dreamweaver is an unecessary expense and if you are starting out as a web designer, the risk is that you won't make the effort to understand what's going on 'under the hood' so to speak.

Develop the techniques for producing your own site templates and with the use of a product like HTML-Kit, you will be whipping together sites in no time.

More to the point you will understand exactly what is going on and will know where to turn when something needs a tweak or two.

lol i cant believe this, a web design forum giving advice not to use dreamweaver?

Use trial version of dreamweaver to test it out and see what u think.

I agree with Sypher, but it entirely depends on what you want from your site.

if you are a pensioners group which needs a website to put news updates on, use something like frontpage.

if you want more than FP but still cant be bothered to handcode get dreamweaver, andits the ideal solution for any web designer, WYSIWYG or handcode.

if you dont want to spend anything and enjoy typing reams of seemingly meaningless gibber, handcode on sometihng like Notepad. alright, there are times when handcoding is necessary but WYSIWYG with DW and you can handcode on that.

thats just my opinion.

Although I disagree about Dreamweaver it can be very good when starting as I myself have no experience in Dreamweaver because I learned to hand-code.

The Advantages of Dreamweaver

• Less Syntax errors
• clean accessible code
• nice interface
• The best WYSIWYG editor
• Good features

The Disadvantages of Dreamweaver

• The CSS in it is crap
• Nothing beats hand-coding
• Money is an option

Obviously there will be more of each but thats the basics, also if you are going to be a web developer when you are older I know for a fact that most of them will say:

• WYSIWYG Experience preferably Macromedia Dreamweaver - 1 Year.

I hand code in dreamweaver, here's why:

- When anyone handcodes, it's always cleaner
- When I handcode in dreamweaver, I get the following advantages:
--- I type the opening element, it auto-types the closing one. This cuts time greatly and improve syntax accuracy.
--- With one keyboard command, dreamweaver cleanly formats all my code. (ex. removes unneeded whitespace, sets proper indenting, etc.)
--- The code changes color when there is an error
--- I can auto-validate from the Results window (though I double check at validator.w3.org in the end)
--- When I move files around in dreamweaver's ftp pane, it updates my links for me, and does so very cleanly and accurately.
--- When I'm done with a file, a simple press of CMD+Shift+U sends up it (no need to open another application for FTP.

I agree, dreamweaver is a bit bloated, but the combination of hand coding in Code View and with all of dreamweavers helpful features, there is really no beating it.

I just wish it ate up a little less RAM...

Wow, I think it's time to put in the old Macromedia studio disk and get some experience in Dreamweaver, I would use the coding section for it though =]

hand-coding html is like using ms paint for graphics... wait a sec i think craig said he does, nevermind.

If you have not already committed to the expense of Dreamweaver or heaven forbid, ripped off a copy, then have a look at what HTML-Kit can do for you.

There's a free version as well as a paid for version. You can customise it any which way you like and there is a huge range of productivity plug-ins from the user community.

• Colour coded code
• Preview pages that include php
• Built in ftp
• Validation modules
• HTML Tidy

I could go on.

Give it a go: http://www.chami.com/html-kit/

I was playing around with Dreamweaver 8 last night and the coding is very interesting, I even managed to code a friends layout in full CSS/XHTML with it with a few tweaks in the preferences.

ha ha, moved onto fireworks

There is an intermediate ground. I use 1st Page, which is basically hand-coding with grunt-work help. Advantages:
- it's free
- you can pop in tags with a button interface, like putting in paragraphs takes two seconds. Highlight, alt-a, p, enter.
- putting in a an image is drag-and-drop
- there is some reference help if you forget a basic html or css term, although it's incomplete and not up to date

I can't speak to disadvantages, as I've never used Dreamweaver. I tried another WYS program and didn't like it at all.

I'm a noob and a slow learner to boot but at least when I do what little I can, I really understand what I'm doing. Since I've made every mistake you can make, usually two or three times.

It would be nice to have clean code from the getgo, but on the other hand, validating css on w3c and then having to clean it up by hand is well-deserved punishment for sloppy coding.

If you're gonna hand code do it in Programmer's Notepad 2

I haven't used Dreamweaver since version 4!

Haven't tried it, but does it have the convenience features I mentioned above that I enjoy in Dreamweaver?

For php/mysql i usually use crimson editor