Beginning Web Design

[Guest]

I am looking to get into web deign for my company. I know nothing about front
page or any other web development softwares (ie dreamweaver). I am curious if
it is worth my companies money to pay for me to be trained in web design so
they can have a web designer on staff. It is a small company and would only
be one website. I know years ago it would not be worth it but software now a
days is incredibly easy to learn and quite powerful. I am not looking to be
able to design crazy graphic webpages. I am an Architect with design
knowledge and know how to use Adobe photoshop. I was thinking Microsoft
Frontpage was the easiest solution to my dilema. I am not sure that it is
that easy to learn. So my questions to anyone who is reasonably knowledgible
about the web design world are:
1) Is Frontpage totally capable of designing websites beginning to end?
2) Is it easy to pick up on?
3) Are there training courses available online?
4) Would you recommend hiring a web designer rather than doing it myself.
We would rather have someone capible of web design on staff so we have the
ability to update things at our convenience. I am not sure if trying to learn
how to design webpages is bigger task than I think it is. Any response
regarding this post is welcome. I figured there where some smart individual
floating around in these discussion groups

 

[clintonG]

I'm a graduate architect myself. Basically, you can think of FrontPage as a
desktop publishing program. Like Microsoft Word with additional page layout
and composition features. If you can learn PhotoShop I would say learning
FrontPage will be a walk in the park given your ability to grasp the
concepts of how the web actually works. Now for those questions...

1) Is Frontpage totally capable of designing websites beginning to end?

Yes, very useful for "basic" page layout but its other "features" are
crippleware.

2) Is it easy to pick up on?

Yes, very easy.

3) Are there training courses available online?

Yes, hundreds of free subject matter and context related tutorials are
better than "courses"

4) Would you recommend hiring a web designer rather than doing it
myself.

Yes but only to achieve specific objectives that require web development and
integration skills noting FrontPage is easy to learn and use and can be
thought of as a push button monkey HTML generator which is great at basic
page layout but sucks at just about everything else.

Web design and development is similar to architecture. It is a process. The
real world of web design and development is best described quoting Charleton
Heston, Planet of the Apes, who screamed "Its a madhouse, a bloody
madhouse!" Really. Basic websites are a piece of cake given a couple of
months of study and application but when needing to support multiple
browsers it gets ugly.

Many other issues are relevant in this context. Making things work together
is very time consuming to learn to do correctly. If there's anything I can
convey which I hope to get through to you is the fact that there are few
shortcuts that are credible. FrontPage for example provides many shortcuts
as do the other authoring programs. These shortcuts always lead to a dead
end painting the ignorant into a corner. Always. Its simply a matter of time
and context. So yes, you will likely need somebody to write some code for
youat some point for some thing as you will want to avoid the fallacious
promise of "features" which in reality are crippleware.

You do seem to understand the fact that content management is an issue.
Before proceeding much further you should consider your objectives and
discuss what you expect to achieve with the website, is it a marketing
portfolio, does it need to integrate with an intranet, does it need to
provide access to files for business partners and so on.

<%= Clinton Gallagher
NET csgallagher AT metromilwaukee.com
URL http://clintongallagher.metromilwaukee.com/

 

[Clark]

Frontpage is a great tool for web designing. You should take a training course
in it, maybe even before that a quick course in html just so you know what
frontpage is doing for you. when you occasionally have to look at the code to
see what is happening.

If you think you might get to the point where your website interfaces with a
database for things, Frontpage will do that for you also as long as things dont
get too complicated. You would want to make sure that you plan to "host" the
website somewhere that supports Frontpage Extensions and Active Server Pages.
You can find such sites for $10 a month or even less.

You will probably want to do some basic graphics, so a program like Macromedia
Fireworks would be good also. It mimics many things you can do with photoshop,
but in addition is has nice graphics capablilities and is a nice integrated
program intended for web design.

Good luck.