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Future Skills for a Budding Web Designer?
ericdfields asks: "One of my lifetime career goals is to establish myself on some decent level or another as a well-rounded, (mostly) standards-based web designer with some backroom web development knowhow. The problem is I have no clue where to begin. HTML, CSS, JavaScript are an obvious start, but what about other web-driven languages? PHP, XML, SQL, Perl... the list goes on. Should I be looking to grab hold of some Flash and Director skills? What abilities will be needed on the horizon that I can get an early start on learning today?"
It's important to know how to use the french fry timer, so your fries don't burn. Also, you will eventually need to know how to operate the cash register. Fortunately, they usually have pictures of the items on the keypad, so it should be a quick study for nearly anyone.
Make sure that you have a good grasp of graphic design and layout/text editing. The best web-designers know more than just the techincal skills, they also know what a good looking page is supposed to look like. Most people are surprised that there are real and time-tested design standards. Violate them and no amount of techincal knowledge will make a webpage look good.
I disagree. JavaScript has it's place. Primarily for enforcement of how a form should be filled out.
There are other uses too. Realtime calculations in web pages. All things that could be done server side, but why waste the server side resources when it can be done client side?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
HTML first, you need this no matter what. And learn it right, don't go putting FONT tags all over the place or build nested tables 6 levels deep.
CSS is next. This is what you use to make your HTML look pretty. Memorize all the little things, there aren't that many really.
PHP next. Play around with generating dynamic HTML.
Then MySQL (or other database), and practice creating forms that get saved to a database. I'd recommend spending a good amount of time on this one and learn things like database architecture and how to tune things.
Javacript should probably be last, since you shouldn't need it much, if at all. A lot of sites have a hundred K of javascript code to try and make things "cool". Go for functional, not cool. Things like confirmation dialogs are good. Things like form validate is WRONG - the backend should do that, not the client.
Photoshop is fairly important, but won't get you far unless you know the other stuff. Although you could do this right after HTML and CSS if you want to do some static websites for people. For dynamic stuff, functionality is usually more important than looking pretty is a business environment, but your results may vary. Besides, proper design will let your site look cool without a lot of eye candy.
As for Flash I don't personally like it and haven't bothered to learn it yet simply because I don't have a NEED for it. That's what it comes down to. Flash isn't necessary for web design. If a customer needs it, subcontract it out.
JavaScript, used correctly, is good. Look at all the compliments Google gets on GMail and Google Suggest or what people are doing with unobtrusive DHTML.
If anything you should be encouragine this guy to write good JavaScript so you don't have to put up with the bad stuff.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
There are a lot of skills, as you've already realized, that go into web development. But to be successful commercially, you are going to need to learn to work as a team. Quite simply, if you are a good designer, you'll have too much work and will be a bottle neck.
The hard part of being a developer is troubleshooting, debugging and optimizing. The only way to know effectively do it is to have a complete understanding of the entire web process. Those skills really come only from experience.
It is learning how ALL the pieces of the equation fit together and interact. I.e How does the HTML in the site render with the browser, is the traffic effecting the performance, if so are the images to blame or possible a database connection? Is there a caching issue in the browser causing upodates not to show? What version of apache/PHP are running, how is each configured?
I own and run a small hosting company. I also do a lot of development using mainly PHP, but there are a few PERL scripts, shell scripts and even a C program here or there. My company specializes in hosting small developer and designers who are just getting started. So We actually get a lot of questions and issues, that usually stem from the fact that the people just do not have a complete picture of the system.
For example one of my larger more experienced customers who has two dedicated servers, and hosts about 300 domains on them, called me with a problem with a shopping cart she has used many many times before. For some reason the site was excruiatingly slow, and she did not know why. A quick glance at the config file told me she was running a database off a server in another datacenter. So there was a lot of overhead from the lookups. She knew this, but didn't realize the impact that geography makes, and she wasted a day trying to figure it out before calling me.
Anyway, in my opinion it is good to lear one or two skills really well, and assemble a team of people around you that can fill in the gaps. But it is equally important to know a little bit about as many skills as you can. This is important for several reasons:
1. If you are farming out the work you can give the subcontractor good specs, and can in general communicate your needs better.
2. If you do need to learn the skill it will be easier with some background to start.
3. A lot of the skills and languages and tools you learn share common elements, or at least common ideas. So by learning new things, you can often take those skills and apply them to your area(s) of expertise and become better.
4. learning about the features and benifits of a wide range of tools will help you identify the best tool for the particular project. That will help you be more efficient, and thus make more money.
Anyway if I were starting with a blank slate and wanted to be an independent developer. I would learn HTML and CSS as they are the fundemental building blocks. A server side language is also very handy, and will allow you to truely take advantage of the numerous free scripts. It is one thing to install a script, it is another thing to fully integrate it into a site, knowing the language will help. I prefer PHP.
If you pick up PHP, knowing basic SQL and specificall MySQL will go a long ways.
Flash, is handy but I try to avoid it for most sites, animated banners are pretty worthless none and really do not provided the customer with any bang for the buck. If your client insists on it, it is easier to farm out the Flash dev.
Graphics skills are very handy, but can be very tedious and time consuming. It is a good idea to know how to "tweak" images, change colors, crop, scale, etc using Gimp or Photoshoto, etc. But Like flash you may be better off letting an artist do the none technical design work.
Javascript has come a long way (or more accurately browsers have come a long way) since now it seems much easier to get Javascript to work across the various browsers. There is a plethora of quality free javascripts
First, I would say the market is full. Web Designers, unless they are very artistic, are low man on the totem pole. IMO, to say "when I grow up I want to be a web designer" for a teenager today is about like saying, "when I grow up, I wanna drive a UPS truck." That's why the other fellow's humor about flipping burgers is funny, sad, but true. You need to think more long term. Also, beware of the wave of out-sourcing
Go to college, and at least get a Business minor. Most of the technologies that are needed for web development are self-teachable, so (again, IMO), if you want to go into computers you may not needa a CompSci degree. Many organizations look for somebody who is technical, but who understands their industry--hence the business minor advice. By that, I mean, you'll understand a bit more about business. However, a business minor (or degree) is really generic.
I used to do IT, now I'm in law school. I don't necessarily plan to be a lawyer--I presently am inclined to return to IT. Having an advanced degree in an industry also helps your job potential.
When it comes to which languages to learn, HTML is too easy to learn to be mentioned--just follow the advice of others on this list and learn HTML properly, not like the WYSIWYG editors might teach. I'd recommend PHP, Perl, Python, all three. I'd also recommend a systems language (Java, C, C++), Mysql is prefect because it helps you learn the fundamentals of databases at a low cost (free).
Depending on where in the country your are, though, you may have to submit yourself to Mr. Bill. In my local market (I moved from where I did IT), Unix skills aren't as marketable as MS skills.
Anyway, a lot of service IT can be self-taught. So, educationally focusing on something else is good for balance. Business helps you communicate to the business types. Other degrees to other specialties. An advanced degree also helps as well as increasing salary potential.
Finally, Be Flexible.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
One of my lifetime career goals is to establish myself on some decent level or another as a well-rounded, (mostly) standards-based web designer with some backroom web development knowhow.
Lifetime goal? Either you're twelve years old, or you're setting your sights really, really, really low. Or both.
Web design used to be tough a long, long time ago. These days, saying that you're going to be a well-rounded web designer is like saying you're going to be a well-rounded word processor user or desktop publisher. Off-the-shelf tools like Dreamweaver can produce web code more than good enough to get by. The challenge is no longer the tool, but the content: businesses have a greater need to put together sensible content that users want to consume, rather than just putting together a well-formatted web site.
If you want to build a set of lifetime career goals, get a role model and ask them what skills they use in their daily job. Don't make the mistake of asking them how they got their start, because lots of us got started in web design because it was tough ten years ago. It's not tough anymore, and it's not a great place to start now.
If you want to make money on the web, don't get started with design - get started with content. Find a subject that you're an expert on, and build out your content using any run-of-the-mill web site management system like Plone or Xoops. Forget getting good at HTML - any monkey can do that. Get good at providing content that users want to return to, and then you have a shot at making money.
What's your damage, Heather?