Welcome!

[jasonrbgh]

Hi, first time on here, playing around with dreamweaver for a friends yoga group.

Give me your criticisms... I know there may be lots

[wbshim]

Good to see people taking an interest in web design! Some questions/tips/pointers:

When you say "attempt at Dreamweaver," do you mean using the design feature in the program? If that's the case, while it may be convenient at first to use that view, I highly recommend coding yourself. Using the design view generates ugly code, and probably does not look the same when viewed in browsers.

As for the design, I'm almost positive Papyrus is the bane of all typography. In my opinion, it makes the website look incredibly generic and mundane. And unrelated, every image on the page looks stretched horizontally. This might be a result of using design view...

[jasonrbgh]

Thanks wbshim,

Any recommendations on where to start to learn code (books etc) or is it best just good searching and reading as much as possible of what comes up.

[Amey]

Kind of looks like when I first started long time back, so I feel your pain.

As per your design right now, the navigation is hard to read, the black link colors and black background are too close of a shade.

Also I recommend getting rid of all that orange. I don't know why, but people always love to use huge background image in their design when they start out, but it looks terrible. I've been there before.

As for learning, I'll just tell you what I did. Find web templates that you like and download them. Then simply look through the code, change things around and see what change what. If you have a problem with understanding a code then just search it on Google. I guarantee this will help you.

Also check out Wordpress.

[bigsmile]

I found the best way to learn CSS/HTML coding was to break it up into chunks. First I would try to learn how to style text, then images, then backgrounds and slowly work it up from there. It's a much more manageable way of learning.

Firebug (an extension for Firefox) is an invaluable tool, as it not only lets you look at the code of other websites, but you can also alter the code. This is an easy way to work out what certain CSS properties do.

However, before looking at other people's code, I would recommend using some beginners CSS/HTML tutorials and just learn the basics of styling text and images. Otherwise, you might find it hard to understand the code of other sites.

I found this site really useful when I was learning: http://htmldog.com, but that was a couple of years ago, so I am not sure how good it is now.

It's worth remembering that good design does not come from Dreamwaver.
I'd recommend the book "The Non-Designer's Design Book" by Robin Williams. The book has very little to do with websites (although there is a web version available), but it explains four simple principles that will help aid any design. It only takes an hour to read at most and will dramatically improve your design skills.

[codeoverride]

I heard this book is good "Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS, 2nd Edition". Just bought it myself but haven't had a chance to start reading it yet.