Hey I've noticed a lot of people here have very "profesional" looking websites. I taught myself some html years back, but I can't do anything like some people here do. For you guys what programs do you use to make most of your graphics, and what languages do you use? Were did you learn those languages/programs?

Mate, sometimes the coolest pages are simpler than we may ever think. Take a look at their codes and you'll realise how you can do great things with basic HTML. As for the graphics, photoshop is a good tool. Get new brushes, fonts, ... pretty much everything you can and try to understand "what is what". I'm a bit lazy, but here are some stuff my brother uploaded to his site (named "Fofo pra carai"):







These are blatantly jokes, but they can show you what you can do with that toy

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[ I May Upload Something Someday ]

Yea I use photoshop, but messing around w/ it doesnt really help me learn it, I'm a better book learner. Also I'm wondering if anyone has links to refrences on site design and layout. Thanks.

i've been doin webpages foe years, but i just cant get anything really classy lookin up. My current project - http://www.buncrana.com/ is probably my best work to daye. It's nice enough looking and easy to navigate, but it's just not cool looking. I used dreamweaver + photoshop + illustrator to design it, but i know sweet fuck all about graphics etc.. would love to get good at all that stuff, as i've always got these great designs in my head, but i can never put them on the screen..


David

one of the most important things is to not use ugly colors.

58 110 168 is a personal fave

but white with clean dark blue lines gives professional quality stuff. Try to stay away from hyperlinks use linked buttons you can easily find mouse-over codes for button changes etc...

if you know the coding @ all go to a website you like, and rip off their code.

main thing is be creative...i know its a bitch.

but binary in a .
..
... kinda swoop a perfect circular edge looks dope and mess around wtih opacities and box lines.

like I said, browse around, find something you like, and steal it.

if you want proffesional sites just goto to Macromedia website and download FLASH MX, DREAMWEAVER MX & FIREWORKS MX, INC PHOTOSHOP. mix all these together and you will have a nice domain

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" You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert."

Getting that professional look is knowing the fine line between overdoing it and not.

That practice makes perfect saying comes in well here. Each time you make a new site you'll learn more things so you're better off the next time.

Currently, for making sites cross browser compliant, CSS is a big help between the mozilla/opera/ie group.

And yes, a lot of people, including myself use the Macromedia Studio package.

Designing a website isn't an overnight thing, just like designing a magazine wouldn't be.

To design a professional website you need to have mastered three things.

1. Graphical presentation
2. Web technology
3. A regard for how a viewer uses a site.

The first thing you should do is plan your website - firstl plan wot its gonna do. A website that doesn't do wot its supposed to do is irrelevant. Secondly plan how the site will work, and make it smooth, make it flow. A site can be simple or easy to navigate, but if you're gonna make a site that's hard to navigate, you need to give the user a reason to spend time learning and playing with the navigation to get it to work.

Sketch out your content spaces. Pretty accurately. Sketch out the pages and how imagery, branding, navigation, promotional/lead space is gonna affect the flow and continuity of your pages and your site.

Then you can start designing it onscreen. You pretty much have a choice of PhotoShop or FireWorks. Personally i wouldn't go near fireworks. Don't use a vector program like Illy or FreeHand, you're dealing with rasterized pixels.

When you are happy with your concept, then you can start breaking it up. If you're gonna use a WYSIWYG editor, then DreamWeaver is the general app of choice, but really, if you're designing a profesional website, you should be more or lewss coding it by hand - so its irrlevant what you use to do it.

The biggest differences between a professional and an amateur site come down to delivery, and how the designer carries the user through the experience.

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www.magnasoma.com

quote:

Originally posted by magnasoma

now thats a good post.

i used adobe GoLive 6.0.1 for my web page..thought it was fairly good.
I really wanna try something like dreamweaver soon tho.

since everyone seems to think the macromedia suit is the best I dl/d that and started messing around with it. Did you guys all learn to use them with the tutorials? Or by yourself? Or a website/book(which ones)?