Self learning web design

A friend and I are going to self learn Web design. I want to know, where it is that I need to start. I have books, but I don't want to sit there and read an entire text book, if I don't have to. I have a little, when I say little, I mean little, programming background. So if you do Web design as a profession, or a actual professor in this subject would be awesome.

Learn HTML, then CSS, then PHP, then javascript and from then on you'll have a good foot in the ground.

Also, books exist for a reason, you'd be surprised what you'd learn from actually reading them.

http://www.codeacademy.com/

HTML > CSS > JavaScript > MySQL and PHP

Afterwards you might want to read up on a style guide, the site doesn't promote the best habits, but it does give you a basic overview of programming principles with its interactive JavaScript tutorial.

Thanks so much for the advice. Keep it coming please!

Get Notepad++ from the Free Programs sticky at the top of the PC/Tech page, I've used something similar that I can't remember the name for; but it'll help you keep your code in check. EDIT: Programmer's Notepad is the one I couldn't remember. Same idea as Notepad++ though.

If you are a college student and taking some Comp Sci classes you might be eligible to get copies of Microsoft Visual Studio or the Adobe Dreamweaver and other software for free or a decent discount. I simply state this because I shamelessly abused that privilege for my coding classes and I miss those programs dearly. They would keep your individual tags (like body, table, tr, td, etc.) in collapsable brackets and would even give you great previews in-program. Or you could use Notepad++ and have your webpage open and refresh it after every save in Notepad.

Also, you should learn how to do some basic image editing. You can do some fun stuff with rollovers and such, but the big thing is you want a program that can compress the image quality so it will load faster on your webpage. (Obviously, HQ stuff is excepted)

Notepad++ is a great program and it's what I use to write PHP, JavaScript, CSS and HTML. Going to recommend you pick it up as well. If you're using Linux Geany is even better than N++.

While it does help to have a bit of graphic design skills, it's not mandatory. Most of the time you can just buy stock artwork and photography if you need it, a lot of the time the client will give you something to work with. Paint.NET is a free, lightweight image editor that will usually suffice for most web designers.

Visual Studio Express is free, you don't need the full version, I recommend against it's use for anything web related aside from working with ASP.NET

If you want to get into any form of programming this attitude will not get you far, coding is like maths you need to do heaps of it to be any good at it (unless you're naturally gifted with the ability to code). There's a good reason those books are thick they're supposed to teach you the basics then build on top of it.

I've been out of the programming game for a while but an easy starting language would be HTML with progression into more sophisticated languages.

Seconded. I got royally screwed my freshman year at UT Arlington by TAs who effectively told us to copy our answers right out of the books. I barely learned anything in that class and bombed the next course. In the next few years I took more (and retook a few) coding classes and having the foundations down really makes it easier, and lets you see similarities in different coding languages.

Most C stuff is similar enough, and having taken HTML classes in High School helped me keep my code clean and annotated so it was easier to go back in fix junk code. My biggest regret is that I've lost heaps of my old work: All of my HTML work is gone, and most of my C/C++ is missing. If I'm really lucky I might find an old HDD that has some of it, but I'm not holding my breath. I did pick up some lovely coding books at Goodwill though, and I've also kept many of my old Hardware and software coding books too; the reference has been pretty useful.

I'm kind of old school, so my fundamentals will probably feel a bit more traditional and outdated. I started trying web design back in high school, but eventually ended up taking more and more courses on it and even graduated college for it lol. The basics are HTML and then XHTML and then CSS. You don't really need to learn much JavaScript when it comes to the design aspect since CSS does it better. PHP and the rest are dynamic development tools for functioning and not so much designing. I personally use Dreamweaver to this day to create all my web pages, although I used to be a Notepad-only dude.

As far as not wanting to read books are concerned? Head over to w3.org. Easy access to learning fast.

What you need is HTML and CSS to get started. Try just building a few(and by a few I mean countless.) static sites this way while reading up on what tags to use where and when, getting proper tagging and hierarchy down from the start will help down the road. Trying out some CSS extensions like SASS or LESS together with some framework can also be a fun thing, just make sure you have the grip on CSS first.

The next step is JavaScript and/or PHP (and a bit of MySQL.) and when you get started it kind off depends on what stack you'll be focusing on. If you run the traditional AMP stack (Apache, MySQL, PHP, read up on this.) then I'd focus on PHP while learning basic JavaScript and relying on a library like jQuery at first. Basic MySQL will come naturally with this.

If you want to hang with the cool kids with the new fad, that would be the MEAN stack (MongoDB, Express.js, Angular.js, Node.js). If this is your thing then you better start to binge down on that JavaScript.

So, start out with some basic HTML and CSS. w3.org is a decent place to start. Heavy on the reading though.

Here's my stumbleupon list where I toss in design/development stuff I come across that seems worth a read. I can't vouch for everything in there as I don't think I've come around to read all of it yet, I just add things that seem interesting and filter out the crap as I read them, but most of the articles and sites about basic development is reliable stuff.