RE: A newbie Question

Well those from a programming background usually say learn the
hand-coding first and those from a graphical background say use a
wysiwyg program first. The truth is that you need the skills from
working both ways to do the best job possible. 

Someone who sees that Dreamweaver is a popular program for putting
together a web site can create a cosmetically attractive site but that
can lead to problems. For example you might not have any idea what
<.h1>text<./h1> does to the text bother in terms of structuring a page
and changing its appearance. However if you learn to use HTML hopefully
you will find the importance of using such tags to help people,
particularly those who use assistive technology, to read the page
easier. One problem I found with Dreamweaver is that I was left to my
own devices to make choices between using bold or strong and then
wondering what on earth is the difference and why you should prefer one
over the other. Whereas after learning HTML from a reputable source
these sorts of questions were answered. 

In fact last week I spent half an hour a page on a, thankfully small,
site created in DreamWeaver by someone who had no idea how to set up a
structure for headings that could then be used with a style sheet.
Without the background in HTML I would not have had any idea how to have
altered the HTML source code in DreamWeaver. They wanted to use a style
sheet but were struggling a bit with it somehow. 

I have been known to have the opportunity to work on a site in two
different locations in one day, one where I had access to Dreamweaver
and one where I could only use notepad. Because I had some idea about
using HTML I was able to make some alterations in notepad without
needing to have Dreamweaver available.  

To create a web site you need basic skills like HTML and Dreamweaver.
Which order you do them or even if you do them at about the same time is
up to you and the resources available to you. The other thing is what is
the point of picking up the skills that are used to help you make web
pages do more than basic HTML can make them do, if you cannot create
basic web pages? Treat this as a step by step process. Once you can do a
decent small site then learn more about adding some extra capability to
it with programming. 

The other thing I would suggest is that when you test the market you
will hopefully find an increasing demand for web sites that are
accessible to everybody. However, there are certain things that either
are not acceptable on such sites or need to be handled carefully. If you
think you will be designing web sites to fulfil any legal requirements
for accessibility that may apply, why bother learning any techniques
that you will not have to use later.  

Susan

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