Web Design Career Change

Hi guys, it's nice to finally join this wonderful forum.

I'm a cs graduate from johns hopkins and am thinking of making a shift in career into Web Designing. I have some experience back in college in regards to coding, so i think the aspect of web designing wouldn't be too alien to me.

html and css are pretty much the most important things i need to know and master first right? html is a given, but what are some other things that are a must know? A friend of mine mentioned a few things to me such as css , adobe flex, dotNet, Csharp, expression blend, flash/silverlight....

From your experience... what would be your personal approach to learning web desgining? html first of course, then css ? and what next?

Reason i'm asking this is that i know absolutely nothing about any of these products/technology other than html, and i would appreciate it if anyone could point me in the right direction and maybe share some of their experience.


In addition, what are some software you guys would recommend for a web designer? what's a very good html editor, what are the nice tools that i need to acquire.

Finally, does anyone know of any good sites for learning the stuff i need for becoming a good web designer? sites that have tutorials and guides on html, css, or anything that might be helpful for a guy who is just getting his feet wet?

thanks in advance.

Dear Friend,
First of all, its a very good decision and thought you have. Since web designing is a stable career option compared to any other software programming. I'm not thrashing other software programming fields..what I meant is Web Design technologies revolve around HTML, CSS and Photoshop tool as a base, which often get get minor advancements around it and it never go outdated as some of the other programming platforms. So its pretty stable.

I guess you have a good programming background and there is a very good demand for good web programmers, HTML coders. In addition to it, if you have good visual design skills (Photoshop skills), it will be a great advantage in the market.

So learn "Table-less HTML coding, CSS, XHTML and photoshop. Flash is good to know..but Flash has become more of a presentation tool and is less used on websites nowadays. If Flash is used, its based on high-end scripting rather just simple animations. So, you may learn Flash scripting. There is good demand for it.Dreamweaver is a great tool for creating HTML/CSS. Photoshop for creating visuals graphics and layouts.

I'm not sure if I should name any tutorial sites over here, which may be against the forum rules here to advertise. So, please google the keywords: HTML, CSS tutorials, Photoshop tutorials and you may find many usefull results.

All the best!

Right, those are my thoughts exactly.
After graduation i went to pursuit something else, something completely none cs related.... and to me, if i'm a 41 years old programmer programmign a certain language, and the language becomes obsolete, i'm forced to learn a new programming language completely from scratch. This aspect of computer science is just very different from other profession, where your accumulated knowledge is better appreciated.. whether you're an architect, scientist, lawyer... etc..

but if you're a pure hard core programmer, you're left to learn the same thing the college kids are learning, and having to compete with the recent graduates... and i'm sure most companies will rather hire someone new who still strive to achieve, rather than a bitter old man. hehe

unless you're not very tied down to one programming language and actually am a master of all trades, then sure, your expertise and experience will be respected to some degree, but there are many who are very specialized in just one language.

that's why i can see where you're coming from. especially with outsourcing.