There's much more to web design than CSS/XHTML though -- here's some food for thought:
1. Accessibility (508, WAIG, etc) will eventually become law, if it hasn't already in your area. Most of the requirements are really easy, so there's no excuse for not getting at least 95% accessible.
2. Usability (making something *truly* intuitive to understand and interactive with) is the difference between a good interface, and a bad one. You'll spend your whole life perfecting this skill, so you might as well get started now!
3. DOM scripting can be used to *enhance* the experience for UA's with JavaScript available, while continuing to remain 100% accessible to those without.
4. Flash replacement techniques are going to be BIG. They can allow you, the designer, to meet some of the more challenging needs of your clients (like graphical headings in an obscure font) with minimal impact to your time and budget.
5. Defensive Design & User Experience Design is related to interface design, but it's pretty much it's own thing. What happens if a form is filled out incorrectly, or there's an error, or a user enters something unexpected or malicious into a form? See http://37signals.com/book/ to understand what I mean.
6. Server-side scripting. Websites need to fulfil much larger goals now than ever before, and usually this involves some sort of server-side data manipulation (everything from a contact form to a product database). Most clients will also want a CMS. You need a basic understanding of PHP or a similar server-side language to:
a) meet basic client needs
b) collaborate efficiently with programmers on larger projects and teams
7. Content is King. Writing or editing for the web is a fine art. You may think this isn't your job, but if you manage websites, then I think it is part of your huge job description. You should at least be able to edit and re-word content to suit the web, and recognise bloat.
That should keep us all occupied for about the next 400 years :)
And by the way, thanks, I think you've just inspired a new article for me to write on my site tonight :)
Justin French http://justinfrench.com/ http://indent.com.au/
On 23/07/2004, at 8:45 PM, 7 sinz wrote:
Hi all,
Im an 19 yer old desinger, with a particular interest in web design. For the last 8 motnhs i've been huddled up in my workspace practising my art learning the ins and out of CSS and pretty much learning the language to a T.
Anything i used to do with nested tables I now write with CSS, layouts dependant on the viewport are atill time consuming to make, and depending on browser support/target audience & scale of the project they can be time consuming, still i managae to pull through.
Fixed width layouts are no brainers to use, i feel once you've comfortably mastered positioning in CSS you pretty much can design any layout you cut outta of Photoshop/other image editor.
Not to say that thats all you need to know when developing with CSS, but it is a main part of structual design, once you can write it fluently theres no stopping or holing back with what kind of structure your static design may be.
Now, it took me a while to get here, but we all got to start somewhere.
But what now? How can you prepare for the next specification, new attributes and selectors, is there a test suite for CSS3?. Im a graphic designer, who's passion for web development introduced me to one of the strongest client side languages available to any developer, now that im at a point of "speaking fluent CSS" what do i tackle next, what new CSS3 flavours can i focus on for the next wave of innovation?
--- Justin French http://indent.com.au
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