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I'm very interested in learning Web Design and have learned some basics regarding HTML and CSS a few years back from W3Schools, but I never learnt how to develop websites that are up to today's standards. (Free-flowing sites without the use of tables to govern the design of the site.)

How should I start?

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Voting off-topic, as this is more concerned with the markup than actual design. Better suited on stackoverflow.com, doctype.com, or webmasters.stackexchange.com – Pekka 웃 Jan 15 '11 at 10:56
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Web development and web design are 2 different things (and frequently performed by 2 separate people/teams). Web design is mainly a sub-discipline of graphic design; web development is a sub-discipline of software development. – Calvin Huang Jan 15 '11 at 11:07
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+1 @Pekka. I'll add : never trust w3schools – Shikiryu Jan 15 '11 at 11:29
@Calvin in my understanding, questions about HTML and CSS are clearly out of bounds on GraphicDesign.SE. And that is what the OP wants to learn about. Real web-related design questions are fine - as would be questions about using liquid layouts – Pekka 웃 Jan 15 '11 at 11:33
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@Pekka: even if is technical, web design it is a mix of coding and graphic, you cannot exclude part of it, without than excluding the other part as well. I think that we simply have to answer in a more design way than just techincal – Littlemad Jan 19 '11 at 1:42
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6 Answers

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CSS Zengarden

Check out CSS Zengarden and flip through end various results. They're very versatile and provide a lot of difference over the same source code. You will learn much about modern CSS techniques. Even if you don't dissect them completely you will at least find a lot of inspiration and CSS abilities against normal accessible HTML. The great thing about CSS Zengarden is semantics against style. Content is not styles whatsoever. Everything you see styles is done purely by CSS which is the correct way of doing it, because data can be consumed by many different clients, and style only by those that visualize it.

Books

When it comes to learning from books this one looks very like a good start CSS: The Missing Manual.

Internet

I read Smashing Magazine on the internet that provides a lot of examples and approaches. It spans articles from the design business to great approaches in web design and alike.

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+1 because of Zen Garden - And I would explain a bit what is great about Zen Garden on the importance of content removed from design – Littlemad Jan 19 '11 at 2:04
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Best places for me about learning about web design (layout solutions, usability, graphics and technical solution) are those:

look at all the website of the people that wrote articles in those websites:

A list apart
24ways.org

Or something more technical about list design, and floating http://css.maxdesign.com.au/index.htm

You have to know what are web standards. The official source is this: World Wide Web Consortium (w3c) It is a bit tricky to learn from there because it is highly technical, but it is good to check it out when you want to know on how things work on the web and why about the standards. the most useful thing it is the Validator of your HTML code.

One best way it is having a good look at the source code of good websites, and naturally the proportion of things aligned like those to learn the tricks: http://www.cssbeauty.com/

And Look at website of good web designers and what they are doing:

Jason Santa Maria
Dustin Curtis
Joshua Davis
David DeSandro
http://www.thinkingforaliving.org/
etc...

and my Delicious bookmarks (there is a variety of things, you have to dig through them and skim what you do not need) http://www.delicious.com/Littlemad/webdesign

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For beginners of Photoshop on Web design, I'd recommend this site http://psdvibe.com/

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Best way of learning is making things so make yourself a website.

Read standards, alistapart, tutsplus.

If you need a book look at SitePoint's - HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS.

Some thoughts about csszengarden and W3Schools.

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Sounds more like concepts, but it sounds like what's wanted is semantics and really simple step by step things. – dkuntz2 Jan 16 '11 at 23:23
It would be great if you will add directly links to those websites – Littlemad Jan 19 '11 at 2:10
@Littlemad Thanks, you are right. – Oleksandr Bolotov Jan 19 '11 at 16:37
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Honestly, I would start by learning how to develop WordPress sites. Yes, I can code a site using HTML, CSS, PHP, ... but I can put together a WordPress site faster and then customize as I need to.

If you are looking to start off just learning today's standards then I would recommend http://nettuts.com/. It would also be beneficial to get the premium membership and get access to some great tutorials. If going from PSD to HTML is something you are interested in, they cover that.

Nettuts is part of Envato. Envato has several of tutorial sites that cover web development, wordpress, vectors, photo and video editing and much more. It's a great place to start.

Just my 2 cents.

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"Honestly, I would start by learning how to develop WordPress sites. Yes, I can code a site using HTML, CSS, PHP..." You'll need to work with both CSS and HTML to develop a WordPress site, surely? – e100 Feb 20 '12 at 17:29
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The are a lot of websites with tons of tutorials. However, the best platform to learn webdesign is http://teamtreehouse.com/. Hope it helps! Nik

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Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable if you could include a few words as to why this particular site is better than others... – Farray Mar 1 '12 at 23:37

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