Beginners Can Learn the Basics of Web Design

Web design basics picture

HTML5 for web designers — Carlos Varela (Flickr.com)

Website Design Definition

For those beginners who want to enter into a Web design career, it can be an interesting and popular field with a compelling proposition for enriching creativity and making money at the same time.

Websites are the gateway for personal and business requirements to advertise and build a brand online. Good designing skills help to build a functional and cool looking web site.

Here are some key constituents for basics of web design:

Web page layout using HTML
Layouts can be easily created by using HTML language and code. HTML is a markup language which is used to create web site features like buttons, tables, list box, choice list, text box, and the text area. It is basically the backbone for any website and is universally used for building pages.

Learning HTML is fairly easy as it uses “English like” syntax and formats are in the form of tags (Don’t worry, you’ll pick this up later). HTML editors are available for free and commercial purposes. The editors such as Dreamweaver provide “What you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) features by which you can drag and drop elements to build web sites. There is no need to memorize the tags as the editors generate HTML code for you.

Web page styling using CSS
Web pages can have cool, stylish, and mind boggling looks with a well designed CSS style sheet. Style sheets take care of the rendering of elements such as color, look and feel, along with general design. Style sheets can be developed using code known as Cascading Style Sheet (CSS).

It can be written once and then used across the website to give a standard feel across the whole navigation area. It is a completely common tool which compliments HTML work. This can be used creatively to show the web pages in an intuitive manner. Web page style sheets are essential for building an eye-catching site and enriches the user experience.

Web page events using Javascript / AJAX
Web page refresh, submissions and events like clicking buttons, selection of choices, form completion, etc. can be managed by Java scripts. This is a programming language and needs some understanding on using the tools to submit data to the servers for business logic processing. Just a bit beyond the beginner basics.

AJAX is used for generating web pages that optimize user experience by avoiding refresh every time and through an inline mechanism of doing them in background without loading the full page. Javascript / AJAX is a powerful tool to build a dynamic web site with exceptional navigation capabilities with fewer and more effective clicks.

In summary, basics of web design includes learning a markup language, style sheet usage and event handling using Javascript. This instructional basic knowledge is adequate for a beginner to start building and managing web sites. There are plenty of tutorials and web design courses to help you get started if you believe this is a hobby or career you want to pursue. Here is a short video demonstrating how to design a simple page using HTML.

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