New Learner

Im very interested in learning to program and looking to study computing or Computer Science at school, was wondering if anyone has got any tips on where to start for web design programming or anything such a PHP CSS and Java script.

Thanks

 

As far as the web goes, the technologies you listed are definitely a great start. I'd begin with HTML(& XHTML), learning the basics of it. After that, I'd move on to CSS. After that, I'd learn Javascript. Those three will give you a good foundation for web design. Of course, along with all of these things, I'd become at least somewhat familiar with the way a web server works, and the basics of how the internet works in general. How DNS works(in general...), how to set up a domain, how to host the website, etc. etc.

After you have a general idea of building a website using HTML, CSS and Javascript(which I still need to learn/brush up on myself), and you have a general idea of hosting and maintaining the website, I'd move on to things like PHP, MySQL and XML.

Personally, I have a harder time learning from research than I do learning from having someone there teaching me and answering my questions, but I've at least been able to learn the majority of what I know about HTML and CSS on the internet.

A few sites that I found useful(and remember, no site is perfect, and most are bound to have an error or two)...
www.htmlgoodies.com
www.htmldog.com
www.w3.org (world wide web standards organization... great place to learn a ton of web related stuff, since, a lot of it comes from(or at least is standardized by) them)
www.w3schools.com

I love sharing knowledge, so I'll do a little rambling about what I know so far in my learning journey.

First, HTML is a markup language, not a programming language. It was created using the metalanguage SGML. There are several different version of HTML. You can add a DTD tag to the top of your html documents to denote which version you are using. Some people may not see this as very important, I think otherwise. I've seen first hand that which DTD(or the lack of a DTD) CAN CHANGE the way the page is rendered. Thus, I will always use a DTD. Also, avoid using browser specific tags. Some browser makers have in the past decided to include "translations", if you will, for tags that are not in the standards. So, while that particular tag will be translated in that browser a certain way, it may not be translated any way in another browser. Furthermore, not all browsers translate everything the same way. As you learn more, you'll learn more about how to make your pages cross-compatible, meaning, they'll display the same way in a wider range of different browsers.

Ummm... CSS is great. When you're learning, you'll probably see a lot of tags and attributes that are deprecated used as examples. That's great for learning, but I'd start using CSS to replace as much of those as possible as soon as possible. It will be easier than growing used to doing everything in HTML, and then try to switch. Using CSS with HTML, I think, will probably end up making your web design experience easier overall. It has mine. Make sure you learn the various ways of implementing CSS and the uses for each. I'm not sure everyone always uses the same words, but you basically have 3 ways to use CSS. Inline(in the tag itself, using the "style" attribute), internal(in the head of the html document), and external(in a separate text file, linked in the html file). and I think that's enough rambling for now... I'm sure those links will teach you much more than my ramblings anyway, and if it's already written in the links, why re-write it here.. Hope that helps you though.

And if you're more interested in actual programming, I can't really help you there.

 

Thanks for that, that was very informative and i will get down to looking at those websites after i finish college today or if i have any spare time ill look at them while im in college.

Thanks

 

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www.learnvisualstudio.net