LearnHub

Intended Audience

* Basic Computer Skills

* Comfortable with using the Internet

* The thrill of exploring new programs

* A venture outside of wizzywig editors

The KickStart

I'm going to provide some some suggested information that I think will lower you're learning curve for building web-sites.

The tools you'll need

A good text editor

-	Windows	Mac
preinstalled	Notepad	TextEdit
{font-family:verdana} free online	Notepad++	TextWrangler
worth buying	E-Text Editor	TextMate

Thats all you need to build web-sites locally on your computer. Putting them on-line is another lesson.

HTMLDog

All the lessons you need and any reference for html and css can be found at the glorious HTMLDog web-site. I had only wished it existed when I began.

Learn about Quirks mode

Quirks Mode is very important to know.

Subscribe to the WSG Mailing List

If you really need help the best place is the Web Standards Group mailing list. If you have something that doesn't look right then they'll get you all patched up in no time. At least subscribe to their light reading which gives great links one in a while.

hasLayout

You'll discover that you'll build a web-site and it will look different in Internet Explorer than it did in Firefox and Safari. This is a great article that a wsg memeber suggested to read. I suggest getting comfortable with html and css first but its here for later when your ready for it.

Do you know these people?

If you don't know these names, do a bit of research on them. You might discover some cool stuff.

* Jeffrey Zeldman

* David Shea

Don't Reinvent the Wheel

There are 40 templates that I recommend using for building all your web-sites. Gala Layout . Take them and make them your own. All my web-sites begin with copy and paste.

Don't blindly pick your colours.

Get your colours to match perfectly. Use a colour scheming tool such as Colour Schemer or use Steel Dolphin's Colour Scheme Tool.

Keep your css clean

* Don't CamalCase or use hyphens in your class names.

* Use ID's sparingly.

* keep it on one line

* keep your line short (if its too long, simplify your design)

When you run into messy css, run it through CleanCSS