Where to Start - Front End Web Developement

If I were start from square one learning front end web developement this is where I would start.

Web Usability

If you don't get any of the books listed bellow at the very least get this book. I would say everyone who works on web sites or wants to hire someone to build a web site should read this book. It describes some really basic web usability practices people take for granted.

Learn HTML

There are a ton of references online to learn HTML however it's good to have a manual right next to you. This is a great book and teaches you the right way to use HTML and XHTML.

Dreamweaver is a good WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get. Sounds like wizzy-wig.) editor to use if you are learning to build web sites. It has a great GUI and is a great code editor. Many web developers only use Dreamweaver to code their entire web projects. I think Dreamweaver can also be used to help you learn what's going on visually. For instance you can drop some elements onto the screen (tables, div, etc.) and then look at what the code is doing in the background by switching to the code view or you can see both the GUI and the code view at the same time. I found this book online to walk you through some projects. It looks like it got some good reviews. I haven't read it, but these are types of books I used to learn software.

A tool I use on the mac is BBedit. BBedit is in my opinion the best tool for programing on the mac. BBedit has a ton of features and if you know how to use them they make developing very easy.

Learn CSS

This is another manual type book but this book you can actually read through and learn a lot. I bought this book a few years ago and didn't even know CSS could do so much. This book teaches the right way to write CSS. The author is known as "The CSS GURU" in the web world.

Learn JavaScript

Once you are familiar with HTML and CSS you should learn some basic JavaScript. This book is more of a manual than a straight read.

A helpful JavaScript library you should definitely get familiar with is JQuery. JQuery makes doing things (like animation, form validation, show and hide screen elements) in JavaScript easy. You don't need to be a guru to use it however knowing some basic JavaScript will help.

If you learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript you can do just about any front end project.

Download Firefox

Firefox is the best web browser in my opinion. It has so many cool features and you can add your own features to it.

Get some useful plug-ins for Firefox

Web Developer. Web Developer plug-in is very useful for designing and debugging. You can add rules to your page like Photoshop guides to see if elements are lining up onscreen. It has a ruler, html validation, css validation and other validation tools, outline elements and a ton of other tools to help you visually see what is going on for any given web page.

Firebug. Firebug is probably what every web developer has to debug javascript and see what is going on on a page. One of the features I use on a daily basis is the 'inspect' feature. If you press inspect you can rollover elements on the screen and view the css for each element. You can even edit the css in the browser to make live changes. The changes aren't permanent but it really helps to debug. There are many more features you can use with Firebug.

Use Google

I know this sounds like a no brainer but if you cannot figure something out google it. Chances are someone has ran across the same problem. Also you can google "learn HTML" or "learn CSS" or whatever and get a ton of tutorials.

Get your own host

Dreamhost is super cheap. $6 a month and you can host unlimited domains, a free domain and you get tons of disk space. Use this promo code ( STEVEM21M0NE ) when you sign up and you will get an extra free domain (it saves you $10 a year).

Use WordPress

With a dreamhost account you can use one-click to install a WordPress site. WordPress is the way to go. You can tweak the templates or totally design your own.

WordPress isn't just a blogging tool you can use it create sites with the functionality to update your own content. I create sites for clients using this method and it makes my life 100 times easier.

I think if you started learning these things you would be able to do a lot and make some good money.

I have read a ton of other useful books but I think most are beyond this blog post. I'll publish another one soon with more books, tools and sites I use for development.