A couple of questions for you.....
What books do you recommend for someone new to web design?
What magazines are targeted for web designers?
Are there any good sites that you use that help with web design?
What software packages do you use(Golive,
Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc)?
With all the different languages out there,
which languages are hot as far as web
programming?(XML,PHP, ASP, JAVA, etc)
I want to thank you in advance for helping me out and I look forward to hearing from you.
Take care,
Marcia
practice - that's all you need - start with something fun and go up from there
Big question, the simple answers are...
I never pick up a magazine for web design. If you are going to design for the web, keep all your resources there. Print design and web design are quite different, and looking at real-world examples is the easiest way to learn. Look at other people's successes and failures, and figure out why you like or dislike the design of their page, go deeper than just images and color scheme. When you look at a page, always think "how can this be easier?" Besides, you'll save a few trees.
For basic reference use: http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/
For Usability use: http://usableweb.com/ http://www.useit.com/
For nearly everything else use: http://www.devshed.com http://www.devhead.com http://www.hotscripts.com http://www.webmonkey.com
Software packages: I've used many, Dreamweaver is very nice, but I wouldn't use it past initial page layout. Homesite and UltraEdit are absolutely fantastic. I dislike GoLive because in my experience it tends to lean more towards MS Explorer, and I don't have time for anything if it isn't completely cross-browser compatible.
languages...
Again its a matter of preference, and depends on what you want to accomplish, platform, backend, size, etc. My preference is PHP, my reasons are cross-platform compatibility, FREE, fast and easy. An ASP, Perl, Java, ColdFusion (or other) developer might tell you otherwise.