Some Good Web Design Sites?

[freemonkey]

Can anyone recommend me some good (free) web design tutorial sites? I'm looking for general stuff, but also stuff specific to Macromedia products (other than their own site).

I've been Gooooogling this, but there's a ton out there, so I was hoping maybe anyone who has some experience with any of it can direct me to some safe, helpful places.

I've recently got myself a tutorial/project book (http://www.peachpit.com/title/0735711798) at Half-Price Books, that I hope will help, but it doesn't have everything I want to know in it.

I've also borrowed some books from the library, but they aren't in a tutorial format. It seems to me that with this particular task (web design), I am going to learn best in a more rigid & directed way.

[livius drusus]

I'm afraid I have no idea which design tutorial sites are worth your time, but perhaps the pros at gthelp (http://www.gthelp.com/index.php) might have some tips for you. (Pay no mind to their own horrid design. They've built that entire site using vBulletin, so design has taken a backseat to programming up until recently.)

Oh, and this isn't a tutorial or anything, but it's something I found very informative when I was researching design a few months ago: Color Matters (http://www.colormatters.com/colortheory.html).

[viscousmemories]

Probably one of the best ones out there (IMHO) is W3 Schools (http://www.w3schools.com/). Also Webmonkey (http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/) rocks but they might be a little outdated. Devshed (http://www.devshed.com/) is full of useful information too.

[freemonkey]

Thanks you guys, I've been reading that stuff and even though its still all confusing to me, its a little less so. Very helpful sites.

I have a much better idea of what what I want to do is called, so I now know what to ask/what to look for.

[Ray]

These aren't tutorials, exactly, but if you don't want your page to end up as one of the "Viewable only with Internet Explorer" ones, they are essential.

Validators: You can upload or link your code to these, and they'll tell you what's wrong with it.
HTML validator (http://validator.w3.org/)
CSS validator (http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/)


Standards documents: The definitive references for the various web languages. If you aren't sure about exactly what something's supposed to do, this is where you check. It takes awhile to get used to them, but there is no better reference anywhere.
XHTML 1.0 (http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/)
HTML 4.01 (http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/)
CSS 2.1 (http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/)


Quick reference: Nothing too detailed; just a quick way to check the basics
Index of the HTML 4 Elements (http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/index/elements.html)
Index of the HTML 4 Attributes (http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/index/attributes.html)


Books:
HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS (http://www.sitepoint.com/books/css1/) : This is probably the closest thing to a tutorial I listed here. It's what I used to learn CSS, and I found it extremely useful. Read it whenever you're ready to start messing with layout and not just content.

Rants:
Morons in Webspace (http://members.optusnet.com.au/~night.owl/morons.html) : A well-written rant about really bad webdesign, and a great way of learning what not to do. This is probably one of the more useful items on the list. Read it as soon as you understand the basics, so you don't pick up bad habits (like I did).

[Ensign Steve]

Rants:
Morons in Webspace (http://members.optusnet.com.au/~night.owl/morons.html) : A well-written rant about really bad webdesign, and a great way of learning what not to do. This is probably one of the more useful items on the list. Read it as soon as you understand the basics, so you don't pick up bad habits (like I did).

This site is great! I'm only about 1/8 through the page and I already learned something new:
If you want some text to appear when the user hovers a mouse over the image, then it's the "title" attribute that you should be using. Regardless of the behaviour of some browsers, regardless of rubbish perpetuated by some people who don't know what they're talking about, that is the purpose of the "title" attribute, not the "alt" attribute.

[noblesavage]

Can anyone recommend me some good (free) web design tutorial sites? I'm looking for general stuff, but also stuff specific to Macromedia products (other than their own site).


Do you want do you want to do?

Graphic design or front end programing?