A couple of years ago I was playing around with learning HTML & CSS the hard way using notepad.

I was pretty happy with where my rudimentary grasp of the "language" got me - despite never finishing anything (I stopped freelancing and stopped looking to diversify my skillset)

But having spent the last few years focusing my energies on one platform, I'm now reaching another point of stagnation - since I'm not keen on going the route of API/SDK/C++ based development for Revit.

So, with a new opportunity open at work, I'm thinking I'd like to get back into graphics, typography & web design - something I've always enjoyed.

But it's clear from returning to my test HTML+CSS projects I'm a little rusty - and imagine I'm a little behind in terms of what's "hot" in terms of web languages and such. I'm also a very GUI-kind-of-guy, so I was wondering if there are any free tools out there worth downloading?

Personally, I think learning HTML and CSS is the way to go, it doesn't take long. As ever with these things, you need a live project or to set yourself a goal as open ended things don't achieve anything. Having a set idea of what you want to end up with focuses the mind.

I bought a book on HTML and CSS, plus a book on php and have done these sites in under a year.

http://www.chillifish.com/

http://www.thebluevinny.co.uk/

http://www.seawaypowell.com/

http://theafricanbiscuitcompany.co.uk/

Plus a load of HTML emails and a couple of other sites that are not live yet all using the free textwrangler.

Yeah, I imagined that my be the answer! Really liking the African Biscuit Company site - nice, bold and clean.


One small criticism (if I may) but there's a fair bit of jumpy page-formatting on all those sites - which has always upset me. I know it's a bit rich of me to say so - given my limited experience. It's always been this kind of locked-down (page) template that got me as a pain when coding - whereas I've always imagined a WYSIWYG editor would go some lengths to remove that.

worth a look
https://sites.google.com/

Hey no problem helpful criticism always welcome, what do you mean by jumpy page formatting though?

Oh and ps, the biscuit company and the blue vinny are the only ones designed by me, I just built the others!

I think it is the pages that include scroll bars, the browser only displays the bars when they are needed, so the page jumps a bit to the left when they appear.

Oh yeah, that annoys me too. Don't really know a way round that other than to increase the text on the ones that don't have scroll bars.