please help me i am an absolute newcomer. I am very interested in doing a web design course. I am on the older side and can not take a year off to go and study web design.
I have looked around and came across a company "new horizons" one can do the course online at ones own pace. I would like to know if anybody out there know if they are reputable?

Look for websites on google that are tutorials. Learn the basics etc, then start designing pages. Learn CSS and XHTML and start with that. Don't expect to know it all in like a month however. Took me a year to learn all I know.

To need to know HTML, I think you do not have to learn the coding. You just have to download Adobe Dreamweaver and make a headstart. Just use the GUI and the code will be generated itself (you may check the code and learn HTML easily). Also, you will need to know CSS which is very necessary for proper positioning of the elements within the document. It may take some time. For form applications you have to learn PHP or .NET. The form applications is pure coding section. Although you may find many reusable code snippets in the internet. And additionally you may need to learn Flash and Javascript to make your website more interactive.

But HTML and CSS, I guess, should not take much time. You have free access to each and every tutorial on every subject in the internet. Plus to check the latest web standards, you can check http://www.w3schools.com/

Just making point, Dreamweaver is an expensive tool. I know you can get trial version however it may be confusing for beginner. Classic Notepad is sufficient for start and doesn't cost you penny (or what ever is the smallest currency value in your country).

At W3Schools, you can study everything you need to learn, in an accessible and handy format.

practice with a note pad or any HTML editor, follow the tutorials the best to learn HTML basic, on internet many website for webdesign courses

for bulid a new website photoshop, illustrator, flash, firefworks, dreamweaver are very useful softwares

You can tray to find a Lynda.com
video tutorials. They are very good and do not take a lot of time to study.

Please don't start learning on Dreamweaver. -_-

When learning HTML, CSS, or any programming or markup language, you need to learn to do it by hand first so that you understand each element that is being used and how to correctly use it. Starting off with Dreamweaver and having it generate absolutely horrendous code is no way to begin. Like others have suggested, start with W3Schools and work on some tutorials and do it all with a simple text editor or a simple code editor like HTML-kit or PSPad.

And yes, I completely oppose the use of Dreamweaver no matter what your skill level may be.

Agreed, don't use a program to do the code for you, learn to do the code first, then have the program do it for you if you get lazy down the rode.

Yes, I concur with everyone else. Don't use a WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver or Frontpage. Instead, use a simple text editor like TextPad (www.textpad.com). Textpad is really nifty because you can get it to highlight your syntax which helps alot.

I swear by w3schools as it is an excellent resource for beginners. I used it to learn HTML, CSS, PHP and Javascript and it was amazing.

I suggest you start of by learning HTML and CSS and make a basic webpage.

Then move onto learning Javascript and jQuery and then PHP.