Dont try to learn web design in a WYSIWYG editor like DW. It spoils you.

Get a nice text based editor which could just highlight and indent your code.

Learn the language than a software suite, I mean emphasize more on the language, writing code yourself. The reason behind is that once you get used to it, you would prefer writing code yourself which is more robust.

Also remember that WYSIWYG editors wont give you exatly the same result what you see while designing everytime.

There are a number of nice tutorials over the web, try googling them, you will get loads of the. Some of them are

www.w3schoold.com
www.tutorialized.com
www.pagetutor.com

Whoops you got a link wrong. Should be:

www.w3schools.com

Yeah for ... vishesh ..., glad to see others think starting with a "do it all" tool is a bad move.

HTMLDog
AListApart
Mezzoblue

All good sources.

Best thing to do is learn by building simple bits.
Learn the ie bugs off by heart - look for IE + Bug + hasLayout ... will solve half your problems!

Also, learn the basics, make sure you get those right every time... you'd be amazed the results from one stupid little error!

Refer to this thread...
http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread88871.html

That covers some of the basics, and gives you a head start on the right path (or atleast, what I see as the right path!).

Do not fall for flashy, clever or exagerated stuff - stick to the basics.
With multiple basics you get clever results any way (It's like building blocks).


Find an approach to layouts that suits you (positioned, floated, inline etc.).
I myself break the site into chunks/sections... header, main, footer. Then I code within those blocks... not 1 purists view, nor 100% semanticly perfect, but fairly clean and saves a whole world of positioning issues.


Basics to figure and play with.
You can position a container relatively, then position child items within it absolutely.

Try to use EM's as a font measurement, and gfor heights (no 20px boxes!... try 2 em), as when you increase text size, things shift with the text, rather than breaking out.

And Validate.
Oh, and Validate again!
Everytime you alter something, Validate!
Get it ?



And make your own notes - you will understand thigns and phrase them to suit yourself... you may see an example, read the details and it will make no sense... when you do it though, you will grasp it... so write it for your benefit!

For graphics... learn to make them bigger than needed if backgrrounds for links etc. if not repeating... .. so if the box gets bigger, the image does leave gaps

Well, good luck.

Use Notepad.

ok thanks for the advice guys I'll bare this all in mind when i start. I'll try and stear clear of dreamweaver i suppose you are right about it spoiling you and i guess its something i can learn once ive got the fundamentals.

You could use the coffee cup "free" version. You can preview easily.

A few years ago when I bought my first domain for my first website, I knew absolutely nothing. I bought dreamweaver 3 so I could build a website. That didn't make any sense. I bought a host of other website builing softwares all of which made no sense.

I found w3schools and built my first webpage finally. I have learned much html, and now venturing into the php and java for dynamic sites. Learning to read and be familiar with the html help when looking for specific codes.

Now after many years and some schooling I can open and set up a site with dreamweaver, and still have to hand code some of it.

Try http://csszengarden.com at the very least you will see how versitile css is.

The basic principal is that there is nothing wrong with using software... so long as you know what the software is doing - which means you needto know what the codes are, what they do etc... as trust me, most of those programs leave junk code in or do things in a few funy ways.

Unless you know what you should, you'll never see it!