[arbiter]

I received a lovely message from @Tonmoy tonight and after sending a response back I realized it would be a great conversation to share with the whole community.

Hey Aero,

I was wondering if I could see the actual source behind how you designed the homepage for RM. I like the concept and your CSS seems to be on a whole different level to mine. I'm currently [...] and [it] would be very beneficial to further improve my skills. So, if you would be willing to share it, please get back to me, so I could perhaps learn from it.

[...]

Thanks,

Tonmoy

Well as I'm sure you know, with front-end web design almost all of it is open source. I would say that the current homepage layout is pretty basic with primarily static content written straight in HTML. Almost all the source can viewed and downloaded by viewing the page source and using any of the hundreds of page inspectors, which I have no objection with. Some dynamic elements, like the "X bots online", is based on a PHP back-end, and the homepage sections are abstracted in a more object-oriented fashion, so I can re-use them elsewhere, like in the JDocs, but even then the code is outputted in a very readable fashion.

As far as concept and CSS goes, it has very little to do with coding. As I mentioned earlier, the concepts are all simple. The really difficult part for me is inspiration and vision. My first step was defining what style route I wanted to down. This is the most critical in my humble opinion, because it dictates the rest of the design process. From real-world experiences, Web 2.0 style guidelines, and current trending styles I decided to focus my search on "flat UI design." It's a very hot trend right now and plenty of examples and resources can be found online. The rest is the usual story: lots of trial/error, frustration, perfectionism, and Monster.

If there's one piece of advice I would give anyone it would be to ignore the @*!@&! people spew about unoriginality or "idea/code theft." There is no such thing in web design. In this space, only trend setters and industry leaders come up with brand new styles and revolutionize the scene. The rest of us "noobies" follow. As any artist, web designer or oil canvas painter, will tell you the journey starts with seeing other artists' work, being inspired, recreating their work, perfecting art, and finally developing a distinct style that is a culmination of the best elements you've encountered. The trick is to devour as much experience and knowledge you can, so one day you can get there.

All that being said, I am in no way an expert. Not even close lol. I'm still learning new tricks every day. I hope I managed to answer your question though, and please feel free to ask more anytime you have one. I'm always up for a good chat. Also let me know if you have any ideas to improve our web design here at RuneMate. As a student pursuing a higher education in web design I am sure you'll stumble upon a stroke of genius.

Hope to hear from you soon,
Aero

 

[tonmoy]

If anyone has Visual Studio 2010+ feel free to check out some of my assesments/while at university.

Here is my latest assessment. The CSS and design, isnt the best, but it was a start, since my first take on it was complete rubbish and didnt even complete it in one go haha.

The first ever unit I did on WD was Techniques of Website Applications and my major project is as followed (Compiled in NotePad++):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xb4818thz01m6bc/MajorAssignment.rar

My second unit on Web Design was, abit more.. well a pain in the ass. But it turned out quite well.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fyyl4gqw56syl8r/GroupP32_project.rar

(Compiled in VS2010 with C#)

Feel free to critique how I went, still awaiting the marks for the 2nd project I have linked.

In another 3 months, I'll be starting a new assessment which is pretty much, think of a concept for a website/app, and bring it to life.

What I have in mind for that is going to be somewhat like this, with full features and NFC

https://www.dropbox.com/s/npfsokc10m0okmo/HCI Presentation (5_).pptx

Enrolled in unit first, but the dropped since I had no knowledge of XHTML/CSS/C#/VB

If anyone else has done something similar, join in.

 

[jason]

Web designing is actually very self explanatory. Within dats of learning I was able to sit back and create a webpage that was attractive. The difficult part is web design is adding function. It's not difficult to create a good home page, and with lots of googling and a bit of JQuery you an make a website that just pops off the screen probably with little to no experience.