Just announcing that my new beginners web design book is ready for pre-order on Amazon! The title is a strange one, but descriptive: Build your Website – Start Here
The first paragraph from the introduction describes the book nicely:
This book is about code and cutting-edge web design. It starts off with the big picture, and then circles in slowly for the web design kill! I won’t leave you hanging with just a bunch of nerd-code either, not knowing what to do with it—no, no, no! Not only will you know how to build a modern website, but also how to get it live on the web.
This is a beginners book but I still cover a lot of material. You will learn key fundamentals of web design and web coding. Here are just some of the topics I cover:
HTML, CSS, HTML5 and CSS3.
JavaScript and programming basics.
Liquid, adaptive and responsive layout – as we build a simple website.
How to add video and audio to web pages.
Bootstrap, jQuery and what web frameworks are all about.
I’ve been teaching web design and development since 2003, and I’ve seen all the trends over the years. The current trend in online education, is to flood people with thousands of videos, and claim that’s a great thing!
Thousands of videos on Netflix makes sense, but when it comes to learning web design and development, that sucks!
Why 10,000 video tutorials suck?
Let’s put in a nutshell:
The teacher, really has two jobs:
Filter for the good stuff.
To simplify.
So my job as web design and development teacher, is to concentrate on the important technologies (and to teach you WHY it’s important,) and to make things that are complex, simple.
… If I say that I have ‘thousands of videos to choose from’, I am basically saying that I am not doing 1/2 my job!
With that in mind, I’ve been culling/removing courses for years. I’ve retired countless videos that covered topics that were either no longer important because of the changes in the market (ex: Flash) or because new updated courses took their place.
I can’t believe that killerSites.com has been teaching the web for 19 years! Back then, I had no white hair … if you can believe it!
A little Killersites history …
Killersites was originally created to support a best selling book on web design, Creating Killer Websites, by David D. Siegel. At the time, killersites.com only contained articles and support material for the book.
In 2002-2003, I took over and started to expand what killersites’ offered – with new articles, podcasts and video training on web design and even development.
I’ve been building websites since 1994 and teaching web design and development since 2002 … give or take 6 months. In that time, I’ve been able to figure out the best way to both learn and teach web design:
The key is to NOT get distracted with the unimportant techniques and technology. That means being able to figure out what you really need to learn, and to cut out what isn’t so important.
… That’s where an experienced teacher and actual web developer can guide you.
Web Design is a big subject that is always evolving!
Over the years, web design has evolved considerably. The process of building websites in 2015 is very different from how we did it in the early 2000’s, let alone the 1990’s! Despite these big changes, there is a consistency in web design that has carried through to today; being able to identify these patterns (and techniques) will help you keep your skills future-proof to a large extent.
… Yes, you should always count on having to learn new techniques and technology, but you can make the process much, much easier when you have a great foundation.
I just wanted announce that my new web design training subscription service (webmentor.org) is live and ready to go. Start learning web design and development for free for 7 days … with no obligation.
Top 3 Reasons to join WebMentor:
1. Direct contact with the teachers – mainly me and Santo!
2. Our latest courses and classic courses updated for 2015.
3. Courses created by experienced web designers and teachers.
… Right now, you can lock in membership for $9.99/monthly or only $99 for the year!
I started building websites in 1994, making 2015 my 21st year of web design. I’ve reached the web design drinking age!
In that time, much has changed in the web design world – both in terms of the technology and the way we build websites.
… It may be obvious to some of you, that the advancement in web design technology (and the Web itself) plays a major role with the web design conventions that come about. So what’s going to happen in 2015?
Web Design in 2015
The last big shift in web design happened a few years ago with the rise of HTML5 and the death of Flash. Another trend that continues to grow is the rise of the awareness of code. Today more than ever, people realize that all web professionals should learn to code. This movement started in the early 2000’s but it just keeps accelerating where code awareness is even being recognized for its’ importance outside of the web design and development fields – even elementary, middle and high schools are adopting coding as part of curriculum!
… I’ve even developed a system (studioweb.com) that makes teaching code easy, and is now being used by over 1500 schools.
The top 3 Web Design Tech Trends for 2015
Ok, enough with the preamble, what are the top 3 trends in web design for 2015:
Code is still king. Learn to code if you haven’t.
Web Frameworks. In modern web design, knowing how to use Bootstrap and Jquery are almost essential.
HTML5 and CSS3. As the last of the old crappy browsers disappear, the importance of HTML5 and CSS3 continues to grow. If I had to pick one thing in HTML5/CSS3 to learn, it would be CSS3 web fonts.
In another article I will go over the top 3 design trends in web design.
In JavaScript, you have a bunch of events that you can tell the web browser to watch for. Here is a short list:
onclick
onmouseover
onmousedown
… There are many more. The proper nerd-term for all these is ‘event listeners’ – they ‘listen’ for events to happen and when they do (ex: someone clicks on a something,) you can have JavaScript fire off some function.
Event Attributes
Instead of using JavaScript to apply eventlisteners (using the addEventListener() method) to tags on your page, you can simply use HTML event attributes. For example:
<p onclick="aFunction()">
This is some text.
</p>
In the above code, I tell the browser that if someone clicks on the paragraph tag, that the ‘aFunction’ function should be activated. Nerds will refer to this as  ‘calling a function’ instead of activating.
The Death of onMouseover?
The onMouseover event listener ‘listens’ for someone to hover their mouse over the element (HTML tag) that it is bound to – like what we did with the paragraph tag above and the onclick event.
It’s a sweet effect and works on all the browsers, except it doesn’t work on mobile devices – that sucks! You have to remember that within a few years, more than 50% of the Web’s traffic will be mobile traffic – people using smartphones and tablets.
Basically, that means you should probably not use onMouseover event listeners.
I was recently asked by my dentist if I had any information for his daughter, who wanted to get into the gaming industry, on the artistic side of things.
So I consulted the nerd-herd and then came back with what you will read below. Though KillerSites is hardly a gaming blog, I figured I would repost here anyway because my dentist told me that this was by far the most information he and daughter had seen on the subject.
Anyway, here you go …
From Sean:
Hey Stef
Gaming is a more stable environment than Film or Television. More often than not film and TV animators travel to work in different companies around the world. As for Gaming even when the economy is tanking people still love to get away from life and sink into a game world.
[ Film and TV / Games ]
Position available for art students include:
Storyboarding
http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Storyboard
Conceptualization Art
http://www.conceptroot.com/
Matte Painting
http://mattepainting.org/
Proficiency in Photoshop/Illustrator
https://www.adobe.com/ca/products/photoshop.html
https://www.adobe.com/ca/products/illustrator.html
[ 3D Software ]
The 3D Software I would recommend using is Maya.
Free Educational version
http://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/maya
[ Schools ]
Alot of home grown 3d gaming talent have pass thought the doors of the NAD Center. They have teachers that currently work in the industry and can become a great reference for job opening in the indusrty.
[ Traditional Animation ]
Traditional Key Frame Animation, frames drawn every frame by hand, is very important to take to become a great animator.
This on a book that most animators have on their shelves at home.
Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams
Here is a pdf of the Book
http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse460/07sp/reading/richard_williams-animators_survival_kit.pdf
[ DEMO ]
A Great DEMO, is the most important as it shows what you can do. Some artistes, animators, modelers etc. I know are self taught so school was not involved. A great DEMO can often speak louder than a certificate form a school. It is what you can do with what you know and not what you know.
Hope this helps. Need any other direction let me know
Scot
From Luke – a director at a leading gaming company:
I think Sean covered it pretty well from a technical point of view! Additional info that I can say about gaming is the following:
There are many options she can take:
Gameplay Animation
Cinematic Animation
Concept Artist
Technical Artist
Character Artist
VFX Artist
UI Artist
…
Some companies name the titles differently but more or less do the same things.
I would suggest starting to become active in various gaming industry forums and websites. Look for forums that companies offer, for instance at EA we have the following LinkeIn forum that people can follow: InsideEA: (Electronic Arts) People, Games & Careers. Other companies have their own similar forums. Also check out game company’s websites in their career sections. They offer lots of info and recommendations. Our’s is Jobs.ea.com.
Follow up on all the industry trade shows(E3, PAX, GamesCom, ComicCon, GDC(Game Developers Conference)) and media(IGN,GamesSpot, etc…)…
A lot of what helped me get into the industry is doing research on all the above info…kinda like the Wook does! 😉
Gaming is a constantly evolving industry so people need to stay well aware of tech and changes going on. Best way is to read a lot of gaming news and info!
I just handed in the last chapter to my new book ‘Web Design Start Here’ last week. I am told it should hit the stores in April. Yep, print is slow!!
Nonetheless, the principle work is done for me and it marks the first time in years that I am in print. Last time I wrote, was for Web Designer Magazine … I would say about 4-5 years ago! Time flies …
As we get closer to publication date, I will be releasing new video tutorials that are meant to support and accompany the book.
In this video, you learn about HTML5 and cutting edge CSS techniques. As long as you know basic HTML and CSS, you should be good to watch this video lesson. And yes, all the modern web browsers support this.
… At the same time, check out our new training site: webmentor.org.
