Ask HN: Learn Web design and frontend programming

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I consider myself a good backend programmer with lots of experience. I'm very interested in learning Web design and frontend programming.

What is the best way to do it? Any good book/source code to recommend?

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Front-end programming is easy these days -- most folks are using jQuery or other similar libraries which insulate you from the problems with implementing complicated effects in various browsers.

Web "design" on the other hand is a vague term. Do you mean the graphic design aspects -- layout and graphics in general -- or do you mean the translation of layout and graphics to HTML + CSS?

If it's the former, then -- in my opinion, which really isn't worth much -- good programmers just aren't good graphic or layout artists. The two fields require diametrically opposed skillsets.

But if it's HTML + CSS, then that's just a matter of studying sites like cssplay, smashingmagazine, and csszengarden.

http://www.w3schools.com/ This site is a good reference for the W3 standards. Flash is currently most easily coded with AS3. Adobe recently redid the flash VM to behave more like a traditional programming language and did away with most of the movie clip timeline stuff, so AS3 is more like just coding. Very nice UI API as well. Essential AS3 is a good book to learn. http://www.smashingmagazine.com is a good reference for learning design itself. I think jQuery is the current winner, but there is something to be said for GWT as well.

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