Dreamweaver. 29 and counting.

I can attach a few dates to events along the path of learning to create web pages.

• Oct 18/10, the Wimba classroom.  My jaw dropped.  Build the course pages outside of Moodle, and upload them?  What?  Why?  I felt my heels dig in.  How could I possibly do this?
• 29 days ago.  I loaded a free, 30-day trial version of Dreamweaver onto my computer, and started to explore.

What’s the journey been like, so far?  The path has been rough in places, with a steep climb, but some fantastic views along the way.  The landscape is beginning to level out, and this seems like a good time to record a few notes:

• I have unintentionally followed John’s rule of three.  Three times, I’ve re-started from a blank page, as the design I had been working on lead me to a dead-end.  But each false-start taught me something – about simplifying the design, using templates, and planning the site.
• Sometimes, the best way to make progress is to turn the computer off, and make a cup of tea.  This could be because a bit of distance gives some perspective on design problems.  But once, when I was getting a mysterious error message and thought I was headed back to the beginning again, turning the computer off and restarting it cleared up the problem.
• Html seems scary, but it can be your friend.  Sometimes, the design view in Dreamweaver just didn’t give the result I was looking for.  It isn’t that hard to locate the problem in the html, and correct it by mimicking code that works.  Right now, my proficiency with html is limited to reading and mimicking simple code.
• The decision to use Dreamweaver wasn’t arbitrary.  Dreamweaver is on my computer at work – as a matter of fact; it’s on all of the computers in the school – in the “Arts” folder.  This seemed mysterious, until I very quickly realized how much of web page design is about the look of the page.  I was talking with an artist friend this weekend, and when he asked what I was doing with my art work these days, I spoke words I could never have imagined a month ago.  “I’m designing web pages.”

What does the path ahead look like?  That’s the next question to explore, but right now – I’ve got a course to build!