I just finished this layout and it was a labor of love. I love Star Trek and I also have a new found love, computer code. I wish I would have discovered this in the eighties when using my parents various computers but unfortunately that did not happen.

Anyway, this layout took a long time to make. There are many reasons. First, I wanted to push layout creation to the limits on Vizzed. I wanted to know what was and was not possible with the Advanced Layout Editor. Now I know. One thing that is not possible is Javascript. I know there is a good reason for this but it is still disappointing. (It should be noted that Javascript will work in the Layout Editor and the My Layouts preview but not when actually making a post.

One thing that is possible is creating a style section. That made things slightly more organized for me.

Another reason that this layout took so long to make is that each browser has it's own little quirky ways of rendering the code. For example, Firefox and IE both displayed the images as I intended but Chrome elongated them to the point that they covered the first few lines of the text box. I did find a solution for this after much searching and now they all display the same in relation to the text. (-webkit-transform). There were other little odds and ends to contend with in each browser that took much experimenting to deal with.

All of this trial and error was actually kind of cool, I discovered many new sources of information and little coding tricks that I'd be happy to share with anyone that wants to know.

My work led me to a conclusion. I need more coding challenges. Now that I've pushed the limits of the Editor, I feel like it's time to move away from it and on to something bigger. I was thinking of maybe trying to code my own website, which brings me to the suggestions part of this thread. What do you guys think? Is this the next logical step in my efforts to learn more advanced coding languages like Javascript, Jquery and Actionscript? Or should I go another direction?

If I do create a website (not the drag and drop type), does anyone have a good idea for one that they'd be willing to share? My ultimate goal is to create something that generates a profit but is not retail. Is there anyone here that can give advice on how to make money with advertising or have an idea for a service to provide?

Seriously, Vizzed is like a second home and you guys are like a second family to me. I know I don't post that much and I don't have a lot of friends like some of you, but that's just my personality. Right now, I'm looking for some "RARELY asked for" advice.

So, do you have any?

 

Sorry this thread didn't get many replies. Vizzed has never really catered to a technically proficient crowd. I'm quite surprised that this layout is your first attempt to do anything with CSS! It's very good and works extremely nicely. Seriously, I thought this was a great job before, but knowing this is your first real attempt just adds about 100 points to the mix. And that's on a 10 point scale.

As for the next step... Well, that's always the hard part, isn't it? Javascript can do a lot of cool things, but to be honest with you, you don't really need to know it. You can almost always search for what you want to do, and find an already tested and working script that you can plug right into your existing website.

Probably if you really like coding, I'd recommend trying out some PHP. It's really not difficult to get into, and the documentation, though not great for learning, is really well put together.

If you need some hosting space to test some things out, I always have room on my server for people who really want to learn.

First try?? Seriously?! Woah... I could have never made something like that on first try. And yes, it would be nice to have a separate style tags available. It's easier to use div id or class instead of style every time you want to make a new box. Unfortunately, Javascript isn't functional, at least when using the new layout editor lol, but I'd rather not have them than to see people messing up the codes really bad and having alert scripts all over the board.

I won't really suggest Actionscript for web designs if you're going to use HTML5... but it's pretty nice for web applications.

*looks at your layout*

If you can already do that much with CSS, you can now definitely move on to Javascript, then after awhile to Jquery. Don't get too nervous as Javascript is a high-level langauge (it means it's easy to understand even without previous programming experiences).

Before you worry about earning and ideas for site contents though, you might have to focus on practicing your coding skills first. Notepad++ is a great light-weight text editor specially meant for programming/coding. Don't stick with the pre-installed notepad in your pc! I usually use it in school and even with designing layouts for vizzed (once in awhile). My second favorite when it comes to web design would be Xampp, but that should come in later once you decided to learn stuff like PHP and MySQL.

Lastly, you can always contact me for help when it comes to programming and coding. I'm not an expert though, I'm still not done taking up Computer Science.

Lazlo Falconi : Thanks for kicking this thread into motion. I kind of had a feeling it wouldn't get a whole lot of immediate attention but that's OK because this topic is pretty technical.

I probably need to clarify that I did have a layout shop and have made quite a few layouts but never did I try to get this complex. I really just wanted to a) push the layout editor to it's limits, b)make a layout that had features no one had ever seen on Vizzed before and c)learn more code.

For the next step, I did find a pretty straight forward Javascript course at Khan Academy. I'm sifting through it now. However, I did follow your link and looked around. I also looked into tutorials and found Codeacademy. So far everything that I've read about PHP makes it sound like something that I want to learn. Thanks for the tip.

I'll keep that offer in mind as I get further along. Thanks again.

Juliet : Like I just confessed to Lazlo, I had the layout shop but wanted to satisfy some curiosities by making this layout.

My fascination with Actionscript comes from many of the flash games that I've played and some research that I've done into that whole industry. It really wouldn't be an option at this stage anyway. (I don't have a new enough computer to run Adobe Flash Builder and it's price tag is pretty steep.)

I had read something about Notepad++ before but didn't give it much more thought. I've never heard of Xampp though. Stepping away from basic Notepad seems like a really good idea. Thanks for the tips and I'll look you up if I need help.

The site I linked to is more helpful if you think you know what something does, but it isn't working the way you expect. It's definitely easier to learn PHP from some other source, and then use PHP.net as a reference. Stack Overflow is also a good source of information, for any language.

I forgot to mention, though Juliet reminded me, you should definitely use Notepad++ if you don't already. And if you use (or have access to) a Linux box, Vim is probably the best text editor around, though very different than anything you've ever used. Once you learn how to use it, though, it's very easy.

Thats really good.
Iv never actually looked into html, but iv done a lot of different languages. Lazlo is right in saying that php really isn't that hard to get into.
I used php for a university project last week, id never touched it before and didn't really need to search much to get it working. That was in part due to its similarities to c# and c++, which i do know, but even still, it is pretty simple (yet very useful).
I quite like python in regards to creating scripts too, but im not sure if it has any relevance to web design, because as i said before, im ignorant to that side of coding.

thenumberone : There are some uses for Python in web coding, but mostly you need to link it into PHP or Javascript to do anything as far as I know. i'm not sure, I haven't really looked into it, but that's my understanding of it.

Lazlo Falconi :
Thats something I instantly liked about php, it is exceptionally usefull for linking code together.
It also seems to be oneeof the easiest methods of doing that, all though I cant be sure because I only got my first look at it about a month ago.

PHP is nice because it's easy to learn, but from what I've heard from people who know other languages, it's really limiting, so you might watch out for that.

Well since I just made my first layout ever (the one currently shown) yesterday your layout skills are far ahead from mine. I found it fun to make this layout. Would like to try out the advanced layout editor but need to gain some trust before that. I like you would also like to learn coding so we shall be in the same path. Hope I can ask you questions about the coding topic later on. Once again amazing job on that layout keep up the good work.

The above post makes me laugh seeing as how no coding was put into the layout and was made with the editor

I'm more a programmer than scripter so I'm not sure how much advice I can give you really. You'll probably no more about it than me. However I actually am learning some actionscript so I can start making games. If you already know this much about CSS then I think you should be able to move onto Java. It's more advanced and that's probably something I can help you more in. I think you should be able to do it seeing as you learn code quite quickly and efficiently. What I recommend if you want to get started in Java or some other languages I recommend Code Academy. I used it and it's where I learned a lot of my skills. However it may be getting a bit outdated but you could try it out. Good Luck .