Iwan

Looking at a change of career in 2005, from technical support of GSM network equipment to web development.

I used to write basic websites for various departments i've been on. Mainly using M$ Frontpage, these were just simple sites with a few frames etc. I also used to do a bit of software writing (Basic, Fortran, Assembler, C++ etc) for work and as a hobby when i was younger, so i don't think i'll have any problems getting my head around HTML/XML etc.

I've been offered a bit of freelance work by a design company if i want it, a mate of mine who's a designer has been badgering me about this for ages. He reckons I need to get a Mac for commonality with the company i'll be doing work for (hence my earlier thread about switching to Mac from PC), and then get up to speed on Macromedia Dreamweaver/Fireworks/Flash (the MX 2004 varients).

Anyone else on here do this sort of thing, what do you use (hardware and software)?

As this is only a first step (and i'm short of space at home), i'm thinking of getting an iMac G5 20" with 1Gb Ram/250GbHDD/Superdrive, a copy of Macromedia Studio MX 2004 (contains Dreamweaver/Flash/Fireworks) then doing the online Macromedia training courses and/or doing some instructor led courses.

Thoughts?

Anything else I should be considering or looking at learning?

Cheers

SJ_Skyline

The problem you will probably have developing for this company and not using a mac is what looks good on your PC will look different on a mac. IE5.x on Mac is almost as bad as Netscape4 was on PC.

I use a PC, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and a subscription to browsercam.com for any development I do. Typically ASP/ASP.NET connecting to SQL Server/Oracle.

I would make a point of visiting http://www.w3schools.com/ and looking at their tutorials, especially CSS if you are doing any design work.

angrynorth

I think you will be fine with a Mac. The software runs great on it and you can actually see what your sites look like on a compliant browser I find it handy to keep a PC around though for testing. My old set up (pre second display with VPC) was a G5 and a donkey networked together with a shared drive on the G5 so I could test sites through the network on both machines.

Current set-up looks like this and works a charm!



As SJ says you most definitely need to look at CSS/XHTML. The magic of PHP and perl are also recommended learning as you really can achieve some great stuff with good implementation of those technologies.

Be prepared for people to expect you to work for nothing as:

"My mate Dave said ah could knock mesel' up a webpage, using that there microsof' wurd and it'd be just as good as owt you cud do. Reet professional like. Or I cud get mesel a template for 50pee and it'd be the bestest site in t'worl' "

Seriously, the web developer/design industry is a real victim of the hobbyist, and be prepared to watch people throw money at sub-standard stuff just because its cheap.

Other than that its great if you do things proper there is a real reward of seeing it live and working.

SJ_Skyline

http://www.sjskyline.com/ CSS 1.0 / XHTML 1.0 / WAI AAA!!

Not too sure how it looks on a mac though...

angrynorth

It looks fine (Safari):



Slightly skips out at the bottom right, other than that its bang on.

I wouldn't look at my site, there's nowt there at the mo except one very big, non-compliant quicktime movie www.the061.co.uk

Iwan

Heh heh, cheers for the tips guys. BTW those sites look better than my crappy old efforts from years back.

I've got an old laptop which i've managed to force to run on XP, i should be able to use that for testing sites on IE and Firefox for Windoze.

Just need to decide on which Mac to get now, and choose some books/courses to get stuck into!

MattW

Iwan, .NET is a very useful skill to have. Will be "round corner" later with a .Net developer friend if you want to pop in for a chat.

Iwan

Doh, just got back from IKEA and seen your message! Will catch up with you over the weekend mate.