Why Web Design?
I love computers. It amazes me how many things you can do with them. A couple of years ago after becoming a dad, I was stuck at home a lot due to my work schedule. Working nights and my wife working days, we decided to use the situation to our advantage rather than putting our child in daycare. So I was at home during the day keeping the baby. When he was little, I would spend time on the computer while he was asleep, just to have something to do that was entertaining. After getting bored playing video games and hanging out on messageboards, I decided to try and use the time constructively and learn a new skill. I have somewhat of a creative type of personality, and so web design seemed like a great fit. I've been learning as I go for a couple of years now. At my primary website, Antbag.com, I regularly write tutorials about web design, and occasionally release free Wordpress themes, which at the time of this writing, have been downloaded over 36,000 times.
Tools I Used To Code This Site
You'll notice to the right of the screen, I have some links to several free software applications that are used for web design. The primary tool I used for this site is the CoffeeCup HTML Editor, which I think is just great. I always use this when I'm building stand alone web pages. For the site title, I used a free image editor called Photo Filtre. I sometimes use Photoshop and The GIMP, but for most things, Photo Filtre handles the job for me. I like it because it's extremely user friendly and I can zip around in it and do what I need to do. Photoshop and The GIMP are much more powerful programs, but with that power comes a lot more complexity. So CoffeeCup HTML Editor and Photo Filtre are the only two tools I used for this site. Oh, and...I didn't create the flash effects....they can be purchased off of FlashDen.net for a very reasonable amount of $.
Come again.......
I'm afraid that's all for now. I'm glad you dropped by and hope you'll come back. :-)