The Future of Web design

As a newcomer, not only to this site, but also the world of web design, I'm wondering what level of programming needs to be learnt to be a quality web designer. NOT just for today, but for future trends.

I've read much about W3C changing standards of HTML programming and embracing more tighter standards through XHTML etc.

What does that mean for existing websites?

It appears generally accepted that poorly coded sites may not be viewable on some of the latest mobile devices. So what is the future of these sites in the Netscape/IE/Firefox etc environment on PCs in coming years? Will they become unviewable and in need of re-coding? Or is the W3C standards just a slow-changing pipe dream? Will poorly coded sites need recoding/redeveloping as newer browser versions become available, or will they always be backward compatible?

As far as I can gather, knowledge of "proper" HTML is an easier transition to XHTML. So what the future of web-designers who have relied on the poor coding of FP etc.? Is XHTML just a short-term way to reduce the number of lazy programmers and thus create a quality standard?

Apologies for so many requests of opinions all at once, but I'd love to hear the unbiased opinions from people who actually know this area!

none of the browser have equally embraced W3C standards in the past, not do i see them doing so in the future, especially with home internet connections getting faster by the day and load times becoming less of a worry.

I know you're right zkiller, and unfortunately thats the culture of the tech industry. All it does it encourage lazy programmers. Amazing how the first moon landing supposedly relied on a 4Mb Hard Drive that took up an acre!(or something along those vague lines) but now we need a P8 processor with 1Gb RAM just to run wordpad!!!

Yes I'm being facetious, and Yes I can foresee both sides of the W3C arguements.

Accepting junk codes and standards means more sales of almost any product to anyone at a lower cost.(ie: more affordable to more people) whereas a global tightening of standards means higher standard programs available to fewer users and at an increased cost.

At the end of the day, is it really worth learning(if you haven't already)X/HTML or CSS or the myriad other web design processes if those who control access to the viewing public are so nonchalant? After all, there are so many free or cheap web design products available that require little, or no html or script knowledge!

From a personal perspective, I am on the verge of deciding whether to learn PROPER html/xhtml or to just buy a generic product and let it do all the hard work for me.

Anyone able to thoroughly convince me the best way to get into the update and/or design of clients pages industry???

IMHO it is worth learning proper syntax. as time progresses browsers of all flavors will continue to get closer to W3C compliance on by then older standards. it always takes a good while for them to properly incorporate new standards.

i admit i use dreamweaver for a large portion of my work, simply because i am lazy and lack the time to hand code everything. these tools are at our disposal, so why not use them?

my scripts on the other hand are all me. i also frequently find myself fixing little things or cleaning up the generated code manually. no WYSIWYG editor is perfect.

in regards to development costs of browser and various other software, i believe cleaner code and better compliance with standards would yield greater profits. the reasoning that this is commonly not done is corporate deadlines. the sooner a product hits the shelves the sooner it makes money. however on the flip side they will waste more time and money on troubleshooting and fixing it down the road. it usually has very little to do with lazy programmers. then again, how much is their really to be made in browsers anymore? most of them are free!

my first HDD was 102 MB.

my first hard drive was actually a floppy disk. 5 1/4 inch... technically not a hard drive at all but... how else do you quantify it?

lol... if portable media counts, my first was a tape drive hooked up to a C64. no clue how much it stored.

Haha now this is gone way off topic!

I had one of those tape drives for my first pooter, a Commodore Vic20 no less LOL. The upside was I could cheat my way through games by reading the game program, unlike the cartridge games that you actually had to learn to play LOLOLOL!

And thanks for the advice zkiller, I think I've decided on actually learning HTML. Considering the small businesses that I've come across need some help, I might need to re-read through their existing web programming in order to offer some improvements, so a good understanding of the original coding may help me provide some simple improvements at a cost of pure goodwill in order to get some future paying business.

As far as I can tell the "Head First" book that qadisha suggested in another thread is the best place for someone like me to start. Can anyone suggest a reason otherwise??? I would like to place an order for the book this week, but I don't want the expense if there are better/cheaper alternatives.

Nah, I'm too impatient, I think I'll buy it anyway. Comments still welcome though LOL!

Cheers
Dick