I have been programming windows applications for 3 years and am comfortable with programming. But when I try to develop a website, elements of design, color, and creativity are obstacles for me.
well it's hard to fight something so natural in the human body (im talking about the dominant sides of your brain) its really rare to see websites that perform so well and yet has lots of design put into it and was made by only one person... usually its a web-firm or a team of at least two people.
but if you really think that you can mix these two parts of your brain i'd say u start reading books by Jason Beaird
There are some interesting books about design for beginners. My favorites are:
For web design, I'd suggest you first hit up any HTML book or resource on the net and then go read sites like csszengarden with it's resources.
Also look up the graphic design resources in this stackoverflow question.
Good luck!
I'm no expert, but I found Robin Williams' Non-Designer's Design Book to be incredibly informative and applicable. Highly recommended.
I recommend the articles at the following sites:
Those have helped me when I faltered at the design phase of a website. Another source of inspiration is the CSS Zen Garden.
These links people are suggesting are a good idea. Another thing that is helpful to do is to reduce the size of the task you need to complete.
My suggestion is, find a content management system you feel comfortable with. As a programmer myself, I like the Drupal CMS because of its flexibility, but if you are doing a small project, Joomla or Wordpress might be easier to use.
The idea here is, you can reduce your program from "producing and managing content myself with a theme I designed myself" to "creating a theme for my project" and letting the CMS do heavy lifting for you.
The other advantage of using a CMS is the sheer volume of useable themes with a GPL license that you can download and install and customize to meet your needs.
Graphic design is a highly derivative art form (which is a good thing for the cause of usability). Start by mimicking other sites you admire. Once you are familiar with the conventions they use, you will start to build on them creatively. Pay close attention to the subtleties of size, spacing, color and typography.
The key to creating a good website is its usability.
Unfortunately this skill is constantly overlooked and that's why we get a lot of artistic websites which are pleasing to the eye but with the navigation all messed up or so heavy you need a minute just to load the 'contact us' section on your home broadband.
You could find a lot of good references on Internet, I would suggest starting from the Wikipedia article which has some useful links and from the web site of Jacob Nilsen
The best (as in only) way to improve your design skills is to practice a lot.
Follow the online tutorials. Challenge yourself with full-immersion weekend projects. Don't be afraid to spend a lot of hours with your HTML editor and graphics program of choice.
Practice makes perfect!
I recommend taking a top-down approach. Start by learning the different web application packages on a variety of platforms. Content management systems are a likely first candidate. Take a look at systems like DotNetNuke, Drupal, Wordpress, etc. By doing, you will learn the techniques already used in the field for content organization, publishing, and rendering. You'll pick up on the caveats, pitfalls, and special advantages of each platform so that you can pick what design is best for your next project.
Sometimes, you may find that a CMS is exactly what you'd need instead of building a custom web site from the ground up. Just about all of them are highly customizable to the point they are completely yours.
There are some good recommendations for books here, but you should really consider teaming up with a designer first.
Over time, with some books and the mentorship of the designer, you will be able to include some of your own design elements.
Warning: Concentrating on design will dilute your programming skills (and vice versa). They are quite opposite skills.
Mark Boulton has some great articles on typograpy, grids and more.
His book, Designing for the Web, is also well worth a download.
I found Design: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird a fantastic starter book that covered a lot of great design points including color choices, theme design, content layout, typography, all the really useful elements - in fact, I'd say that all of the SitePoint books I have are great jumping off points:
I also found Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability was a humorous while fairly informative read. It covered a lot of ground that Beaird didn't cover or glossed over briefly and never went back to.
As others have said, read "The Non-Designer's Design Book" and other great books.
Then use a CSS framework, like Bluetrip. It will help you apply these ideas relatively easily (and it will look the same on most browsers).
This is a bit of a hard question to answer as you can address web-design from two different directions.
If you look at web-design from the stand point of aesthetics, then it might be something that you can only get so far with before you run into the extent of your artistic talent in the area. There is a degree of artistic talent that is needed for good web-design and looking through a site like css Zen Garden demonstrates this. However, if you don't know your limits, then your best bet is to just practice designing sites and something like css Zen Garden does give you interesting to work with in terms of a problem.
If you are looking at it from the more technical standpoint of usability, interactivity, and other issues, then the other posters have done an excellent job of pointing you in the direction good sites and books. This is another area that boils down to practice, but since it is of a technical nature, you don't need to worry as much about artistic talent in the area.
I find reading Jakob Nielsen's Articles on usability help give me a greater awareness of various usability pitfalls, which in turn helps my UI design.
Usability is only one part of web-design, but an important one!
I also use SitePoint CSS Reference (along with the aforementioned CSS zen garden) for CSS troubleshooting.
Finally, sites like ColorCombos.com are often nice for less design minded people like myself!