I'm not the best designer, but I'm pretty adept with HTML, so I did a lot of coding and design in junior high/high school for extra money. Even though I wasn't always sure what I came up with was the best or brightest idea, I used to look at some of the designs people sketched, and it amazed me what they thought would "work" on the web. (My favorite? Still the woman who wanted me to put an entire row of animated gifs across the bottom of the page to "sing" to visitors. The site was to promote a business solutions start-up company. I don't think it lasted.)

I thought it was important that the readings mentioned some of the simplest rules of design. The more people spend looking at a webpage, they begin to see it's not visually appealing and try to change it, but they don't realize what a difference small things the make. Just the distinction between <br> and <p> is so important. I belong to an online writing community where posters have to format their work themselves, and those that run all the paragraphs together must not understand that it simply doesn't entice anyone to read more. It's not as important in Dreamweaver, but definitely something of which to be aware. With news stories, no one wants to see a long block of type with no visible paragraph breaks.

CRAP, also, is a great way to break down the basic rules of design, but a lot of it is still trial and error. It takes a lot of honesty with yourself to look at something and say, "You're really not doing your best here; this is't something someone will want to look at." It's really necessary to do though because taking risks can land you with the most amazing end product. I know when I was learning to code, I spent a ton of time copying elements from my favorite sites until I found combinations that worked best with whatever content I was using. It's all about trying it out and being flexible.