Considering I spend most of my days developing applications that are web based, I actually do very little web design, if any. I'm very interested in the process of create web pages from scratch, including color schemes, css, and layout. So this week during staff development, I've attempted to see if I could come up with a page that I'll eventually be able to use for an administration side of admissions online application. DHTML has it's pluses and minuses. Each browser interprets html differently, so it's difficult to get a uniform look to your page. I was attempting to get a header and footer to display at the top and bottom (I know you'd never guess that) and apparently there's no way to do that without javascript capturing the window size and modifying the table height, which was not what I wanted to hear.
I'm also trying to learn about color on the web and what color schemes and combinations appeal to people. There are quite a few color theory pages out there. I like the suggestions on choosing colors from nature photos found on http://www.mezzoblue.com. The comments posted also provided many resources of use.
I've just started with pages that I like or that have interesting layout and have been snagging bits and images. It's still a rather frustrating endeavor, but I'm sure it will get easier the more I learn about it.
