Ruby on rails, building a simple portfolio page - html

So I do freelance iPhone app development, and I need to a build a small website showing my company;s name and the apps I already deployed in apple app store, plus some images of my previous clients.
I started playing with ruby on rails, and setup a skeleton app on heroku, its live and works.
My problem is I don't know how to create a lot of things in Web, like scrolling left to right,
or adding a band that has icons. I don't know what should be the next thing to learn? should I readup on html and css? or is this a RoR functionality?
Anyone can guide me in the direction of a sample protfolio website in RoR?
Thanks.

If I were you I'd leave Rails out of this equation altogether until you have HTML and CSS nailed down - you're going to add in a large layer of unneeded complexity if you try and start with a server-side framework like Rails before you understand the basics of building web pages.
I believe that http://net.tutsplus.com has free beginning HTML and CSS courses that should be more than enough to get you up to speed.

Ruby on Rails is just the framework for the site. The flashy stuff you see on websites comes from javascript, css, html, etc. If you have the website functioning properly and are now looking to create the flashy pages to show off your apps, I'd suggest getting into javascript and css.

I guess your application is a collection of static HTML/Web pages which has some data(text, images).
So I guess you really don't need a scripting language or framework to develop your site.
Having grip on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery will do everything up to my knowledge.

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I have a psd files of my website design, So can i convert it into html template.
Template should contain html,css code.
Basically i am beginner in photoshop so i don't know, it will possible or not.
Please help.
Well the good part is that you have the static design, what means that there is no interaction with a user, of your website ready.
I would suggest you to start with one or another interactive prototyping tool like Marvel. Then you can prototype the functionalities of the website and start working on code writing part. This step will also help you and people, who are going to help you, to get the idea what you want to achieve as a final result.
There are also Adobe solutions like Dreamweaver what gives you an option to migrate the Photoshop layers to webpage. But this solution is not free.
After you finish working with prototyping you can take a really good free course on Udacity about developing solutions with HTML5 and CSS3. Codecademy also has good set of courses on this topic.
Hope this helps to start your journey in learning PSD to HTML techniques and web development in general.

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At the moment I'm using a basic text editor to tweak the html (for a custom Google Map), but cloud9 and the like highlight code in colour and complete functions etc. so it's easier to use (also I can't use an offline editor due to hardware).
I'm keen to learn more javascript but really only have basic web html/css skills so all the node.js files lose me a bit. Where can I find a really simple introduction to just writing, say, a html page and seeing it previewed? Or does it not work like that?
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Thanks, and sorry for asking such a beginner's question!
Does the Cloud9 documentation site (https://docs.c9.io/) help?. It has articles ranging from the basics to more advanced topics, including some video tutorials.

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I'm trying to create a mobile version of my school website is there a simple way to do this? I'd rather not pay money to get some website to do it for me. can I load an external html template instead of just an external css file.
You can find many free and paid tools that help you create mobile sites. Have a look at this list. I am sure there are many more. If you don't want to pay a penny and you are planning to get some programming experience, you will need some knowledge on HTML5 and CSS.
If you plan for some big and fancy ideas, have a look at jQuery Mobile or Sencha Touch
Sure you can. However, this is no task that can be done automatically. You need to sit down and maybe create a new HTML and/or new CSS. But you can also just leave it as is, because you can view them on the most smartphones without any problems.
Are you using a Content Management System (CMS) such as Wordpress Joomla, or Drupal? If so, look for a responsive template created in the last year. Another option with some CMSs is a plugin/addon that renders a different template when detecting a mobile device.
If you aren't using a CMS it'll take more work, there are lots of responsive frameworks out there, the two big ones are Bootstrap and Zurb Foundation.

How to effeciently/repeatibly prototype a web app front end?

As most web development freelancers, I'm facing the problem of the front-end part of the application, doing front-end development from scratch (even using css frameworks such as 960gs or blueprint) is still just too much time consuming.
Is there a reliable/repeatable way of quickly generating a front-end prototype without relying too much on HTML/CSS editing? Can ready-made css/html templates (whether free of commercial) save time?
I can think of stuff like weebly or artisteer but these are pretty basic and the resulting code is not easily changeable.
Web frameworks like Rails and Django have pretty darn well solved the back-end problem, but the front-end thingy is still untouched in my humble opinion.
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I'm very new to flash and as3 design patterns. But I can read and write as3 quite ok, i've created small widgets with that. I've developed several web sites using php and also python.
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