What are the industry standards

What are the industry standards.

What are the programs and skills that designers are expected to know at this time?

I work with Adobe GoLive but it is my understanding that Dreamweaver is what someone is expected to know.

So what programs or skills should one focus on learning? - flash, photoshop, what about swish, php, etc...?????

learn html and php, photoshop and perhaps illustrator and you''ll be on your way to be a superstar designer. or well, creator of pics on who we will decide if it's art or not.

Quark/Indesign, PS, Illustrator are my big 3. Thats for print design anyways.

If you're talking about web design, standards compliant xHTML and CSS is really "in" right now. And with good reason. Flash, PHP, etc. Knowing a certain program is not so important in my opinion. Programs are pretty easy to learn. And of course photoshop/illustrator.

i loved that no one mention a good art education, and a drawing background helps a great deal.
computers arent doing everything for us YET! [unless you count ngen].
knowing all these applications and having no design skills will land you in a production job, and if thats what you want to do i suggest you just learn as many apps as you can, so that you can be a more marketable production person.

as a designer, photoshop/illustrator/quark. adding web skills would be dreamweaver and flash. additional pluses are after effects, director, and any 3d package (lightwave and maya are often asked for, 3dsmax for architectural firms). this is all considering you can actually design too

chris

i wish i knew how to use after effects :D