as for the TS question, web designing for me, is designing. no development work, no flash, no HTML, no JS.
Designing has a broad skill set on this area alone. meaning you can be very busy purely with designing without having the knowldege to code.
Personally, I would suggest you to know the right color combination first as some colors just does not blend well. Next is to check the most recent websites and know how designs have changed overtime like buttons, fonts, headers are bigger than usual. No more use of embossed buttons, and space really consumed all over the page. practice lng and research. mao na ang key for getting great designs.
Also, Don't be too artistic on your designs where it will lead on to the CSS coder not being able to cut your design because of the structure and layouts. Saying that, learn CSS/xHTML a bit so it can help you and your coder create websites faster without sacrificing quality.
HTH
Cedric