144 replies to this topic

[kshan]

There are many tutorials available on the internet.
The one site, i would recommend is w3school. It has very good tutorial on the html, dhtml, xml etc.
Or just try googling on the specifics you want to learn.

[webishqiptar]

I learned html from different sites, but the best way to learn it in my opinion is to do practice. I learned html and css coding from psd to xhtml. And I still remember it nowadays though not designing and coding anymore. I don't have enough time.

[Rael IAK]

Like just about everything I've learned since I finished University, I learned what HTML I know from a variety of sources. Primarily books I've grabbed at the local library and the numerous tutorial sites on the web.

One site I've found especially useful is www.w3schools.com. It covers the basics of HTML, XML, Javascript and the various server side scripting languages. Many of the tutorials also let you try coding on-line and show you instant results. This is great for people who learn best by doing. I'd recommend to anyone that they at least look at this sight for anything related to programming on the web. I didn't read all 15 pages of posts in this thread so if someone else has already mentioned this site, I apologize.

In this day and age, if you are able to learn things reasonably well by reading then there is no good reason (other than for professional accreditation) to take a course in anything (in my opinion).

[mrdee]

I would say I learned HTML for the most part by doing it.

I remember in 1998, when I got access to the Internet for the first time (still on my good old Atari ST), I could only use it for emailing, BBS systems and reading newsgroups, because the browser software Atari had (called CAB) let you surf the net to some extent, but you had to try and go for mainly text-based websites, as the spec of the Atari was not 100% up to scratch for seeing PC type images, Flash, Java etc. and besides, you had to have a hard drive and a lot of cache and a very appropriate monitor.

However, when I saw the things I could see, my interest was immediately roused in the sense of "Hey, i would like to put my own site on there too".

Then, at Christmas of the same year, I got my first PC, and I was amazed at the things the Internet had to offer.
I don't remember how I had it, but my OS on my first machine was Windows 98, and for some or other reason (did it come as part of Windows or what?) it had Frontpage on it.

I started fiddling with Frontpage a bit, and after a few days, my fist website (or, rather, attempt at a website) was born, mainly due to the WYSIWYG and drag-and-drop features in Frontpage.

I used to ask people in news groups to rate my site, and also how I could achieve certain things in HTML, and got lots of useful tips from there.
However, using Frontpage, one of the regular criticisms I got was "Microsoft always know better, the way you do this is nor standard HTML". ( you will see something later in this post too about the things people posted about Microsoft).

Anyway, apart from looking at my site and just changing things through WYSIWYG, i also started looking at the HTML code, and found there was a lot of logic and self explanatory stuff in it.
I was, of course, not ye fluent enough in HTML to just start using Notepad or something, i still needed help from WySIWYG features, but having had all the input by newsgroup and forum users, I started moving away from Frontpage, and started using demo/trial versions of other professional packages, and also freeware programs.
A combination of the latter, and the things I learned from analysing my code and, once again the input from other people, made me more and more proficient in correcting my HTML code by hand, doing better bit by bit.

I then got across a company called "Coffeecup", and they make all sorts of website design software, going from a HTML editor to a form maker, a shopping cart application and much more.
I liked their HTML editor from the beginning, maybe not the most professional program under the sun, but, hey ho, I am not a professional website designer either, and it did everything I expected of it.
Then, because of the /11 atrocities, the company gave away a free copy of their HTML editor to all demo users, and I have used it ever since, the good thing is, you own it for life, never pay extra for updates, and there is a better version at least every year.

I have also tried my hand at Dreamweaver, that program can do practically everything you would expect from a website designing program, but, as it goes, like all Adobe programs are IMVHO, it is incredibly difficult to use and very user unfriendly.

So, i have stuck with my Coffeecup, which is now also HTML 5 compatible, however, with a new version of HTML also comes a lot of new learning.
Nowadays even, I still check newsgroups, forums and tutorial sites (now far less than I did before, but I still do on occasions) to see how to perform an action using HTML.

A word of warning too: with the new standard of HTML 5, over time, some features of HTML 4 will be scrapped, and you will be forced to switch to HTML 5, the only problem with that (at the moment) is that not all browsers support it yet, some not fully, some not at all.
And, believe it or not (yes, here we go again), the browser used by most people, Microsoft Internet Explorere, does not seem to suport HTML 5 at all yest, as I noticed a few days ago when I put a simple and short song online, using HTML5, I used a number of browsers, but the only one that would not display my media player nor play my song was..... Internet Explorer.

Anyhow, the best advice I can give o people wanting to learn HTML is:use some different browsers, use WYIWYG by all means, but look through your HTML code too, visit newsgroups, forums and tutorial sites, and, like I did, buy some simple books about HTML.

I won't say that the sites I made are the bees knees, but, they do the job I want them to do, and, IMHO, they do look rather attractive, without lots of flashy features on them (always remember too much of a good thing is not really that good).

And furthermore, like I always hungered for and highly appreciated help from others, I am always willing and ready to help other people.

[Iniyila]

my first attribute to html where in 1999 where i faced a problem while i was trying to see a webpage. i found that fonts on that webpage (i really do not remember what website i was in but it was related to daily news i think) are not viewing correctly because author had used 24px for some content and 8 for others content so when you were seeing that page you had to zoom in, in order to see that 8px fonts and then those 24px fonts will became so huge, as i suggested them using contact system to use same font for all the page they sent me a copy of that page source and told me if i can fix it for them i will get some money so i started to learn html.

My first source was a book that i doesn't have it anymore (i don't know what happened to it). i was using that book and combination of notepad and internet explorer to change the source and see the results. i soon get to know what html tags are and i changed the fonts and corrected the webpage and i gave them the corrected one. i think they gave me something like 50 or 60 box or so and that was a great start for me. anyway till today i never earned money using my html knowledge except for that start.

i remember in 2002 when i bought a pc with winXP on it, it had a full version of office XP on it and so the frontpage. from those days i started to struggling with frontpage and soon i found it is rubbish and i prefer my notepad more. actually i never can keep a html tag in my mind and i have to look at the examples always and even after 11 year of working with html i still can not keep that simple <span> tag in my mind. after 2002 , i never read that book i bought again becuase i have learned to use google for everything and it was very easier to find my desired tag in google than in the book.

the biggest source i have ever used is that w3shool website which in the past ten years of my experiences, i always searched for finding correct tags in it. actually their function of "Try it yourself" helped me a lot learning html because doing that using a notepad++ and a browser is more time consuming than doing it using their test script. another debugger i have used in these years is tinymce editor, with its sample files which is a complete editor you can write your html pages without any problem and you can see how your page will look like if you use some codes.

these days knowing html is not enough at all because even simple webpages nowadays are based on css, javascript and php so learning html itself will not even help you write a simple page so you have to learn other things too.