Ask HN: What are the best resources to learn basic HTML/CSS for a total newbie? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are the best resources to learn basic HTML/CSS for a total newbie?

2 pointslsanza8 comments

A colleague (who isn't technical at all) is trying to understand better how what we do on the technical side works and has asked me for some references.

I've found several but I'm not sure if they're appropriate for someone with pretty basic or no knowledge of anything that is CS related. Is there any resource that has helped some of you in the past?

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I really liked the Webmonkey lessons, but that was a very long time ago, and I have no idea if the lessons they had are at all useful these days.

I've heard the Head First books are good for people who are pretty new to web development, but I have to say that their iPhone development book didn't work for me at all.

Ultimately, the best thing is to save a webpage that someone else made, and to then start tweaking it, and to compare the differences between the old and new versions (use multiple tabs). Then, begin to plan what changes you'd like to see, and see if you can change the page appropriately.

In Chrome or Firefox, the "inspect element" tool is really really useful.

Good luck to your colleague.

I found this book by Duckett to be very helpful. It provides a good visual overview of the stuff you're learning. http://www.amazon.com/HTML-CSS-Design-Build-Websites/dp/1118...

I would recommend you codeacademy too for HTML/CSS. It is a pretty quick and easy markup language and presentational language. Both easy to learn if you really focus the learning on the code and what it does instead of the cool result you gonna get.

This page on the codeacademy site:

http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/web

http://www.codecademy.com is a great start for someone completely new.

http://learncss.tutsplus.com/

Thanks for all the answers! I got a couple of friends to mention codeacademy as well...

I recommend Head First HTML/CSS. It's what I used - great book!

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