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TribeLeader · May 17, 2006, 09:04 AM

I want to learn to hand code (maybe xhtml and css) and I'm wondering what kind of investment (in terms of time and effort) I am looking at. I realize it's somewhat subjective, but any thoughts on how long it may take to learn hand coding (to the point of building a clean, high quality website)?

I built a website a few years ago using Dreamweaver 4. I relied on WYSIWYG, knowing only a few html basics.

Thanks!

tripletaker · May 17, 2006, 09:16 AM

I learned pretty quickly. Just buy a basic HTML book and go through the entire thing and make sure you understand it. Then go through web tutorials teaching you what CSS is. XHTML is just every tag must be closed. ie. <br> becomes <br />

Then to get really good, look at code of other people's site. See how they do it. Emulate it. After you understand that, make your original design. I did the above and learned after a few months.

registered_user · May 17, 2006, 06:35 PM

Learning how to write html and css doesn't take long at all. But learning what doesn't work as you might expect takes experience.

TribeLeader · 01:23 PM

Thanks!

I read through the Basic HTML Tutorial at http://www.w3schools.com/ this afternoon. Some of it was review, so I moved through it pretty quickly. Next I'll go through Advanced HTML and CSS.

What other coding languages should I learn or or become familiar with?

registered_user · May 17, 2006, 09:36 PM

That's a pretty open-ended question, don't you think?

- - e r i k - - · May 17, 2006, 10:02 PM

Learning some php never hurt me on top of my xHTML and CSS skills.

SirCastor · May 17, 2006, 10:25 PM

I started playing around with PHP in about September of last year. Now I have a full-time job working in it. I love it as a language. I relearned HTML since and learned CSS. All in about 6 months. I do freelance web development on the side.

Chuckit · May 17, 2006, 10:53 PM

It's really not as hard as people imagine. They basically did it in one semester at my school, and I thought the class moved pretty slowly.

Obi Wan's Ghost · May 18, 2006, 03:07 AM

Couple months as long as you take notes and do exercises.

andi*pandi · May 18, 2006, 02:51 PM

The class I took covered those topics in about 3 months, and put it together well. w3schools has code snippets, and is good as a reference, but doesn't show how to put a page together completely.

harvard extension has distance learning options.

selowitch · 07:29 AM

Hand-coding is worth the extra effort, because you actually understand intimately what the code does and you have more control. The alternative, using WYSIWYG tools like Dreamweaver or NetObjects Fusion, creates bloated, crappy code that runs slow and ignores standards (Please learn about coding to standards instead of to IE at the Web Standards Project, from Molly Holzschlag, and at Jeffrey Zeldman's website.) Another key trend is the separation of content from presentation, which you will read about at those sites. So do code by hand, but use a text editor with syntax coloring and tag balancing like TextWrangler and you'll be fine.

TribeLeader · 01:38 PM

Thanks everyone!

Originally Posted by selowitch

Hand-coding is worth the extra effort, because you actually understand intimately what the code does and you have more control. The alternative, using WYSIWYG tools like Dreamweaver or NetObjects Fusion, creates bloated, crappy code. Learn to code by hand, but use a text editor with syntax coloring and tag balancing like TextWrangler and you'll be fine.

That makes sense. And, so far, I've been playing around with HMTL in TextEdit. I could see how the color-coding would be helpful!

Speaking of html editors, I've found references to the following on this forum ...

TextWrangler (Free)

Taco (Free)

SubEthaEdit ($35)

SkEdit ($24.95)

AceHTML (Free/$69.95)

jEdit (Free)

TextMate (€39)

I know it's largely a matter of personal preference, but I'd be interested in any thoughts/recommendations on these or other html editors.

selowitch · 07:22 AM

Don't forget Nvu and PageSpinner. I used PS for a while but got tired of its pecularities. Much happier with TextWrangler (mostly because of its awesome search-and-replace). SubEthaEdit is great, too, especially if you group-edit a website. I would start with one of those two, and if one of them suits your needs, what could be better, since they're both free?

TribeLeader · 02:01 PM

Here are the Top 14 Text HTML Editors for Macintosh according to Jennifer Kyrnin at About.com, eleven of which are not yet mentioned in this thread. Although I'm not sure how old the article/list is.

TribeLeader · May 26, 2006, 02:27 PM

Question: What are good sources/tutorials for learning (X)HTML and CSS?

I mentioned www.w3schools.com and I've also come across (though I haven't looked at them yet): http://www.sitepoint.com/, http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/, and http://www.webstandards.org/learn/.

Any other (website and/or book) suggestions?

skalie · May 27, 2006, 07:08 AM

Originally Posted by TribeLeader

I want to learn to hand code (maybe xhtml and css) and I'm wondering what kind of investment (in terms of time and effort) I am looking at.

As it's what you want to do, I think you'll find that hand coding isn't that much effort, in fact fun to learn, as is css.

Untill you make the unhappy discovery of Internet Explorer.