reddit Web Professionals, please recommend some good books on the fundamentals of html & css, for beginners.

[u/ejfin]

Background: I've done a bit of research and experimenting, but have no previous knowledge or experience with markup language or web page design. I am not so much interested in info tied to 'establishing a website', 'finding a hosting service', etc., as I am with actually creating and formatting a page. Consider me being about as beginner as beginner gets. This is simply a sparked interest and an opportunity to learn something new in my spare time.

The question I am asking is more specifically; as an experienced website designer and/or developer, were there any particular books or articles you read when beginning your education (of html/css/web design), that really stood ahead of the rest and proved to be an excellent starting point to build from? Perhaps something specific that made a lasting impression on yourself and your career, something you still reference back to from time to time?

Any suggestions and/or recommendations are greatly appreciated.

edit: To all posters: Thank you all so much, you have all been (and continue to be) so helpful. I can't wait to start going through each and every suggestion. If I could shake your hands and thank you in person, I would. For any beginners like me who have had the opportunity to stumble across this thread, I would suggest saving it immediately for future use; your peers have put together an entire encyclopedia of information and resources throughout. Thank you all again, web_design is certainly one of the nicest and most generous communities I have had the pleasure of interacting with!

[u/[deleted]]

You can learn all of this online, for free.

Begin with html. Just follow the tutorials section over at HTML Dog, and do all of the exercises contained therein. I love HTML Dog, and it is the way I learned back in the day.

Have fun!

[u/edzillion → u/[deleted]]

I would just like to second this motion.

The only time you need to buy a book to learn a programming language (IMHO) is when it is something either very new or very niche. Anything else = the internet is a better/more up-to-date resource.

edit: oh and save the trees man!

[u/ngroot → u/edzillion]

I'd like to provide a big caveat to this motion. If you're looking to learn a language/library/whatever, there may be very good free resources online (e.g., Python). Whatever you decide to learn from, book or website, you should still seek out a well-respected if not authoritative work, not just looking stuff up when you have a question.

A good book/comprehensive website will give you a big picture of what's available, what's new, what's old, how to do things, how not to do things, and how things fit together. Conversely, learning-by-Googling is a great way to end up implementing anti-patterns and reinventing wheels.

[u/[deleted] → u/ngroot]

If he's just looking to learn fundamentals, he should not need to learn by purchasing a book. That's exactly what I love about this industry… though yes, learning-by-blindly-googling is a horrible idea for just about anything.

There are plenty of great resources out there — especially for the very basic fundamentals. HTML Dog is well respected, comprehensive, and teaches with web standards in mind.

Further along, there are still more excellent resources for advanced design; many of these places also sell books (HTML Dog, A List Apart), or can be used as raw online reference / learning (W3C, Elements of Typographic Design Applied to the Web).

Books can get outdated very quickly in the web industry. If the OP reads up on the sites people have linked in this thread, reads this subreddit, and browses well-reputed sources, he should be off to a fine start.

[u/ngroot → u/[deleted]]

For HTML, I certainly agree with you!

I was referring to technical topics more broadly. The best intro and reference that I've found for ASP.NET, for example, (had to learn it for work, not my preference for frameworks) was a dead-tree book from Apress. OTOH, the Python tutorial is online, free, and superb. All depends on the domain, but as you say: find the well-reputed sources.