I began my journey on the W3CSchools website, a Google search for "HTML tutorials" lead me there rather quickly and it's simple to understand format had me on my feet in no time, I was using <p> and <table> tags within 5 minutes.
After a few hours I began to get bored and wanted to create some really nice designs so I downloaded Dreamweaver, I had heard great things about the software and after torrenting it on thepiratebay along with an activation key which worked I began my journey in to the grand clusterfuck which is a beginner designer using Dreamweaver.
I began to output some quality design (or so I thought) and despite the fact that everything was black and white on my website, I was proud of it and began to show all my friends (I was about 14 at the time) what I could do!
After that I searched for "Best web design" (again using Google) and realized that, to be fair, I was quite crap. I practiced and practiced, learning CSS in the process (also on the W3CSchools website) and soon enough, there was colour and cool looking styles popping up all over the place, my website looked like a blind clown trying to put on its makeup over a heavily tattooed face.
To be honest though, looking back after 5 years I can honestly say that it wasn't W3CSchools (who I still credit with supplying me with the base knowledge I needed) who made me the designer I am today (though to be honest, I'm much more proficient in the back end) it was time and iteration. Almost no one starts out with all the skill they require and I was certainly no wunderkind, it was the 3,000 terrible websites I built before the one I built last night (which in 30 more websites time, I will look back on as a horrific disaster of colour and style, no doubt.)
Had a two term multimedia class in high school. One half of the class was learning Flash timeline animation and the other was HTML / CSS. The professor had us start in notepad before jumping into FrontPage or Dreamweaver. My first major project was to redesign the schools website. After that, I kept tinkering with personal projects, picking apart bigger websites and eventually I pursued a CS degree.
I taught myself while trying to build my own website. Just plain old notepad and long hours of suffering, or in geocities or tripod. When Tripod started offering perl I even taught myself enough to build the worst forum ever.
I started with Dreamweaver back in the day. It was nice because you could switch between code view and design view. Also I created a really crappy music review site and used that project to help me learn html/css.
Ashamed to say this, but Microsoft FrontPage, when it comes to HTML and CSS. That how I started to understand what the markup of the web was and after a while ditched FrontPage for Notepad and took it from there.
I first learned about HTML by studying the tags in web page source codes in college. This was not part of the curriculum: I was picking up the skill off my own bat.
Likewise for Javascript and CSS (and basic use of forms and CGI); I first learned about them by looking at inline scripts, and later learned how to invoke external script files. I was already out of uni when I began to learn about them.
I'm currently developing a social music discovery platform, Tune Patrol and I work on the front end(HTML,JS,CSS) predominantly. From my experience, I feel there isn't any specific book or instruction manual to follow. I've always felt that learning code is a simple three step process, no matter which the language.
1. Understand the logic of basic commands that you will be using, for example, in java script, event listeners is a pretty important concept.
2. After reading the core concept briefly, have a run through the syntax. Remember, you can always refer the syntax of a language, do not mug it up. The syntax will come to you after some practice.
3. Implement it practically. Make a personal website or simply start coding a few plug ins. This is where the actual learning happens.
I've always followed this paradigm and its worked out okay for me so long.
Work through the examples using WAMP or MAMP and a text editor, using Firefox to view your work, once you get the basics down learn how to use the Firebug fire extension for Firefox to inspect your own work and other websites.
Once you finish the examples in the book build your own website or pick out a project you want to build. You learn the most trying to build something new. Then improve on it. "I want my site to do this or have this element."
StackOverflow.com is a great place to search for solutions, techniques. I like Tizag.com as well for specific samples.
There is a Head First Javascript book you can work on after picking up some HTML CSS skills.
And Head first jQuery would be the next step. jQuery is used on a lot of websites and something you should learn.
(I didn't use those two books, I learned JS and jQuery from tutorials and stackoverflow.com.)
From there I moved on to Head First PHP/mySQL to learn some server side programming and database skills.
Along the way the key to learning is creating and editing websites for yourself or projects that you need/want.
I progressed from websites to web applications to mobile websites and mobile apps.
Wordpress is a skill you should pick up as well. There is a head first book for that too.
I would recommend learning HTML, CSS, check out HTML5 and CSS3 as well, Javascript, jQuery, jQuery Mobile (for mobile web sites), PHP, mySQL once you have the basics of those start learning Ruby on Rails.
When I noticed that I would have to reference Web colours in RGB hex code, I was glad I was already very familiar with hexadecimal code.
I greeted the discovery of external scripts for JS and CSS with joy, because I knew how versatile those external scripts could become; I only needed to code one particular style or JavaScript function or object once, in one file, and use that code throughout the site; maintenance would be a breeze, too, because I'd only have to update a given style or JS function, again, in one place.
So, to summarise, my first thought on becoming acquainted with HTML, CSS and JS was "This is going to be so useful."
After a few hours I began to get bored and wanted to create some really nice designs so I downloaded Dreamweaver, I had heard great things about the software and after torrenting it on thepiratebay along with an activation key which worked I began my journey in to the grand clusterfuck which is a beginner designer using Dreamweaver.
I began to output some quality design (or so I thought) and despite the fact that everything was black and white on my website, I was proud of it and began to show all my friends (I was about 14 at the time) what I could do!
After that I searched for "Best web design" (again using Google) and realized that, to be fair, I was quite crap. I practiced and practiced, learning CSS in the process (also on the W3CSchools website) and soon enough, there was colour and cool looking styles popping up all over the place, my website looked like a blind clown trying to put on its makeup over a heavily tattooed face.
To be honest though, looking back after 5 years I can honestly say that it wasn't W3CSchools (who I still credit with supplying me with the base knowledge I needed) who made me the designer I am today (though to be honest, I'm much more proficient in the back end) it was time and iteration. Almost no one starts out with all the skill they require and I was certainly no wunderkind, it was the 3,000 terrible websites I built before the one I built last night (which in 30 more websites time, I will look back on as a horrific disaster of colour and style, no doubt.)