I think the only thing that is the problem with HTML and CSS, is that a lot of browsers display it incorrectly.
Something that looks nice in IE, might look like hell in Opera, and vise versa.
IE is known to make theire own <tags>, which are not standard, and then users start using them. It might look cool and be easy to use in IE, but in some other browser, it might not work at all.
That is kindof why they made XHTML and CSS, I think.
has some tutorials I think, but XHTML is VERY easy to learn, after you have learned basic HTML.
There are only small differences, and you will also learn by validating your pages, as then you will be forced to work around the flaws that are in your code, so the design will (in theory) look the same on all browsers.
I also think that you should start with some basic HTML tutorial, that you can find on google.
I think what is important to learn, is easy.. like:
images are <img>, you provide source with <img src="path/to/img.jpg">
you also have paragraphs, <p>text</p>
linebreak: <br>
etc etc.
I think forms are a vital part of HTML, as well as formatting (<p> and <br>).
When you learn about XHTML, you learn to write all tags in lowercase, as well as all tags should be closed.
tags like <img> and <br>, are in html, tags that are not closed. You simply close them by adding a / at the end:
<img src="woot.jpg" title="woot, this is cool" />
Then you will also learn tips and tricks, while you are doing the html coding, like:
specifying width and height for the image tags, makes the browser render them faster, as then it does not have to "open" them, to check the width and height.
anyways, I dont know of a good html tutorial at hand, but I guess that you will find some on google.
CSS is also smart to use, as said above.
I have recently made a "html free" design.. (I should rather say table-free design, as some html is always needed). The design worked PERFECTLY, and also gave some more freedom than regular html.
html is "square", in that way that everything is made up, almost like an excel document.
You can however make some cells span (have same width as more than one cell, that is above), modify height, etc.
If you are after some flashy, animated page, it is most likely easier to make it in flash.
If you however are after a fast-loading page, which will show a lot of content, I would use XHTML and CSS, with php/mysql backend.
If the page is not to be updated frequently, XHTML/CSS could be enough, with some kind of flatfile system and includes.
What is great with CSS, is also that you can define tags, so that you can send a template to a designer, and send some files to a programmer. They can then handle the files, without corrupting your system, if you make a smart system, that is.
Anyways, this was a lot of babble.
Good luck!
Olav Alexander Mjelde
Admin & Webmaster
