Recommended advanced HTML/CSS/JS book?

[foshizzle]

I've been gaining an interest in web development. I read a book this summer that was really basic HTML/CSS. My eventual goal is not web design but more on the side of web development, in languages like PHP and Ruby on Rails. I would like to dive more into HTML and CSS, and begin javascript, before I get more involved in PHP or Ruby.

Can someone suggest a more advanced book that goes beyond the basics of HTML and CSS, and maybe even dives into javascript? I know there are plenty of websites that go into this but I'd rather read a book on it and I cant seem to pick from the hundreds on amazon and elsewhere. I figured someone could probably recommend a good one (or two) to help me cut down the list. I'd prefer something written in the past year or two to be up to date.

 

[SelfMadeCelo]

I don't know of any really great HTML/CSS books (Mostly because I learned HTML a long time ago and then read a lot of CSS stuff online) but I do have a recommendation if you want to learn PHP. I picked up this book. It was really easy to get the hang of it although they don't really get too deep into PHP5. But still, great resource for a beginner to start off with. Good luck.

 

[foshizzle]

thanks, I'll look into it. Would it be worth my time to learn javascript if my eventual goal is PHP or Ruby? I'm still trying to figure out a path from A->Z (A being basic HTML/CSS, Z being PHP or Ruby, etc). Should I dive straight into PHP or should I learn some other programming concepts like C or javascript before I get into these other languages?

 

[angelwatt]

JavaScript and PHP are fairly different. JavaScript is really different from a lot of coding languages. You'll want to learn both though, especially if you do any AJAX. JavaScript can be picked up pretty quick though as long as you're fine with code. The languages also serve different purposes, where JavaScript is executed client-side, and PHP is done server-side.

 

[memco]

I've been doing server side stuff for a few years, during which time I've learned that HTML/CSS/JS are very handy tools to have at your disposal when building sites. The PHP, Ruby, whathaveyou are all only going to be able implement the "business logic," which means it'll give the site functionality, but they won't do layout and design. AJAX is one of the nicest reasons to learn JS. Being able to give the users a richer experience by executing server-side code without reloading an entire page is nice. Further, JS can be used to handle some tasks that you shouldn't need to go to the server for such as reordering the rows in a table. You could go do another query, but since you've already got the data you could just as easily re-sort what you've already got.

All that said, JS isn't essential, but it does help a lot.

 

[wfoster]

If you're look for a good online website to learn programming try http://w3schools.com.

 

[foshizzle]

@wfoster: I'd pretty much written off any websites to try to learn any of this, except for bits and pieces here and there. After reading through the HTML and XHTML tutorials on w3schools I'm impressed. I'll definitely keep them around, and i especially like their reference documents.

I'd still like a book that is advanced HTML/CSS or beginning JS, just to get those down and have a book around.

 

[Meek Wriggle]

I've been using this to learn PHP with. It also goes into MySQL. It's a huge book but if you're going to learn PHP you generally need to learn MySQL for web apps.

For learning HTML/CSS I bought this. It's more of a starter book but covers a lot of (X)HTML and CSS and teaches you good practice to boot. It also covers a little bit of graphics (how to optimize them for the web mostly).

For more advanced HTML you might want to look at this. And for Javascript I hear this is probably the best book out there.

 

[foshizzle]

Jumping the gun, I actually already bought that PHP/MySQL book. I've realized that I do enjoy the programming side of PHP and MySQL is really interesting, but I think I need to get some more HTML/CSS/JS under my belt first before I can truly master PHP and make webapps (that look nice). My eventual goal for the next couple of yaers is to work on a database with a front-end webapp for the company i've been at for 3 years. Its a fairly small company and my boss likes the idea, which is one of the reasons they're helping me out with school. I'm majoring in computer science (well, starting a double major along with mechanical engineering which i've been at for 2 years). I'd like to make something useful on an iPhone/iTouch browser as well, or even make some kind of app for that to interface for our testing equipment, but that is beyond web development and this section of the forums.

thanks for the HTML and JS books, i'll definitely look more into both of them. Do you know if the JS book is going to be updated any time soon? It was last published in 2006, and i'm not sure how much has changed since then.