You make a good point, but my wee little brain can only take in so much. It makes sense to me to learn the newest ways of doing things. I can always add things later as needed. Thanks for the input!
I agree 100%. But look at through the eyes of someone fairly new. First time I saw the float property for positioning I remember thinking “Hey, I don’t want to float anything. I just want my divs to line up across the screen”. So you turn to your trusty search bar and type “tutorial css float” and now you have a thousand articles to look at with no real way of knowing which ones actually apply.
For me at least, filtering by age is the first line of defense.
The good news is that I’m sure this will settle down in next 30 or 40 years.
Actually, if you focus on the latest technologies for HTML and CSS you are shooting yourself in the foot. =p
HTML 5 is built on top of HTML 4.01, which has been around since the mid to late 90s, and has changes very little. Without a firm grasp of that, it’s next to impossible to use HTML 5 well. Similar with CSS; CSS3 is built on CSS2.1, which hasn’t changed much in about a decade.
While I wouldn’t go with anything too old, going with something too bleeding edge is just going to get you cut. =p
I have an older HTML/CSS book that is just as valid today as it was a while back. I’d say when you are dealing with HTML and CSS, anything within the last 5 years is pretty safe (as long as it was a good book when it was released). I highly recommend Sitepoint’s HTML and CSS reference books. They are pretty recent (I think the second edition came out not very long ago). They easily replaced my old reference books.
Yep, I use these weekly (if not daily). They are available for free online too, and are kept up to date there.
Not sure I agree with that.
It’s clear that the questioner’s main concern is to learn the basics: to get started with basic HTML and CSS. Although there have been plenty of developments in the last couple of years, the basic stuff hasn’t changed. It’s better to focus on those fundamentals than always to worry about learning the latest technology.
Mike
I went back to uni at 52 to learn computing, and grabbed the class prize as top student.
I’m a bit older than that now, and I don’t see age as a problem.
Sure. You get the clients, you design the site in Photoshop or something, then you contract out the work of translating your design into HTML and CSS. Lots of designers do just that.
It is never too late to start a career and even hobby in something else so long as you are physically capable. Earlier I watched a program of a fellow who taught himself how to cook Italian food in his seventies. He never cooked before that time; minus maybe something minor once a blue moon I would imagine. Go for it!
I think my next set of books is going to be from site point. (Now back to Netwarts School of internet Wizardy :D)