Ready to get started, now which direction do I start.

[jimmylee7706]

According the Read Me First thread I should explain a little about what I'm looking for any my experience first.

I've been playing with HTML for a little while, never really did much with it, I know the basics and can build a website using HTML but it would be very basic. I've been using Wordpress, Joomla, and e107 for websites mostly. In the next year I'm going to be starting college for a degree in web design, but since I can't start school yet, I want to get started with learning as much as I can on my own.

I'm mainly interested in creating HTML5 stuff that looks good on my iPad, but eventually I want to be able to do PHP and MySQL. Also want to learn Flash to incorporate it into my non iPad pages.

I've noticed that I struggle with trying to learn from books like the Dummy Books or whatever, but I do well with the Lynda.com training videos. So I have a few different ones, I want my websites to be very graphic rich so some of these are graphic stuff. The ones I have are:
Photoshop CS5 One on One Fundamentals
Fireworks CS5 Rapid Prototyping
Creating a First Web Site with Flash Professional CS5
Flash Professional CS5 Essential Training
HTML5 First Look
PHP with MySQL Essential Training
Search Engine Optimization
Web Site Planning and Wireframing Hands On Training.

[tivy]

I never liked those Dummy books. They seem more like glorified reference manuals then they do training books. That being said, I'm not much good with Flash, but as far as HTML/CSS go, I have a few years under my belt.

My best advice to learn HTML and CSS is to find a website you like, and then try and duplicate it exactly from scratch. This will inevitably force you into considering at least a few design decisions, enlighten you about the shortcomings of CSS and HTML, and inevitably, help you develop a personal style. If you get stuck, you can always take a glance at the site's CSS and see how the designer did it.

Once you become adept at being able to duplicate sites exactly, try taking these sites and making minor changes to them. For example, changing the highlight color or the menu style. From there, move on to modifying more significant portions and eventually you'll arrive at the point where you're making your own original sites instead of copying someone else's :)

Their is no substitute in practice and there is no shame in emulating the more experienced. The only real taboo is pretending you did something by yourself when in reality you borrowed the idea from another. Its amoral and depending on where you live, might also be illegal.