Recently, I’m on the verge of learning basic web designing. It all started with the idea of making a landing page for myself from scratch, without using sites like About.me. I ended up discovering sites which can be very handy for beginners who’re trying to code.
1. Codecademy
This is one of the best things I’ve stumbled upon this year. Codecademy is where you learn code by actually writing it, i.e. by completing exercises which are created by experts of those field. This year, they launched a free initiative named Code Year, calling everyone to learn the basics of coding.
The site lets you track progress, achieve badges and other cool stuff. If you’re stuck at some particular exercise, you can post your doubts in the forums, there are some helpful people out there! You can grab exercises related to Javascript, JQuery and of course CSS3. They also seem to add lessons related to Python, in future. The best thing? All this is free.
Link: Codecademy
2. Dochub
How about an instantly searchable documentation of all major programming languages? That’s Dochub. You can easily find documentation for various programming languages online, but it’s all scattered, and it’s not fast. Dochub solves this. Also, you can get the local version of the website from the Github page.
Link: Dochub
3. Mozilla Developer Network
Mozilla Developer Network(MDN) provides a great in-depth documentation for CSS and Javascript. It’s more like Wikipedia for web developers (you can even edit the wiki, and changes will be reviewed). Bonus is that, you can also learn about making Firefox addons and HTML5 apps, which are cross platform.
Link: Mozilla Developer Network
4. 30 days to learn HTML and CSS
If learning coding by reading documentation or books doesn’t work for you, then consider taking this free course. It’s a series of video tutorials by Jeffery Way, of TutsPlus. Of course, the tutorials are really basic, so if you want something more advanced, you should consider paying for Treehouse, a subscription based learning platform for web and and even iOS developers.
Link: Learn CSS
5. Read Blogs
Blogs related to web designing are in plenty. Starting with the TutsPlus network, till Smashing Magazine, there are so many blogs dedicated to this niche. Most of them will rank well on Google, if you search for anything related to web designing, that’s the best way to find good blogs.
I’m sure there are many more sites which fall under this category, and I’m no web designer. So, do you know any free resources for learning web designing? Write them in the comments.
15 Comments
I think this a list of great resources there. However I don’t learn my HTML/CSS there.
I learned mine from w3schools[dot]com. It might not be as interactive as Codeacademy, but there is a HTML editor for me to try out the new HTML code. Furthermore, W3Schools has PHP lesson as well.
The reason I didn’t include W3Schools is that, it’s too popular, and it’ll be like repeating the same thing over and over again. But yeah, it’s a good resource.
Do check out w3fools.com.
Yeah, have seen that site before. W3schools may have errors, but most of them are resolved and those guys have actually responded to W3fools site. http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/01/w3schools-responds-to-w3fools.php
I didn’t knew this existed. Thanks for sharing. Didn’t know that someone will start a site just to report about another one’s mistake.
@Vibin: I am quite sure most of them are not aware of “w3schools” as of yet.
As a matter of fact, the title of this post says “5 great sites for beginners to learn HTML/CSS.”
But you seem to reason that “w3schools” is “too popular” so you dint include. So I guess that contradicts to your Subject.
My personal opinion is that “w3schools” is hands down in the top 5 list.
May be I should have written the title as “5 New sites…”. Though MDN is not something new. 🙂
You missed out on teamtreehouse.com
Not really. I linked to it in the 4th point.
I think http://htmldog.com is also pretty cool..
w3school is a good site for both beginners and professionals.Explain everything in a simple manner , “Try ” will help to get more informations
I think http://www.w3schools.com should have been there in top 5 as it is most popular in colleges and everything is explained here in a simple way and editor also helps you try your things.
You missed W3Schools it is my encyclopedia 🙂
I also think w3schools.com gets a bit of a raw deal on the internet. There are plenty of other I found it quite useful over the years. However, it is not necessarily as fun as learning with something like CodeCademy.
I have been creating http://codeavengers.com, a site which looks kind of like CodeCademy, but is designed from the ground up with a focus on beginners. I am particularly targeting high school students.
I think the CodeCademy HTML/CSS lessons are fine for beginners, but many total novices have reported that they find CodeCademy’s JavaScript stream too difficult. That is where CodeAvengers shines. CodeAvengers uses minimal text and terminology and examples suitable for beginners, as well as carefully sequenced lessons that provide enough repetition to re-enforce new concepts.
My site has introductory HTML/CSS and JavaScript courses that I have been creating in my spare time over the past 8 months.
Hi all, w3shcools is good but they don’t explain the topic very clearly, I have found a great website that you really likes http://www.tutorialrepublic.com. Check this out.