How long, exactly, did it take you to master, or get pretty good at coding in XHTML and CSS? Wordpress? Java? I'm personally on the verge of learning to do of all of these things, and I've gotten a basic hold upon XHTML and CSS. I want to do something with wordpress, but I haven't picked it up just yet. Honestly, I have no knowledge when it comes to Java. But, how about for all of you? I realize it really depends on the person -- but I just want to look at a somewhat average time it takes for each of these.
HTML and CSS - 1 year. Around a year ago I googled for every tag and learned from tutorials, now I can code a template from scratch. Wordpress - 1 day.
Ah, i am jealous I am yet to remember what CSS stand for The only thing that i have some command on is HTML
I learned html back when I was 13. Took like a week, but I've been perfecting it and remembering it better as time goes on. Took a couple days to get the hang of CSS, now its the easiest thing in the world. CSS makes things so much easier and cleaner.
I can do almost anything that can be done by CSS but this doesn't mean that I have memorised every tag. If I don't remember it, I google or ask it.
Learning HTML and CSS doesn't take long. Learning them properly can take a few months to a year or more. The problem I see with a lot of people who use HTML and CSS is they use way too much of it in their work. Bear in mind, I can't complain too much about it myself, as I used to be this way as well. I eventually got sick and tired of wrapping everything around DIV tags and hacking for IE so I started looking for a better way - it dawned on me that I should use the HTML elements as they were intended to define the structure of a Web page (header, menu, content, sidebars, footer --> in that order). Using a DIV with a single IMG element for the header (the DIV would have an ID of "header"), an unordered list for the menu (with an ID of "menu" on the UL element), a DIV to hold the page content (with an ID of "content" on the DIV), and so on. The same also holds true for forms - using the elements that are provided for what they were meant to do. As for the CSS, I start by using the universal selector (* {} ) to strip the Web page of ALL the margins and padding, set the background color on the BODY selector (that's the <body></body> tags, for the benefit of those who don't know what I'm talking about), remove the borders on all images (img {border: 0;}) and then style the sections of the Web page as they appear in the HTML template's source order. I also avoid using absolute positioning as much as possible, instead favoring a combination of floats and margins (including negative margins), and styling the contents of a container rather than the container itself (turns out this method saves a LOT of headaches when coding with Internet Explorer in mind). The other big thing is that I don't code for one browser and hack for another. I test on Internet Explorer 6/7, Firefox, Opera, and Safari at the same time as I go along.
XHTML + CSS = less than 2 years to really master both. You can never say you learnt both because there are so many hacks and possibilities. Milestone article for me was "Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards" published by A List Apart.
Took me 2-3 years (Wasn't really motivated til around mid 06), going from a complete web newbie in some HS E-Commerce class to (getting hired as) a front end developer that's really comfortable with css layouts, semantic markup, source order and seperation of content/behavior/presentation, etc. I mostly learned from books such as Dan Cederholm's Web Standards Solutions, Bulletproof Web design, A List Apart, W3C specs, Zeldman, 456Bereastreet, Quirksmode, Adactio, Clagnut, AutisticCuckoo, and all the other sites within that network. I've always tried to avoid sites that teach you the oldschool/poor man's way such as Tizag, and the dozens of sites listed when you search for tutorials in Google. Nowadays I learn by solving other peoples problems on forums such as this one, reading css-d which has lots of advanced topics/threads, helping people with IRC, discussing new techniques on IRC, coding more graphically complex layouts, etc.
Well I'm 14. I started trying to learn HTML when I was 12, and pretty much mastered it by 13. Then started on CSS, got it done in 4 months. Recently I've been working more on programming scripts such as C++, PHP, and Perl. I've about got PHP to where I can write basics, but the others are stranger.
Piggy, I wouldn't worry about Perl too much, unless you're going to be working with it a lot. PHP and other server-side programming languages can do everything that Perl can, and are also inherently more secure too (though PHP does have its issues).
CSS/HTML - doing it for around a year before I did all the HTML & CSS for the www.bensherman.com website. At this point, a year and a half now. Still learning of course, even though getting paid silly money in London working for very big, prominent, companies on important global websites.
one month is enough to learn HTML & CSS, but for mastering them you need at least 5-6 months and that does'nt stop there u have keep on updating urself to be in race with other developers
I picked up all these languages fairly easily, probably helped by the fact that I am probably a "logical" thinker. I remember coding a forum script from scratch 2 months into learning PHP (and I don't spend much time on learning/coding). However, like many things, they are somewhat easy to learn, but hard to master. Hard enough that it is rare to see code, be it HTML, PHP, or other, that is well written - adhering to standards, writing maintainable, secure and reliable code, etc. - and this applies to any code, even in commercial scripts. It is hard to merely estimate a time to learn it as it depends on what point is defined as the time when you have "learned" the language. My guess is a week to a month, maybe a few months for more "advanced" or capable languages, averaging about an hour or two a day reading or coding and then months or years based on how much time you spend before you become "proficient", understanding why/how things work, coding with scalability and other aspects of enterprise systems in mind etc.
Which brings up one of the most important points about ANY programming, be it simple markup like HTML/CSS, behavior scripting like Javascript, or full blown programming in Perl, C, PHP, ASP, etc. The day you think there's nothing new to learn is the day the rest of the world leaves you behind. I'm quite often shocked at the number of websites I see that the code has more of 1997 about it than 2007 - people who don't update their skills, code for one browser then can't figure out why their page is broken/buggy/bloated. As Dan said up above, it can take years to get a full understanding - which has the caveat that the internet, like most things computer related, is a moving target. By the time you get yourself up to date, you are now out of date and there's something new to try.