I'm trying to learn from scratch ! just the basics can anyone help me by referring me to good tutorials especially on CSS and HTML ? Any help would be appreciated
+1 for w3schools. I have been working on/with webpages for many years and still refer back to their site from time to time. For some side information, I suggest using Firefox as your primary testing browser with one of the HTML validator extensions. For writing HTML, I recommend starting with a text editor rather than Dreamweaver or the like. You'll gain a much more intimate understanding of how HTML works if you do the markup by hand. If you're on Windows, Crimson Editor is a good program to try (for OSX you could try SubEthaEdit and on Linux you can use Vim).
Get your hands on Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Firefox, and Opera if you can. Test your code in each browser as you go along, rather than waiting until the end. Understand that HTML is a structural markup language, not a presentational language. Stick to HTML 4.01 Strict or XHTML 1.0 Strict (if you can follow ALL the instructions in Appendix C of the XHTML 1.0 specification that is). Learn how to use proper, minimal semanatic markup. Avoid the over-use (as in abuse) of elements, classes and IDs at all costs. Reading Designing With Web Standards, 2nd Edition is highly recommended. You will also want to read my little tutorial on HTML and CSS markup, as it definatley touches upon these topics as well, along with some best practices that many people still do not seem to realize are necessary: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=2619952#post2619952 I did have to make one correction (was unable to edit the post after a period of time, which blows), which can be found here (in the same thread, just a few posts down): http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=2630993#post2630993
Not just IE and Firefox, but all four major rendering engines (Trident, Gecko, Presto, KHTML/WebKit). You can get three out of the four just by testing in IE, Firefox and Opera.
No problem. You might also want to look at the stickied threads on the HTML and CSS boards at SitePoint for extra information, tips, tricks, tutorials, examples and more...
You might also enjoy this site http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/index.shtml (I would make this a link, but I can't yet) It has a feature similar W3schools, which is an interactive "test area" where you can see in real time the effects of changing code.