How did you learn to code HTML?

How did you learn to code HTML?

  • Self-taught through 'View Source'!

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Online tutorials/forums

    Votes: 13 61.9%
  • Software tutorials/help sections

    Votes: 4 19.0%
  • Study/educational

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Professional course

    Votes: 3 14.3%
  • Combination of the above

    Votes: 1 4.8%

  • Total voters
    21

Dave1975

Active Member
A little poll to see how any web coders took their first steps in learning basic HTML, feel free to expand on your vote with a reply! along with details of any other coding languages you've moved onto since HTML and how you picked those up

Thanks,
Greg
 
I would say self taught through view source and fiddling in dreamweaver (Don't worry I hand now ;)) but I have learnt alot through online tutorials/forums too.

I am now learning Java in university and I think again although the teaching is great and is helping a lot I like to play around and see what happens when I stick other stuff in and mix stuff up.
 
I have to say that I have been self taught whilst on the job with my first employer years ago and now can write in quite a few different languages.

But I do use some tutorials and then just play round with the code I have found to develop my own to understand the code better.
 
Self taught using notepad! Dreamweaver or any of the others weren't about then! I then got arachnophilia - I now use Dreamweaver but mainly use the code view. DW saves a lot of time!
 
Self taught here as well, I always do find it a little funny though when people admit to using dreamweaver but are quick to say I write the code by hand though! I don't write all from scratch, I could do as been doing websites for 9 years but its so much more efficient for me to use the wysiwyg, if you insist on writing code then use notepad, don't pay out silly money for dreamweaver if its not going to be used for its full potentional, again this isnt aimed at anyone at all, just something I see regurly and i like a good rant!!

Also its good practice to write from html from scratch when learning so again im not saying otherwise.

Brett
 
peekaboo said:
if you insist on writing code then use notepad, don't pay out silly money for dreamweaver if its not going to be used for its full potentional, again this isnt aimed at anyone at all, just something I see regurly and i like a good rant!!

Hi Brett,

Agree with what your saying but in the defence of those who may have said that they use dreamweaver even though they can hand code it may have been that when they started out coding they got DW believing that was the best way to learn. Now that they've learnt otherwise and can hand code it may still be useful to use DW just for the speed advantages despite the fact they won't be using the software for all of its features.

Just a thought :)
Greg
 
Greg said:
Hi Brett,

Agree with what your saying but in the defence of those who may have said that they use dreamweaver even though they can hand code it may have been that when they started out coding they got DW believing that was the best way to learn. Now that they've learnt otherwise and can hand code it may still be useful to use DW just for the speed advantages despite the fact they won't be using the software for all of its features.

Just a thought :)
Greg

Hi Greg,

I agree with what your saying, all my point is when people say they use Dreamweaver they insist on saying but I hand code it in, when the use of it is mainly as a visual guide, its like me saying I have a dirt bike but I only ride it on roads, it just tickles me when people do that :) I dont mean to come across as a moaner, and also I agree alot of people may use dreamweaver to get started but then hand code in it, if thats the case though I expect them all to have dreamweaver 2 :p

Brett
 
hehe... I have to say, we switch between Dreamweaver and Notepad, I use DW all the time as it's great for visual aids, snippets and doing the donkey work when my fingers start to hurt! lol :D
 
peekaboo said:
when the use of it is mainly as a visual guide, its like me saying I have a dirt bike but I only ride it on roads, it just tickles me when people do that :) I dont mean to come across as a moaner, and also I agree alot of people may use dreamweaver to get started but then hand code in it, if thats the case though I expect them all to have dreamweaver 2 :p

You're not coming across as a moaner :)
...and yep I know what you're saying too! As there are plenty of small apps to make hand coding in a notepad style interface as quick as it is in DW, I guess it's just how people learn and what they find comfortable :)
 
I had many friends, when I was learning, that knew HTML already. So, as I would attempt to learn new things in HTML from tutorials, I would ask them questions and get feedback, and basically learned that way.
 
I started learning HTML back in 1994 - it was a lot simpler then! Though of course table-based layouts soon made it ridiculously complicated. I used various editors that basically had quick ways of adding tags before eventually (and to begin with quite reluctantly) getting DW2 which was great for doing the more complex visuals when nested tables were the only game in town.

Upgraded until DWMX but haven't felt the need to go any further as I really only use it for the way it keeps track of your links and site structure and for the ability to add in various Behaviours when necessary. Other than that I could easily ditch it as most of my stuff is advanced CSS and the html is usually so clean it looks more like the pre-table stuff from 1994. In fact DWMX doesn't handle my CSS very well anyway so I'm usually in code view and I'll often use Notepad++ instead if I just want to adjust one page. The program I do find essential however is TopStyle, just for the ability to jump quickly and easily to any part of my CSS documents.
 
I actually learned the logic through C++ back in school and from there, i found logical values and tags easy to learn and develop and by looking at many websites in my time, I have just learned where these tags go and it wasn't until i really started to get into web development which I found out what these tags really meant. I suprisingly didn't learn these tags through dreamweaver what so ever, but the structuring I have learned from the software package.
 
I learned to code whilst laid up after operations on me legs when I left the army.

I couldnt really move so decided i needed to do something to pass the time.

I only had notepad at the time so i learnt the basics without any fancy editor, this gave me a real insight into the code and helps me now to spot errors etc.

all in all probably the best move i made at such a bad time in my life!
 
I'd say a lot of viewing source. God I wish I'd heard of 'Firebug' when I started learning!

At one point I tried to plough through a heavy HTML book, but the only book that has really helped to do things properly was Jeffrey Zeldman's 'designing with web standards'.
 
I'm self taught through view source mainly however I did use DW for about a month or two and some online tutorials helped to get me started.

After the first month or two I started coding by hand in DW and then moved onto getting a mac and started using a program called TacoHTML Edit - I love it!
 
I had a placement at a web design company in London and whilst I did a lot of designing they tought me some basic code... So can say that it was a pro course in a way... :)
 
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