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Tackling the problem of learning xhtml and css has been more difficult than I had imagined. I learned html inside of a week, and I figured that xhtml wouldn't be much different. On that score, I was very wrong... but not because the language is inherently all that much more difficult. It's still basically just tags and attributes, it's just a matter of figuring out which tags to use for what effects, and which attributes are valid for use with which tags.
The problem that really makes it difficult is that the resources for xhtml and css are different from those which are available for learning html. Not in basic content, so much as in attitude and language. The resources for learning xhtml and css (and other related standardizations) are generally geared towards people who are already programmers. The reasons for that are varied... part of it is that programmers are the ones designing the standardizations, which is understandable. Another part is that xhtml is a standard which is being reached towards but which has not yet been fully implimented by browsers, so there is less public support behind it. There are also a lot of rather stupid incompatabilities caused by strange code parsing which can be very confusing to people who have never coded before. Combined, this means that the resources for xhtml and css, unlike those for pure html, are rarely written in forms which are plain and easy for the average person to understand. And, ultimately, that means that I not only have to learn the xhtml language but I have to learn, at least in part, how to understand the way that actual programmers speak and even think if I want to have any hope of understanding the documentation for the language.
As for how that's coming? Well... I think I'm making progress doing just that. It's been slow, and I've had to stop a few times because I've found that one resource or another that I'm reading is not standards compliant according to the latest version of xhtml (xhtml 1.1) which is the version I am trying to learn. But I keep finding one thing to be true: there are always other resources, there are always more up to date resources, there are always resources which will format the same information differently and possibly make it more understandable in the process; these resources are all out there, even if it takes a hundred searches to find them. I've found that some of the quick reference guides are more comprehensible than the in-depth tutorials, and ironically can cover more topics because they confine themselves to the tags and attributes and their functions rather than trying to walk you through the process of building one very specific web page and leaving you with no idea how to modify it to suit your needs afterwards.
I even finally found out what the error I was getting about a nametoken when I was trying to check the coding of a page using Amaya the other day actually means, which is something that had really been giving me a major headache because I had no idea what the problem with the code was. :)
Ultimately, I think I'm really going to enjoy coding in xhtml and css once I get them completely figured out... they have weak points, still, and there are things that I would like to see change like the way xhtml handles certain characters if they are present inside script and style tags, but all in all I think I like the direction that things are going in now and I hope that they continue to proceed in that direction, though I also hope that they take the time to address the issues which arise along the way.
The problem that really makes it difficult is that the resources for xhtml and css are different from those which are available for learning html. Not in basic content, so much as in attitude and language. The resources for learning xhtml and css (and other related standardizations) are generally geared towards people who are already programmers. The reasons for that are varied... part of it is that programmers are the ones designing the standardizations, which is understandable. Another part is that xhtml is a standard which is being reached towards but which has not yet been fully implimented by browsers, so there is less public support behind it. There are also a lot of rather stupid incompatabilities caused by strange code parsing which can be very confusing to people who have never coded before. Combined, this means that the resources for xhtml and css, unlike those for pure html, are rarely written in forms which are plain and easy for the average person to understand. And, ultimately, that means that I not only have to learn the xhtml language but I have to learn, at least in part, how to understand the way that actual programmers speak and even think if I want to have any hope of understanding the documentation for the language.
As for how that's coming? Well... I think I'm making progress doing just that. It's been slow, and I've had to stop a few times because I've found that one resource or another that I'm reading is not standards compliant according to the latest version of xhtml (xhtml 1.1) which is the version I am trying to learn. But I keep finding one thing to be true: there are always other resources, there are always more up to date resources, there are always resources which will format the same information differently and possibly make it more understandable in the process; these resources are all out there, even if it takes a hundred searches to find them. I've found that some of the quick reference guides are more comprehensible than the in-depth tutorials, and ironically can cover more topics because they confine themselves to the tags and attributes and their functions rather than trying to walk you through the process of building one very specific web page and leaving you with no idea how to modify it to suit your needs afterwards.
I even finally found out what the error I was getting about a nametoken when I was trying to check the coding of a page using Amaya the other day actually means, which is something that had really been giving me a major headache because I had no idea what the problem with the code was. :)
Ultimately, I think I'm really going to enjoy coding in xhtml and css once I get them completely figured out... they have weak points, still, and there are things that I would like to see change like the way xhtml handles certain characters if they are present inside script and style tags, but all in all I think I like the direction that things are going in now and I hope that they continue to proceed in that direction, though I also hope that they take the time to address the issues which arise along the way.
