During the last 10+ years I've tried to stay on top of all the latest trends in web design, but I realized the most important things never change:<p>1) Test browser compatibility. 10 years ago that meant IE and Netscape. Today there are a a lot more browsers, but luckily there are standards now and the browsers mostly stick to them. But you have to test on desktop now, on mobile, and on tablets.<p>2) Test page load speed. While average broadband speeds have increased considerably in the last 10 years, there are still a lot of users stuck with slow lines. And when you're on mobile, you will have slow connections even if you live in a large city. If you have a Mac, use Network Link Conditioner to test how your website performs on slow or unreliable networks.<p>3) Progressive Enhancement. Don't rely on Javascript, Flash, Java, HTML5 video etc. Make sure your website is usable with everything turned off. If you want to use awesome animations and videos to present your content, make sure that you provide a simple textual description as an alternative. That's important for search engines, but also for users who can't view your interactive content for whatever reason (missing plugins, slow connection, e-ink display, no speakers connected, etc.)
I did the same; taught myself css, php, javascript and quit my FTJ last Christmas. Best thing I ever did.<p>I also sent the following as advice to someone wanting to get into web dev:<p>"I was just thinking of 'easy ins' to the world of web development and a good source of information is <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/</a> there's a lot of information from people who work in the world of tech startups and it's good information.<p>Also - if you are wanting to do php dev the key things to learn are:
Software engineering techniques and practice - object oriented development and abstract patterns are key to how to think about good development.
Database design and development (1st normal form, third normal form etc) Learn SQL. (SQL for dummies or similar is good for the basic commands and syntax etc.)
Stackoverflow.com - it's the best source of help for software development on the internet.
read books, the ones that come up again and again when people talk about learning to program:<p><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Construction/dp/0735619670" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.co.uk/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Con...</a>
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mythical-Month-Essays-Software-Engineering/dp/0201835959" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mythical-Month-Essays-Software-Engin...</a>
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Pragmatic-Programmer-Andrew-Hunt/dp/020161622X/ref=pd_sim_b_3" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Pragmatic-Programmer-Andrew-Hunt...</a><p>also - look at github.com - that's where programmers keep their source code.<p>Learn about Object Oriented Programming, Design Patterns, MVC (which is a design pattern) is specifcally useful for web development.<p>Also - demand for javascript programmers will increase over the coming years because of things like jQuery and Ajax.<p>That's my starter for ten - if you are interested in a career as a web programmer.<p>If you want to focus more on the html/css design side you could do worse than focusing on one CMS - such as wordpress and learning it inside out - you could then offer that to clients and it's a good way to provide web sites cheaply with very little effort."
Though I'm sure this is a sentiment held by many as they mature in their fields, I almost feel bad for people just getting started with web development today. When I first started most web development was pretty bad. I hacked around with HTML and CSS and a little JS for mouse rollovers and that wasn't too far away from being on par with the average site out there. Now there is a much richer ecosystem of tech to use (which is awesome!) and much higher design expectations. It's a more mature field which means newcomers will need to grow up much quicker.<p>I suppose, to balance that out there are better learning resources and better OOTB tools/libraries to get people started.
<i>You don’t want to cloud your learning</i><p>And you probably shouldn't start learning with 'the cloud'. Better start with a shared host and learn the foundations than to get spoiled by Heroku's 'easy deployment' and then get hit by Leaky Abstractions.
If people weren't put off ten years ago, I don't see why they should be now. Everything is easier, and we have way more and better tools for our needs. Debugging javascript in ie 6 will be hard to equal in terms of insanity (and think about html/css in ie6 before the various "hacks" were discovered)
I wrote something similar as a StackOverflow answer once: <a href="http://www.manuel-strehl.de/dev/learning_html.en.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.manuel-strehl.de/dev/learning_html.en.html</a>