I agree with Jo Ann there. Making your hands dirty ALONG with learning something is ok.

I read prism post a little different. I think your taking his suggestion to the extreme end. I think diving into coding without at least reading something would be like trying to make a cake from a picture. Your going to give it a try and you will make mistakes. When you do go find how to fix them.

Free HTML/CSS/JS courses:
http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/web

There are rules in decision making. If your decision can be easily reversed then do it immediately, If it is difficult to reverse then give it some thought, but if it is a one way deal study it closely.

By the way Jo I said read how to fix it. I agree that asking questions if they are not core ones does not help anyone. But some like to hear themselves type whoops! found out

With that new menu maker how many actually read the help file before jumping in. I didn't, I am still trying and taking notes on possible questions I may have, a lot will I know be answered myself as I learn.

I learnt to ride a bike by getting on and trying. The success you have at doing something is based on the confidence you have in achieving your goal.

One thing, there are no silly question only silly answers.

Prism, what planet are you from?

Getting "my hands dirty" or lack of confidence thereof is not an issue for me... I was simply looking for some good books / free courses etc.. Obviously, I can't simply pull HTML, CSS, etc... out of thin air and start working without some sort of material to reference while I'm learning. Just plain common sense I would think.

Thanks to those who gave me some viable suggestions. I have enough resources that I can take it from here.

Peace out,
Jenny

Thanks for posting this link, Paintbrush. It's really a gem! I had a look at some of the courses, and they have very easy learning curves. I also found one or two that I'd like to study myself.

What if...:
Some of us could actually do a course together and help each other along. How's that?

Prism, after having a look around the new Menu Builder, I went straight to the help file. I like to get an overview of how something works and what's possible before diving right in. Go to the VSD forums and you'll come across many users who could have saved themselves hours of frustration if they'd taken the time to read through the help file before starting a site.

Same thing with HTML and CSS – get a good overview and learn what does what before slinging chunks of code all over the place in the hope that something will work (we've seen someone struggling with that approach recently in the HTML forum, Inger has even re-written whole pages of code for him).
Jenny, I think you're on the right track, find what works for you and stick with it.

Inger... I'd love to have someone else to study with. I could use some JS/Jquery and PHP courses. Someday when I have lots of free time , I'll check out the Python and Ruby on Rails courses.
What are you interested in trying?

Probably also PHP, js and jquery.

Take the first star on the right and keep on till Morning. Still on the same planet just a little bit far removed.

I guess my learning method is different like my painting, first I muck it up then spend the effort to fix it up. I learn more from correcting my mistakes, taking wrong paths and re finding my way by first doing then finding what I should have done. I will admit to find the correct path does require study.

Reading a book, taking a course before understanding the nature of the beast is the slow way to achieve your goal.

Tell you a story. Many ,many years ago I was told to build and program a production tester. So I enrolled in the local uni and took a course in microprocessor control, I read up on A to D control and anything I could find. When I finished I unpacked an early AT computer a ton of control cards and then started to learn. How can you create a computerised tester without having some contact with the beast that drives it. So in the early 80's only having seen a Tandy toy computer before I started at the wrong end.

If I would have got my hands dirty then and paddled in the complexity of dos batch files it would have saved me many months. By the time I got used to the AT I had to re learn microprocessor control. There were no tutorials then on batch files just a set of rules.

Anyway Jenny take what I say with a grain of salt but the next time you install a new program, get a new appliance note how you go about getting to know it. I bet you get your hands dirty first.

One last comment have you read your phone manual yet

Yep I have, as well as most other manuals that the items aren't intuitive to work out. I don't always read everything either, but when it comes to doing website code or any other programming, you can't just walk in and expect to learn it by doing it all. That's the slow way of doing things not the fast way, nor is it the correct way and you'll teach yourself a lot of bad habits that you shouldn't.

Now having said that, I'm not saying you won't learn "something", but you'll most likely have to relearn what you learned because you will probably not understand how it fits into the big picture, you'll only learn that if I do this this happens, but you will most likely not understand how X in this other file affects Y in the background. Just my opinion of course lol.

Either way, reading books, especially if you do the "The Missing Manual" series of books, is always a hands on setup. In fact almost all the code books are a hands on setup these days. So you're getting your hands dirty as you learn, that's the whole point of doing it that way these days. Years ago (won't give our ages away too much there Prism haha) there were no definitive books to do hands on work with, you had to just read it and learn it first then go try it for so many things. It's not like that now, pick up a book or tutorial for something today and you'll see what I mean, your hands are in there getting dirty from the very first steps in most cases.