Tables? YUK!
Never encourage someone to use tables.
The sitepoint books are a great starting place of course 
But you should also get into the habit of finding the valuable resources on the web. For example, W3c markup language references are free and have EVERYTHING you will ever need to know about how HTML, XHTML works.
But yeah start with a basic walkthrough kind of guide, then find the good websites to get into the juicy stuff.
When I started out in web design, I bought a big old book on HTML and went through the chapters trying each example. Now look at me!
why donât you search on Amazon? There are many books and you can check the reviews to see if itâs what you want.
Perhaps Iâm jumping into the discussion a bit late here but Iâve heard good things about both above mentioned Sitepoint books so any one of those should do.
I do agree with people saying that there are plenty of resources on the internet too. However, a good book will never be superficial. First of all, on-screen reading isnât as comfortable as on paper. If you buy a good book then you can get all relevant information right there on paper which is much more convenient. And then, more effort is probably put into a book than a website or article, so you generally get better quality and a more complete picture.
What I personally do is I use books to learn (most of the time) and the internet for reference and quick searching. For me, itâs the logical way to go since I like reading on paper.
So my advice is to check out those Sitepoint books, or do as I always do: do an Amazon search and look at the reviews of books with high ratings. Soon youâll have an idea of which books are generally considered the best.
I bought a book just recently to learn and to be honest I learnt more from online resources, there a plenty out there so I would advise to use the web rather than a book,
also ask lots of questions on forums, you will be suprised how willing ppl are to help you
Emma
One problem with online resources is that often they suck. This is either because they are pretty old (w3schools.com is still showing folks how to use the <font> tag, câmon) or because they werenât well-written in the first place (and if you are starting at nothing, how would you know if that was a good site or a bad one?).
So, online research is prolly essential, but you need to already have some knowledge to judge new knowledge. I still learn wrong things on teh InterTubes, and sometimes get them correctly and other times go on my merry way thinking I learned something well. When youâre just starting out, the danger is you learn Bad Habits online. Those are harder to undo than learning that something you read is wrong. Books can have this too (oh man the HTML section of a book on osCommerce is soooo awful) but Ianâs for example pretty much gets you started on the right track. A good online article can do the same, so I suppose we should be recommending those as well.
While I like HTMLdog.com, I could never learn much from that tutorial, any more than I could learn anything other than tag names from w3schools. I needed a book to show me how to build a SITE.
I also use EditPlus and wouldnât use anything else. I tried UltraEdit and it was way to complicated in setting up and bloated beyond belief.
I do have a question, though. What default coding should EditPlus be set to?
What do you mean by default coding? The character encoding? If so, I prefer UTF-8.
Yes, that is what I meant, sorry. What about the Tools -> Preferences -> Files -> UTF-8 Signature setting? That one really confuses me.
I have mine set to preserve existing signature if it helps. Frankly though, I really havenât bothered with it much since I create my files rather than edit other peoplesâ files.
I still donât quite understand the coding effect the way EditPlus does it. I set mine to Add Signature if necessary. Would that cause any problems do you think?
I create my hacks with EditPlus (or did, anyway) and it has always worked well. But I did a complete re-install of EditPlus the other day and have been setting things up in it and I forget what I had those 2 settings set to, believe it or not.
Thank you for that. That explains it a little better. I suppose I should set that to Preserve Exisiting Signature then.
there ar many web design books available in the market, but you should buy a sitepoint book for new web design company, which gives an idea oif what should you do to get success in web design industry.
I always get help from www-richardquickdesign-com website. maybe it helps you too.
I think you could download some free ebooks to learn it.
search for free css templates you will find lots of real good designs, just change with frontpage, dreamweaver or notepad I started like thisâŚ
Build your own Web Site the Right Way using HTML & CSS & principles of beautiful design.
Best way for learning web designing is to start with HTML and with the help of GUI editor like Microsoftâs Front page.