I’ve been asked a couple of times over the last week on what the best approach to learning CSS would be.

The approach I took was a good one and it was the one I suggested. Learn it as you would any other technology …. Properly!!.

You wouldn’t stumble into trying to learn Java fumbling your way through without ever picking up a book and trying to learn the basics. Same with CSS and especially with HTML and yet nobody does (very few anyway).

I chose to read  Web Standards Solutions, Eric Meyer on CSS, Building Accessible Websites  and a few others. I read them cover to cover. I read the XHTML DTDs and understood the semantics of a document. I also read the CSS specs and as many articles and tutorials as I could (and still do).

Without doing it properly (and having a few people that can help every now again) you’re pissing in the wind and you’ll make a balls of it. Your nasty markup and dire CSS will take away from the perfect backend code you’ve written.

Don’t underestimate the importance of learning CSS and HTML properly. It’ll come back to bite you later.