On balance, I would say that this might even be more important than learning things in the first place. We are in a rapidly-changing field here, kids. Even though HTML itself has not changed since December of 1999, how we use it, and how we use Cascading Stylesheets and JavaScript and a host of other technologies has changed quite a bit.
The problem with books, and you don't know anyone who loves books more than I do, is that they don't change. Whatever was printed on that particular day is the information you have. So when styles, best practices or even standards change, how do you know? How do you keep up?
Books are static. The Web is dynamic. For news and updates and all manner of help, get thee to the Web. Here are a few of my favorite Web sites:
I rarely visit the WorldWide Web Consortium, the W3C, except to validate pages. They are a big academic exercise and can spend days and days navel-gazing and deciding where a comma goes in a sentence. If have a lived a faithless life, I will find myself in the W3C conference room as my Reward. But there is a lot of good information, here. In fact, this is the source material for probably every book on Web Design you find on the shelf. But source material isn't always pretty.
Here's the W3C on ID and Class attributes: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#h-7.5.2
Not thrilling, huh? Almost any book on HTML does a better job of teaching you HTML. But that's not really what the W3C site is for. It's more of a reference, the final arbiter of How The Web Works.
I spend much more time with A List Apart (http://www.AListApart.com). ALA, the kewl-kids say, tackles much more of the leading-edge stuff. Several years ago, they spearheaded a campaign to do away with browser-specific markup and whip browser developers into shape building software that adhered to the standards (as published at the W3C). If you have ever wanted to Zebra-stripe a table and wondered how, or even wondered if it was worth it when it comes to usability, ALA probably has an article or two covering it. Need to style your <form> inputs, buttons and text boxes? I check ALA, first.
Molly Holzschlag is one of my Web Heroes. She is the one who (patiently) taught me HTML, back in the days of the 56kbps modem and the Steam-Powered Computer. Her site isn't only about Web standards, but also about whatever happens to be taking up space in her life at the moment. http://www.Molly.com is on my daily Web hike.
Eric Meyer is another of my Web Heroes. Eric literally wrote the book on CSS, again translating all of the arcana of the W3C site into a how-to guide that was there first with the most readable information and how-to help. I visit http://www.MeyerWeb.com once a week or so, on average.
There are probably several good mailing lists out there. People post questions and others post answers and, at the end of the day, a digest of all of these transactions is compiled and e-mailed straight into your mailbox. I enjoyed seven or eight years of the WebDesign-L mailing list (http://www.WebDesign-L.com/) but finally ran out of time and got tired of the repetition. You can imagine that over the course of a decade or so, you will see questions like "How do I make my ordered lists start with Roman Numerals instead of Arabic Numbers?" comes up quite often.
Next up: An amazing phenomenon I have noticed in the Web World.
I am a big fan of Paul Boag, and his BoagWorld podcast ( http://www.BoagWorld.com/ ) from England. Some of the language is a little tricky (if something is awful, it's pants!) but the accents are charming, the humor is refreshing and the information is spot-on. I subscribe to the podcast and listen via iTunes.
There are at least two really good magazines on Web work, both from the UK. The first, Web Designer, comes with detailed tutorials color-coded and with links to available help-files. Turn to the green pages and there is some whiz-bang new trick you can perform in Dreamweaver, in about an hour. They do a great job of keeping up with the trends and the news, as well. It's pricey here in the Big PX, but it is well worth the time and money for the news and information. http://www.WebDesignerMag.co.uk/
The other magazine is a little trickier. It's available everywhere in the world as .Net, which of course was the name of a whole suite of technologies Microsoft developed years ago only peripherally involved with Web design. Here in the States, the magazine was known as Practical Web Design for years, but it merged with .Net a few years ago and is now available here as both the .Net Magazine and Practical Web Design, depending upon your news vendor's distributor or something. It's all very confusing. If you Google "Practical Web Design Magazine" the first hit that comes up is a link to .Net but the magazine is available here with both titles, so be careful. Again, this one's expensive but worth it if you can afford it (see if your boss will buy you a subscription!). http://www.NetMag.co.uk/
The last source I lean on is our own Web Developers' Network. Whenever you have a question, check WebDevNet first, to see if someone else hasn't already encountered and maybe even solved your problem. http://wdn.unl.edu/
How do you keep up? That's how I do it.
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