I need a consensus (HTML - CSS)

So I guess now the question to all of you is this: Let's fast forward 2
or three years. What will a future student who knows absolutely nothing
about HTML and wants to learn how to hand-code websites study? What
books/guides should he/she be looking for (assuming CSS is included)?
Will they be learning only XHTML, XML, or still studying HTML with all
its depracated tags? One of the books I am presently studying ("A
beginner's Guide to HTML) was published in 2001 and it refers to CSS2
not being fully implemented and CSS3 on the horizen. Have we moved
forward at all? Your personal opinions are welcome.

In article <1137685019.234237.130330 (AT) o13g2000cwo (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
"sonnystarks" <sign.up.email (AT) comcast (DOT) net> wrote:

So I guess now the question to all of you is this: Let's fast forward 2
or three years.
I am only a observer of this group, most certainly not one of the well

informed people who are helpful at answering questions. My original
pages didn't use much except text and a minimal subset of HTML. About
four or five years ago I spent a Xmas vacation asking questions here.
Thanks to replies here I added to many of my minimal HTML pages a
minimal subset of CSS1. However CSS was around long before I ever heard
about it.

This time I hope to add lots of photos. I now have lots more server
space. A majority of web surfers in this country finally have ADSL (and
so do I now). So now I want to make a lot more use of CSS, and maybe
add some Javascript.

The big changes to me seems to be that sites like CSS Zen Garden and
others exist, and show just how far you can go. Even people like me who
are not heavily into web design are finally noticing them, and can point
them out to others. And can try to do something along those lines. I
see lots of low cost, theme based web site generation packages. Most
don't seem to do a particularly clean job of their pages, but being able
to pick a theme and change the appearance of a site is getting to be
expected. Many minority interest word processing or light desktop
publishing packages are forcing the use of themes. I think all this is
helping gradually push the idea of styles out to a wider audience.

You can make a site that lets people pick to some extent how they want
your site to appear. I would hope that eventually this would simply be
something that is expected of a site.

Ajax doesn't seem to use anything we didn't have available a long time
ago, but several big and small companies are using it to put genuinely
useful applications on the web. RSS is now something expected of news
sites.

All these seem pointers to advances in the ultimate use of existing
technologies.

CSS2 not being fully implemented and CSS3 on the horizen. Have we moved
forward at all?

I think web pages are moving at an incredible pace. Building columns,
for instance, took thousands of years to move from tree trunks through
ornamental imitations of the leaves, limbs and roots to simple
structures without ornamentation imitating tree trunks. We have been
using fixed size paper and type for many centuries. Little wonder it is
taking a bit of time to move to the idea of flexible web pages.

--
http://www.ericlindsay.com