Talking about W3Schools, it’s one the best places in the Internet for aspiring and existing Web developers. Their website claims to be “the largest web developer’s site on the net” and I could barely oppose that. I’ll tell you why.

When I was still a struggling student, W3Schools was my ultimate bible in web development. That website and SitePoint, a popular web development forum, are my last resort when I encounter computer programming difficulties. With no cost, W3Schools offer free and up-to-date tutorials to different Web languages that truly accelerated my learning. And yeah, I could say strongly that their resources influenced my previous scholastic achievement – I was hailed the Magna Cum Laude for the Information Technology department in our campus. Well honestly, I don’t care about that title but it definitely gave me an edge over rivals during my job hunting.

If you ever dreamed of becoming a web developer and create your own website but you are intimidated with the languages and codes that you might encounter – then make a head start in W3Schools. No computer programming education? No problem. They have tutorials on popular web languages like from beginners to advanced topics – starting from HTML, XML, browser scripting, server-side scripting, .NET, multimedia, and everything.

However, I would like to suggest that you do your study in the following order.

• HTML/xHTML - Learn how to write W3C-compliant web page, insert images, do preliminary web design using tables and explore the very foundation of web development. By the way, W3C unleashed xHTML 5.0 last January! For complete reference, click here.
• CSS – Improve the aesthetics aspect of your web pages by using style sheets, and slowly migrating from using tables to CSS tags <div> and <span>.
• JavaScript – learn how to validate your page and do client-side scripting.
• PHP / ASP.net – server-side scripting, personally I am inclined to PHP (I like it) because it is free. If you favor Microsoft, however, then choose ASP.net languages.
• MySQL – learn how to interact with databases and make your page content dynamic using the standard query language (SQL).
• AJAX – if you are good enough with PHP and JavaScript, explore the world of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and learn how to do dynamic content without page reload.

Well, you will need an HTML editor for your study. I recommend that you check out my previous post about Adobe Dreamweaver (among other software that will make you productive on the Web). Buy it if you have the enough dough or just use Notepad++ for your HTML / coding needs. I also recommend that you get a hosting account — having such will really, really boost your learning in many ways and make your online life more exciting.

Read: This is not a paid article.

I used to be an avid Internet surfer – chatting, reading articles, participating forums and clicking links after links throughout the endless Web. I just love the Internet, I just love the Web, and I could not picture out myself without this technology. Well, truth is, I still am an Internet savvy but now I am more technically challenged!

I just love the Internet, I just love the Web, and I could not picture out myself without this technology.

Unlike before that I only hooked myself to the information superhighway for recreation, now I develop websites, deal with codes and scripts, write blogs, blurbs, optimize web pages for search engines, and a lot more. I do all of them to express my thoughts and creative works for the Web. I thought before that utterances are useless but I figured out that someone somewhere can benefit fit them in a way.

If you are like me and you want to know how to be more creative, or if you believe you already are and you don’t have idea to improve your productivity, you might be interested to know the software tools I am using. These are not secret tools, so I believe you already heard or used them.

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