Originally Posted by Krik

Not likely the W3C set the standards for both. If there is any conflict it would be due to a browser straying from the standards W3C has implemented.

As for books just get yourself a quick reference guide, as just knowing what tools you have is the biggest step. They usually have each style and an example or two. And you can just look up how to change the appearance (size, color, position, border, ect.) of any object or text. And, as I recently learned in an embarrassing moment, make sure you update your reference material in a timely manner.

Also you really should get a good grasp of CSS as half the power of Javascript is in its ability to change or set the style of an object or text on an event.

As well you can setup PHP to set different styles based on information that passed to it. So if the user has Safari and X style is different than X Style in Firefox PHP can produce the correct style for each. Of course Javascript can do it also but if you happen to not be as good at Javascript you can use the PHP.

Next you really need to break yourself of WYSIWYG editors. The key to being good at PHP or Javascript is knowing HTML backwards and forwards. You need to be able to name most of the 90 or so HTML tags. And it would be good to know the most commonly used attributes for each. This will help you understand DOM which will expand your skills in Javascript and PHP. And will aid you in learning XML, should you ever need to.

Knowing HTML will allow you to write the base framework for whatever you are doing without having to see it. Now I write all my HTML but I do use my browser to see how it looks (ie. should that be 250 or 260 pixels in width). And it doesn't matter if you have one table or 5 nested tables. Make sure you can hand write it out. I know when I first started web design (in the 90's) I would go to work and during down time I would write out HTML on paper then take it home and try it. And to this day I hand code everything.

So get comfortable will hand coding HTML and to a lesser extent CSS. As your skill level in any other web based languages will depend on it.

And for the nested tables try to limit them. I may like tables still but at most I may nest one table inside another. If you nest too many your code gets hard to follow and you risk not closing tags out and that can take hours to find were you missed a closing tag on a larger project.