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You might want to add that the "View Source" option is only in Firefox once the Web Developer add-on is installed. Now that you mention it, I would suggest installing this add-on for many reasons, but I found personally that the way a majority of code is presented in books and the way it is actually implemented in the real world are two different things. This hurdle has been the greatest for me with regards to CSS. Books, at least the ones I have been exposed to, tend to fail at actually showing the real world applications of those principals. The most progress I have made in that past has been through getting your hands dirty and digging through other individuals code.

To the author, I would suggest finding a website that you feel accomplishes something you would like to create (I would start small, like a personal blog just because the amount of code might be overwhelming with larger sites). Borrow their code using the add-on, and change certain features to see effect the change makes to the product. I would continue the process for a while until you get a feel of how all of the code works together. Only after this point I would suggest going into books. Maybe you will learn differently that I do, but reading a book without actually being able to have hands on experience with what I am attempting to grasp has a hard time sinking in.




> You might want to add that the "View Source" option is only in Firefox once the Web Developer add-on is installed.

No, it's a standard part of Firefox. "View Selection Source" is too, which can be useful.

I agree that Web Developer (or similar plugins) can be a great way to learn.


Web Developer and FireBug for FireFox are the best way I know of to discover the inner workings of a web page.

FireBug even has a javascript REPL built in!




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