richarduie:

I’ve posted a page of links to books, tools, and online tutorials and articles for web developers, both novice and expert, at:

http://home.comcast.net/~richarduie/

How long?! Sheesh, I’ve been doing web development professionally for almost a decade, and still ain’t done learning! If you study diligently for a few hours a day, expect to be basically competent within a year in HTML and CSS. As for JavaScript and AJAX, unless you are already well-versed in some other programming language(s), you will require years to gain even a decent grasp. I knew several languages well, both OO and otherwise, when I began learning JavaScript; I learned to do trivial stuff in a few days, but it took a very long time to become truly proficient and comfortable with the full potential of the language. It is unfortunate that most JavaScript-ers misuse and utterly under-utilize the capacities of the language.

As for whether you NEED to learn JavaScript, it depends on what you want to accomplish. If your intent is to create simple, static pages of content, no. If you hope to create interactive pages or even earn a living as a UIE (user interface engineer) in the world of the W(ild-’n'-)W(acky)-W(eb), JavaScript is indispensable.

For all of these topics, there is the additional issue that the various browsers do not handle things the same way. If you intend to write pages that operate correctly in multiple browsers, you will have to learn a lot about different browser implementations of these languages.

Ebilan:

Try putting "html tutorial", "xml tutorial" etc in to a search engine. As for how long it will take for you to learn them, how long is a piece of string?