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over the last 4 years I worked very hard to move from telecommunication engineering to become a programmer so I learned:

machine code (on underdtanding level)
c/c++ (advanced)
DBpro (I already made few cool projects)
and thanks to TGC for the amazing AppGameKit (2 small apps coming on android next week).

the missing link is designing web pages. I always used ready made software to design web pages and honestly, that got me bored.

sooner or later, AppGameKit will support HTML5 applications. so, I said it would be nice by the time it is supported to get into HTML5 so I am ready for the big day.

of course I looked around and gathered some knowledge but maybe someone can give me an advice for a good start (such as books, editors etc.....).

HTML5 is definately the way to go. It's so much simpler to use than previous versions. For example, I'm making an HTML5 only site that's compatible with ie6 all way way through ie10 (i'm only making sure it's just usable, and not completely borked. If you want full compatibility across the board, you got too much time on your hands) and, of course, the other major browsers. I don't have to worry much about compatibility, because for the most part, it's handled automagically with javascript.

My html5 tools are as follows:

Twitter Bootstrap combined with HTML5 boilerplate

To warn you, twitter bootstrap requires compiling (you can get precompiled versions but the ones I found were outdated. The compilation process is pretty complex, I just about gave up on it, but got it to work. I'm feeling nice, so here's a precompiled version. It's compiled from source just a couple weeks ago. You'll have to read the twitter bootstrap documentation to use it.

That's the html5/visual side. For the scripting side I'm still using PHP because that's what I know.

I use codeigniter though, which makes php actually pleasant to use. If you program in PHP, that's the framework I'd recommend, though it will take a couple weeks to get comfortable with it.

If you're planning on learning a brand new server-side language, I'd recommend instead of PHP investigating Go or Ruby, which are better designed.

Just saying, I've found that designing web pages and coding them are two different beasts, and that I suck at the design part...

Neuro, I agree with you entirely. Using bootstrap is akin to using someone else's template, so that's kinda nice in that you don't have to design one. That said, if you don't want it to look generic, it's rather simple to make it look very different without too much extra effort, and it's all done through more coding rather than artsy drawing and cutting up, so it's more familiar to guys like us.

I find that even when I break out my design hat and make a template from scratch, it looks absolutely atrocious. I'm not sure that there's really anything I can do about it. I'm not an artist and I know it

Don't click mail back... don't click mail back...

darn it

Interesting Ruby and Go, not heard of Go what is that? but Ruby its such an intense language every book on it is over 1500+ pages is there a definitive description of it? as I am still sort of new to server side coding...

thanks guys, I left this post couple of days ago. interesting points

I second Jerico2day's suggestions of using Code Igniter and Twitter Bootstrap. I use them both everyday and am in love