I need advice on some reference and learning materials as well as where to focus and you are the folks to help me.

I've picked up a gig as a gifted web-designer's right hand man. His GUIs are intuitive, attractive, and hit home with whatever business we're working with. Problem is, the code behind his webpages sucks outloud, and I am sugarcoating it. Everything he's done has been with a WYSIWYG editor, predominantly Frontpage, and he uses no CSS. It is all tables and font tags for my man.

And none of this is a problem, because he has me. This is no secret. He and I both know it. He has a killer eye and can create beautiful things. I don't know ugly from pretty nor good from bad, but I soak up information like a sponge. I'm solid with HTML

We want to hit up more and more advanced things. I'm only so far ahead, as my life to this point has been dealing with networks and operating systems. So what I'm hoping you can help with is the following: can you set me in the right direction on some learning materials?

I'm nearly clueless when dealing with javascript and any server side scripting language. I need something that I'll be able to go back to if I miss a week or two and be able to pick backup and jump right back into it. I'd also like it get me on my feet quickly enough that I can at very least have a rudimentary understanding of what a chunk of code does when I see it.

I want to RTFM, I just don't know which one I should drop some money on. This book or tutorial or video or voodoo curse needs to be all bedrock, I need a killer foundation I can build off of. So I long for your opinions. Please, help me help myself and in turn help yourself by minimizing my stupid questions and developing a peer who knows his head from his butt.

Thank you for your help. My apologies for being long winded.

-rich w.

Hi there richWnewkey , welcome to daniweb! Here is a great site that may help you:
http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp
hope this helps!