ok i just went through the tutorial on tizag.com and i didnt really understand it, especially the layout part. can anyone help me clear this up? thx!

Layout? You shouldn't use html layouts these days. Use CSS for that.

Here's a very good tutorial.

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp

^+1

You use layouts on html!??????

Its really complicated and rather long.

Meh, i've done it when i've been short on time. It's probably easier to work out for beginners. But no, you can get pretty much the same effect without having to jump to and from documents all the time, just as long as you're not demanding that much.

Html layouts are a lot more confusing than simply using CSS, and html layouts are very limitted.

Not if you use some clever tricks. And i find them a lot simpler than using CSS, having to ID everything, then going into another document and relating to that ID and then adding your styles and formatting... it's just to long winded. Don't get me wrong, i do use it for professional sites, but when i'm short on time or i just can't be bothered i use HTML. The styles tag can be quite useful. I would recommend doing this for a beginner, and not complicating them with both markup languages at once. Then they can learn it in their own time when they feel confident with HTML.

It's also hard to know what should go in the HTML document and what should go into the CSS document.

You don't actually have to use a seperate file for your CSS stylesheet. You can just implement it in your html document. And I feel html layouts are far more confusing for beginners than CSS is. Having to give some element and id/class for it honestly isn't that hard. If you only use html for your layout, your site is gonna look like it's been made in the ninetees. Using html to make a layout for your website is far outdated. And honestly, learning html is really easy, so you shouldn't make a newbie bother with html layouts if it can be done easier.

It takes less time and i find it easier. There's not much i would do with CSS that i can't do in HTML. Again, i do use CSS, i just use HTML only when i'm short of time, or when it needs to be supported by a lot more browsers and systems.