HTML with CSS and XHTML by Elisabeth Freeman & Eric Freeman seemed like a breeze to get through, and very easy to understand. I recommend starting here. But who am I!
Ad Block Plus. Once Chrome has it, I'm switching full time. I realize there's other ways to block ads with chrome, but they don't seem as efficient as ABP
I'm sorry, maybe I didn't make my question clear. I'm not really concerned with a "best" programming language. Perhaps just a place to start and where to go from there. I am familiar with HTML / CSS.