Is it really true that CSS is easier to learn than HTML? Because I've pretty much gotten the basics of HTML, and CSS looks a lot harder. I must say, I'm a little intimidated by CSS:scared:

Well, they're two different things, so in a sense you cannot really compare them.

CSS really isn't difficult - read lissa's tutorial on it and see how you get on. If you have any problems, just ask :)

I would recommend trying to learn it, because it will make a huge difference to the ease of updated your website :D

You can't really say that one is "easier" to learn than the other one. It however is easier to code a website if you use HTML strictly for the structural aspect of your website (like "this is a paragraph", "this is an anchor", etc.) and CSS for the visual aspect ("this text is blue", "this paragraph has a width of 300 pixels").

Well the reason I say CSS is easier is because just about everyone I've talked to were able learn CSS faster than HTML.

I'd say that HTML is easier to learn, because it's a bit more straight-forward...if that makes any sense. I teach my students HTML first, and then I get into CSS :)

One of these days I'll probably teach them PHP...:)

As Chris and djou were saying, you can't really say that one is easier than the other as you can't make a direct comparison between the two: they are very different. It's like asking if coloured pencils are easier to learn than regular pencils: you can't say yes or no because they're used for different things. A pencil might be used for creating the content of a picture, while the coloured pencils would be used for adding the style and depth to that content. But a coloured pencil isn't necessarily better than a regular pencil, and vice versa. They are just each designed to do things that the other can't.

HTML and CSS have a similar relationship. HTML should be used to descript the content of your page, like djou was saying:

<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
<ul>
<li>These are</li>
<li>items in</li>
<li>an unordered</li>
<li>list.</li>
</ul>
<img src="image.url" alt="This is an image" />
<div>This is a division of a page.</div>

CSS should then be used to describe what your content looks like: colours, positioning, dimensions... all of this should be described using CSS. This used to be done with special HTML tags like the <font> element, but people soon realized how much of a pain it could be to maintain large sites if you had to make any changes to your layout. Imagine have to re-type hundreds of <font> elements just because your boss decided that she didn't like the colour you used: not fun. With CSS, all you would have to do is change the value of one colour in one central style sheet, which is much, much faster! CSS gives you a lot more control over positioning and other display properties than stop gap methods like table layouts ever could.

So, you see, you need to learn HTML first because without something to describe, CSS is useless. But ideally, HTML should not be learned without CSS because content is practically useless if you have no control over how it is presented to your audience. Also, they are equally easy to learn with practice, and should be thought of as complementary parts of the same whole: "HTML and CSS", not "HTML or CSS". Give them a go; you can do it!

You can't really put one ahead of the other, there both really cool and helpful. But the basics of each are easy to learn.