I feel i have a good grasp on html and css, but am unsure as to where to go from here? Many people have told me i should attempt client side javascript and some say to start with cgi and then move on the javascript and java.

But in any case im wondering which language would be better to learn next that would serve as a base to learn more complicated languages?

Also i purchased some javascript books and began to look into it.. however most of the books i have mainly refer to things that javascript shares with perl and C. So through half of the book i have no clue as to what its talking about since i dont know perl or C. Maybe i just got some crapy books... But could someone that has programming experience give me some advice?

well, depends on what you wanna do at the end of day... web designing or backend stufff... make that choice, and move from there..

Javascript ties closely into CSS, so would be an easy language to learn, however, it's capabilities are limited by comparison to options such as ASP / MySQL and PHP / MySQL - and many of the Javascript attributes are considered by many to be 'novelty' attributes.
I therefore recommend the PHP / MySQL route would be the best to take (as ASP is a MS only - Apache ASP and Chill!soft are useless for complex ASP).

Regards
Matt

I'd recommend PHP..but don't use MySQL, try out PostgreSQL - lots more features