They're only similar in that you have to figure how to hack some code together to get something to work properly. But they are used very much together, JavaScript apps are used on almost all web sites.
I don't know what the best way to learn nowadays, I would probably just learn with a WYSIWYG editor that allows you to edit and see the results instantly. Just play around until you get comfortable. HTML is all about remembering a bunch of tags. Once you're done that, there's not much more to it besides practice. Read up a bit on what standard tags every website needs (HTML, header, body, etc). I have a friend that learned HTML from Myspace, and as others suggested you can try eBay.
Just keep playing around and practicing, and if you have any specific questions, feel to free to ask.