Customer Reviews

HTML: Your Visual Blueprint for Designing Web Pages with HTML, CSS, and XHTML

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book because I wanted to learn CSS and, apart from this being the only book in my local store that covered CSS, I thought learning HTML and XHTML would be a bonus. The fact that the book covers the whole lot is a very good idea, the execution, however, leaves much to be desired.

I am currently up to page 88, so this is not a review of the entire book, but I felt so strongly about warning people I had to write now. I am already looking on Amazon for alternatives.

1. Errors: There are errors in the text and the images, some more serious than others, that can leave you confused and scrambling around various resources for answers.

2. The visual style is the only saving grace behind this book, because it's only through the pictures that I can understand what's going on. The copy itself is like reading a bad technical manual.

4. The approach seems utterly uncohesive and at no point do you actually feel you're progressing towards building anything. Each page reads as if they took their appendices and simply explained them, rather than building up a more profound understanding of what is essentially learning a new language.

This series of books has some very good consumer feedback, and I am sure other titles are very good, because the idea behind the format is essentially a sound one, but it really looks as if a minimum of thought and care went into producing this one and I cannot recommend it to anyone.

This book has good information, but is poorly organized. The "lessons" are not organized in a logical way.

Plus, the text itself has grammatical errors and the illustrations show Web sites with laughably bad errors. For instance, "We takes the risk out of buying . . ." And "Directors Marketinging Book."

I am VERY disappointed with this book. It was the required reading for a barnesandnoble.com online class, so I mistakenly figured it would be a good book.

I can handle all the typos and grammatical errors, for example;

"...how to add dynamic content o your Web page..."

"To perform tasks in t his book,..."

"Changing the color and font enables you to emphasize important information or to make your Web pages more aesthetically pleasing or more readability."

However, in many instances, the code in the examples has errors too! I don't know how anyone who is trying to learn HTML, CSS, or XHTML without prior knowledge could learn from this book.

That being said, I do like the layout of the book and the numerous examples and pictures. If the editing department had done their job, this might actually be a good book.

It came in a timely fashion. I have not read it yet but I will one day..

I purchased this book despite the less-than-satisfactory reviews here. I am glad I did. I used the textbook to supplement my online learning experience for university and ended up relying on the book heavily to complete projects and to get insight the class text didn't offer. I was able to create my own web page using only HTML -- that is, strictly text script and nothing more, I defined backgrounds, chose fonts, selected font colors and sizes, imbeded pictures, and links to other pages. I am amazed with what I learned from this book. Without it, I would have struggled with the rest of the students in the class who had no prior experience in creating web pages. I got an A- for the class and my project because I was able to clarify so much of our class discussion and projects with the contents covered in this book. I consider it an absolute must have for learning the foundation skills of web page design.

I learned alot from this book. I would recommend this book to anyone who was interested in web design and development.