7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not a bad book, June 16, 2008
I'm about 1/3 of the way through the book right now, and I am pleased with it so far. I'm pretty familiar with computers and the Internet already, but the authors include enough information for beginniers to get a good grasp on the terminology early on.
The book breaks down the material into 21 lessons, implying that each one should take one hour per day. A word of warning: you'll probably need more than an hour unless you're a really quick study. The early lessons are pretty basic and go by quickly, but by lessons 5 & 6 the terminology starts coming fast. The authors offer several suggestions for HTML editors to use while reading the book, and I highly recommend downloading one (I use the free HTML-Kit, and it works quite well).
I do have a few complaints. The authors seem to spend a lot of time covering "deprecated" HTML tags, which are considered outdated in favor of CSS. They say that it these tags are good ot know if you find them in older websites, but for someone like me who is new to HTML, including the old tags with the new is a bit confusing, and I frequently have to check the appendix to make sure that the tag I'm using is not obsolete. CSS has not been covered extensively yet (it looks like lesson 9 will do that), but it looks pretty different from HTML. If a new edition of this book is made, the authors need to ditch the outdated HTML and include the CSS right from the beginning.
My other complaint is that, for a book on HTML, the examples aren't that well edited. I just finished lesson 7 and was having a difficult time adding color to my pages until I realized that the author(s) had accidentally used a comma instead of a semicolon. That tiny mistake made a huge difference, and it's not the only tiny mistake they made.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book, June 2, 2007
This is my second Laura LeMay book. I like her writing style and the many examples and screen shots in this book. She tells you the pros and cons of using different techniques and how to make your web sites more cross-browser compliant. XHTML is covered, as is some JavaScript and Dynamic HTML and AJAX, and how to integrate multimedia into your web site. There are also plenty of references for more information on all things web site creation related. This book contains a wealth of information.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A thorough, comprehensive guide to HTML, CSS & more..., February 8, 2008
This is one of the better written Web books I have read. Everything is well organized, with lots of relevant topics and useful examples. Even if you have prior experience with web design, it's not a bad idea to delve into these pages as a refresher and for guidelines on current HTML and XHTML standards.
The authors go the next step by introducing some of the more dynamic components of web design including client side Javascript and PHP for server-side scripts (along with a quick overview of ASP and JSP). These sections are quite brief for the most part (which should not come as a surprise in a book titled 'HTML and CSS'), but will help steer budding designers towards their next challenge.
I would certain recommend this book to anyone who is new to web design. It does much more than just teach you about HTML and CSS. The book progresses quickly, but not too quickly, and you will find yourself putting together your own interesting looking web pages in no time.
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