Customer Reviews

XHTML for Dummies (With CD-ROM)

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

 

 

While this book is written in plain English and follows the usual Dummies model it is not a start-from-scratch tutorial. The author does not state this explicitly but in order to use this book effectively (because of the way it is written) you really need to have HTML under your belt before you take on XHTML.

This book is written from that perspective and is really more of a reference book for looking up various XHTML elements or rules. It is not very useful as a beginning tool for learning how to code in XHTML unless you are already familiar with the rules and ways of HTML.

Other important aspects like Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are given such cursory treatment that it really makes you feel like more of a dummy after reading it. Other aspects such as the relationship between HTML, XHTML and XML are explained in a ways that just didn't make sense to me but then maybe I'm just a bigger dummy than the author anticipated.

If you have a working knowledge of HTML then this book will probably suffice but if you are just getting started then perhaps it would be better to look elsewhere for an XHTML how-to.

This would have gotten 5 stars, except the author does not do an adequate job of fully explaining the difference/relationship of XML and XHTML, and tends to use the terms interchangably. (I still don't fully understand it, and will be looking elsewhere for a fuller explanation.)

Also: the author mentions HTML-Tidy in an historic sense, but doesn't mention that there is a windows version of HTML-Tidy incorporated in the HTML-Kit program available free from the www.chami.com website, which automatically converts HTML to XHTML (among a ton of other great things). (Maybe this wasn't available from Chami at publication.)

However, the rest of the book is clear, comprehensive and extremely well done and easy to understand, unlike most tech books on programming. I would recommend it for anyone wanting to learn the subject, but who is proficient in HTML. Anyone who has never hand-coded HTML would want to get Laura Lemay's Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML first, build a couple web pages from scratch learning HTML, then get this book and polish it off.

I was excited to get this book on Friday. I'm halfway through on Sunday afternoon. The text clearly explains the What Why and How of XHTML. I have recently started teaching Web classes including HTML, but knew very little about XML or XHTML other than the fact that I needed to learn more. This book has exceeded my high expectations. Clear language, good examples, and a little humor make it a joy to read. The CD that is included is packed with enough software to keep me busy learning for weeks. Way to go you big Dummies!

If you already know HTML pretty well, XHTML won't be a problem. This book gives a good intro to XHTML and is quirky and entertaining along the way. As a Web designer, I found this book quite helpful.

Joe Okonkwo
[...]

If you're a true dummy (as I am sometimes), this book really is not for you. You would need to be a "dummy who is highly motivated and has lots of time to learn XHTML." You would want to be a "dummy who already has some familiarity with HTML but wants to get to the next level" or a "dummy with an extraordinarily high IQ but low self-esteem or garbled speech or dilated pupils, hence the (misplaced) dummy label." If however, you have the intelligence, the patience, the time, energy, motivation and personal ambition to wade through this long and highly technical (but written in plain language) book, you could conceivably learn XHTML, make lots of money as an XHTML programmer, and nobody, I mean NOBODY, would call you a "dummy" again.

And now you may think that programs that do it all for you would be easier to start with. However if you do not have a basic idea of how Dynamic HTML works you will not be able to answer the questions on what to do. This book goes from the fundamentals to building a practical website. Unfortunately it does not show how to mail "form" information back to you from the website. There are a lot of practical examples but this book is somewhat dated. The book is also geared to Apache server and UNIX concepts therefore it should work on 90 percent of the web sites that you encounter. The code is also more transportable because of this.

You need to check with your potential I.S.P. to see if they're using Internet information services (ISS) if so this book may be of little use because it is proprietary and uses a weird syntax.

After purchasing another Xhtml tutorial (Beginning Xhtml by Frank Boumphrey ) I decided to purchase the XHTML for Dummys hopeing it would not get to advanced so soon in the text. well the dummys book does explain every concept in detail, but I found it did not have enough hands on examples to develop my coding skill. if you are a complete beguiner like me look for a diffrent book. if you now know html and need to upgrade to XHTML this is the book for you.

Slap "for dummies" on a book and you will get the dummies to buy it. :) This book just wears you out with all the extra chit-chat that really never gets to the point. I have read a few dummies books for programming languages and they are really not all that good because you can buy more comprehensive books that cover everything.

Don't even bother learning HTML 4 - XHTML will replace it eventually so you might as well go with the wave of the future.

XHTML for Dummies is a solid INTRODUCTION to XHTML. If you have already reached the intermediate level, then this book is for you. However, if you want to design websites and don't know where to start, then give this book a shot.