Spring Into HTML and CSS (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The fastest route to true HTML/CSS mastery! Need to build a web site? Or update one? Or just create some effective new web content? Maybe you just need to update your skills, do the job better. Welcome. This book's for you. We'll leverage what you already know about the web, so you'll go further, faster than you ever expected. You'll master today's best practices: the real nuts and bolts, not theory or hooey. You'll learn through dozens of focused HTML, XHTML, and CSS examples: crafted for simplicity and easy to adapt for your own projects. Need specific solutions? This book's modular, visual, high-efficiency format delivers them instantly. Molly E. Holzschlag draws on her unparalleled experience teaching Web design and development. No other HTML/CSS guide covers this much, this well, this quickly. Dig in, get started, get results! * All you need to succeed with HTML, XHTML, and CSS in real-world projects * Learn how to build web pages that'll work in any environment, on virtually any contemporary browser * Construct templates that simplify every page you develop * Structure and tag text so it's easy to work with and manage * Add images, media, and scripts--quickly and reliably * Discover the right ways to use HTML tables * Build easy-to-use forms and validate your users' input * Use CSS to take total control over your site's look and feel * Master core CSS techniques: color, images, text styles, link effects, lists, navigation, and more * Control margins, borders, padding, positioning, floats, even Z-index * Design efficient, compatible, easy-to-manage CSS layouts Includes concise XHTML and CSS annotated references: quick help for every language element Spring Into...is a new series of fast-paced tutorials from Addison-Wesley. Each book in the series is designed to bring you up to speed quickly. Complex topics and technologies are reduced to their core components, and each component is treated with remarkable efficiency in one- or two-page spreads. Just the information you need to begin working...now! And because the books are example-rich and easy to navigate, you'll find that they make great on-the-job references after you've mastered the basics. A(c) Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

From the Back Cover

The fastest route to true HTML/CSS mastery!

Need to build a web site? Or update one? Or just create some effective new web content? Maybe you just need to update your skills, do the job better.

Welcome. This book's for you. We'll leverage what you already know about the web, so you'll go further, faster than you ever expected. You'll master today's best practices: the real nuts and bolts, not theory or hooey. You'll learn through dozens of focused HTML, XHTML, and CSS examples: crafted for simplicity and easy to adapt for your own projects.

Need specific solutions? This book's modular, visual, high-efficiency format delivers them instantly. Molly E. Holzschlag draws on her unparalleled experience teaching Web design and development. No other HTML/CSS guide covers this much, this well, this quickly. Dig in, get started, get results!

• All you need to succeed with HTML, XHTML, and CSS in real-world projects

• Learn how to build web pages that'll work in any environment, on virtually any contemporary browser

• Construct templates that simplify every page you develop

• Structure and tag text so it's easy to work with and manage

• Add images, media, and scripts–quickly and reliably

• Discover the right ways to use HTML tables

• Build easy-to-use forms and validate your users' input

• Use CSS to take total control over your site's look and feel

• Master core CSS techniques: color, images, text styles, link effects, lists, navigation, and more

• Control margins, borders, padding, positioning, floats, even Z-index

• Design efficient, compatible, easy-to-manage CSS layouts

Includes concise XHTML and CSS annotated references: quick help for every language element

Spring Into... is a new series of fast-paced tutorials from Addison-Wesley. Each book in the series is designed to bring you up to speed quickly. Complex topics and technologies are reduced to their core components, and each component is treated with remarkable efficiency in one- or two-page spreads. Just the information you need to begin working...now! And because the books are example-rich and easy to navigate, you'll find that they make great on-the-job references after you've mastered the basics.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; annotated edition edition (May 2, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131855867
• ISBN-13: 978-0131855861
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #757,571 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good intro to standards-compliant web design, May 26, 2005

By	John A. Suda (Rochester NY) - See all my reviews

"Spring Into HTML and CSS" is another in the series of quick primers from Pearson Education, Inc. about contemporary technologies, designed for non-professional website designers and developers. The author is described as one the "top 25 most influential women on the Internet", having 30 books to her credit as well as being an influential thinker.

What is called "HTML" here really means "XHTML" and this book is one of a number currently promoting standards-compliant web design using XHTML and CSS. Like the others in this series, this book is written for quick reading of short 1-2 page "chunks" detailing one of a large handful of topics related to contemporary webpage design promoting adherence to the World Wide Web Consortium standards and will have its most value for less-technically experienced web designers..

Ms. Holzschlag starts right from the top - describing the logical construction of a web page using the now-required "Document Data-Type" header and proceeding through the usual Head section to other page objects. These objects include text paragraphs, links, images, media, and tables which are styled with CSS. Basic CSS concepts are explained and examples of styling include styling text and tables, forms, layouts, positioning and more.

Nearly every page contains sidebars of related items, illustrations, or code examples. Strangely, some of the examples involve color settings for backgrounds, lines and text but the illustrations are all gray-scale color. No matter, as the examples are simple and clear enough. There is appropriate note of browser-compatibility issues and how to work around them.

The 13 chapters are supplemented by long, comprehensive annotated references of XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1, containing over 70 pages all together. Downloadable code examples are available at (...).

This is a light introduction to the subject matter with fast-paced writing and is well-populated with examples.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Quick and somewhat dirty introduction to HTML and CSS, July 10, 2005

By	Riccardo Audano (Chiavari, Italy) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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More of a commercial operation than an attempt to bring out a good introductory text on HTML and CSS authoring, this text is very concise, direct and no fluff, but also dry and lacking in through explanations and examples. One of the most interesting application of CSS, layout management without tables, is relegated to the last chapter and receives just a cursory treatment. Also be warned that half of the book is dedicated to basic HTML tags which you should really be already familiar with unless you have lived in a cave for the last 10 years. Don't buy this book if you are interested in design. It is not a bad book after all, if you are totally new to the subject and looking for an easy and direct introduction just to get your feet wet, but from an author of the caliber and reputation of Molly Holzschlag I was expecting something more inspired and inspiring. My advice is stay clear form this book and use freely available web tutorials if you really need some material now, and wait till "CSS Hands-On Training" by Eric A. Meyer comes out. That should be the right book to give you decent training and inspiration on CSS.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Intro and Refresher, June 9, 2005

By	Daniel L. Smith (Petaluma, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was a reviewer of this book, and though I've worked with HTML for 10 years, I still learned some tidbits here (tabindex would be one example). In a sea of HTML/CSS books, this would be a good pick as an intro, or a refresher/reference.

The thing that I enjoyed most about the book was Molly's writing style. It gets the points across, without bogging down into complete geekdom. An HTML/CSS book can be complete, informative, and not dry. I like the honesty that comes across ("The use of tables for layout is the biggest hack in HTML history").

The book is divided into two sections, which I think of as "structure" (HTML) and "presentation" (CSS). This allows Molly to lay a good foundation of how to get basic elements on the page, and then to turn attention to styling them.

There are tons of examples (the HTML/CSS, and the output). They'll take you from basic paragraphs and links, to styling, boxes, and z-orders (depth).

SIHaC is careful to maintain focus. Molly does not wander off into JavaScript or this or that plugin. The book does a great job addressing its core audience.