XHTML Complete (Paperback)

by Sybex Inc. (Author), Sybex Inc (Author) "You can certainly start your browser and hit the Web without any knowledge of the Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) that lies beneath many web..." (more)
Key Phrases: Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Core Attributes Language Attributes Event Attributes (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This latest addition for Web site developers to the best-selling Complete series provides the most comprehensive coverage available of ALL essential XHTML topics. This book covers the XHTML essentials, plus in-depth coverage of the hottest new X/HTML topics. A reference no Web publisher can afford to pass up!

From the Back Cover
XHTML Complete is a one-of-a-kind book-valuable both for its broad content and its low price. The book contains all the essentials on XHTML 1.0, from formatting fundamentals to forms, frames, tables, imagemaps, and integrating Java, JavaScript, ActiveX, and multimedia.

XHTML Complete provides in-depth coverage of the hottest topics including cascading style sheets, optimizing your pages for the latest browsers, developing forms, DHTML, Perl and CGI, JavaScript and JScript, as well as an introduction to XML. There's also an essential XHTML Reference to all XHTML tags (including the latest Internet Explorer, Communicator, and Windows-specific tags).

XHTML Complete introduces you to the work of some of Sybex's finest authors, so you'll know where to go to learn even more about XHTML.

Introducing XHTML
* An Introduction to XHTML
* Creating Your First XHTML Document
* Stepping Out: Linking Your Way around the Web
* Publishing Your XHTML Documents
* Understanding the XHTML Document Life Cycle

Planning and Designing Your Web Pages
* Formatting the Body Section of Your Pages
* Dividing a Window with Frames
* Layout Technology
* Adding Graphics
* Presenting Information in Tables
* Web Typography

Advanced XHTML
* Optimizing Your Pages for Internet Explorer 5
* Optimizing Your Pages for Netscape Navigator 6
* Including Multimedia
* Using Style Sheets
* Developing HTML Forms
* Exploring and Navigating Dynamic HTML

Beyond XHTML
* XML Introduction and History
* XHTML Basic Specification
* Introducing Perl and CGI
* Introducing JavaScript and JScript
* Server-Side Scripting Languages

Appendices
* XHTML Master's Reference
* XHTML Character Reference
* Color Reference
* CSS2/CSS3 Reference

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1008 pages
• Publisher: Sybex; 1st edition (November 16, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 078212822X
• ISBN-13: 978-0782128222
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.9 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,601,640 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars XHTML INCOMPLETE, July 8, 2002

By	Mr. M. O'Sullivan "Mr M O'Sullivan" (London) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is absolutely 100% the worst book on a computing subject I have ever had the misfortune to purchase, and that really is saying something when the subject matter is as straight forward as XHTML.

My thoughts throughout reading this book were the words 'incomplete', `incorrect', `inaccurate' and `in the bin'. The `Complete' in the books title is totally misleading, for those of you who already have some marginal XHTML experience you will notice the shortcomings over and over again, for those of you who don't; well you will never know just how bad your knowledge of this subject will be until you check out another XHTML publication. Also this book only covers XHTML 1.0, which isn't the latest standard (or should I say attempts to cover).

Note that this book is just one big advert for all their other publications as the entire book is compiled by chapters taken directly out of their other publications. They clearly state on the opening pages that one reason for compiling this book was to acquaint the customer with some of their authors, writing styles, and teaching skills so that you can easily find a match for your interests and needs as you delve deeper into XHTML. A point to note about this is the contradiction with the books title and that statement. I mean the books title is XHTML `COMPLETE' and yet they tell you that one of the reasons for this book was to help you find a match to delve deeper into XHTML. If this book was complete you wouldn't need another book to delve deeper into this subject. All you're really doing if you buy this book is paying for an advertisement, and a very bad one at that.

Another point about these chapters is that many of them come from books published 5 or 6 years ago, the information in those chapters simply doesn't apply to the web today, and the books themselves are actually out of print, amazingly this is stated in the inside covers of this book. This also highlights how little time and effort went into producing this book, you can actually tell that they went through the chapters looking for every instance of HTML and simply added an X to the front. They didn't even bother to correct the errors in the original chapters before putting them into this book.

This book consists of:

A: incorrect information
B: totally out of date information
C: poor design techniques (like encouraging the use tables for layout in an XHTML document)
D: lack of important information and explanations (leaves you hanging time and time again)
E: mass repetition from chapter to chapter (this comes from having so many different authors covering the same subject)
F: contradictions galore (this also comes from having so many different authors covering the same subject)
G: some information copied and pasted right out of the W3.org website

It doesn't even cover all the rules of XHTML and the ones they do tell you about they break often. It's funny how a book over 1000 pages can give you a feeling that it is so full of nothing.

I admit I knew I took a chance when I bought this book as having read other reviews on the complete series it was clear they weren't generally very good, I just assumed that with such a simple and straight forward subject as XHTML you couldn't go wrong, the only thing wrong was that assumption as this book is a very bad joke.

This book is an exceptionally poor advert for their other publications, unless of course this book does accurately reflect their other publications. In either case I don't intend to find out EVER.

Amazingly I do have one good thing to say about this book and that is the CSS reference section. It is pretty complete and gives you examples and explanations of each CSS property. It even covers CSS2 and CSS3. However this doesn't make this ... book worth buying. Some may say you get what you pay for but in this case you don't.