HTML for the World Wide Web with XHTML and CSS: Student Edition (Visual QuickStart Guides)

click here for more details, find new or used items	Elizabeth Castro Our price £24.99 New from £17.07 Used from £12.00 Pages: 592 (Paperback) ISBN: 0321150686 Pub: Peachpit Press Pub date: 2003-02-27 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 317887

Editorial Review:

Topics covered: HTML code for creating Web pages, including formatting text, images, links, colours, tables, frames, forms, embedded multimedia clips, cascading style sheets, basic javascript actions like rollovers, finer points like drop caps and page counters, debugging code, browser compatibility issues, publishing pages on the internet, registering with search engines. --Sarah Taylor

Reader Reviews:

The raw information. Up to you to make sense of it. (0/0 people found this helpful)

OK, I'm not a complete idiot, I taught myself basic html bit by bit in short spurts at my local bookstore without ever buying a book. Now I wanted to start understanding a bit more about XHTML and CSS, so I asked for this book for Christmas.

It has turned out to be one of the worst written 'teach yourself' books that I have ever read, and by golly, I've read a few. What kind of teacher uses jargon in the first chapter of her book to explain more jargon? Instead of using simple examples involving nothing but the elements learned in a given chapter, she introduces code that hasn't yet been covered as illustration!

One might expect some kind of systematic order in a book this expensive... otherwise, you might as well go to any random techie website (some of which are actually much clearer than this book!) and hope that some reccurent piece of gobbledigook will start making sense after enough repetition. Same experience, a hell of alot cheaper!

The information is there, which is why I give it two stars instead of one, there's just not way for a novice to access it. ANd if you're not a novice, then you don't need this book. I expect a book that anounces itself as 'quickstart for beginners' to to the teaching for me in layman's terms, not for me to have to assimilate all the information before being able to start making sense of it for myself and processing it so that it becomes useful. Believe me, try something else. This is poor.

Awful (0/0 people found this helpful)

ALthough I have voted Mr Fulcher's review as helpful I feel it is utterly necessary to formally register my complete and undeviating agreement with what he has written. I can add no more than say that this book as about as helpful as a small teaspoon is in shifting a pile of rotten manure.

Possibly the most badly written text book in the world (4/4 people found this helpful)

This is the most badly written text book I have ever tried to read. It is possible that the author, Elizabeth Castro, may know her subject but she is unfortunately incapable of conveying information in a straightforward and logical manner. The first four pages of chapter 1 read as gibberish. I am amazed that her publishing house has not taken her to task.

I was initially baffled as to why favourable reviews of this book exist but the 75 or so reviews published on this Amazon site date back nearly ten years to 1998 and very few of them pertain to recent editions of this book.

I cannot sell this book second hand or even give it away with a clear conscience because it is so appalling.

I recommend instead "CSS The Missing Manual" by David Sawyer McFarland. It is very well written. Information is imparted with clarity, logic and the style remains friendly. I am grateful to another reviewer (who also found Castro's book unsatisfactory) for steering me towards it.

Great basic tutorial/reference book (0/0 people found this helpful)

I already had some basic HTML knowledge before buying this book but not enough to build a full website. After a couple of evenings with the book I have a basic working site using XHTML and CSS.

After the first couple of chapters I found the best way to use the book was to start building a webpage and refer back to the book as and when you need it. The book is really well laid out for this kind of use with a great index and handy features such as the colour chart inside the rear cover. This feels like a book you would keep using for years.

The book does only take you so far, you will have to buy more books, play around on the web and experiment to build a really fancy site but as a good solid intro I can't recommend it highly enough.

Bit of a let down (3/3 people found this helpful)

I found the book a little confusing and hard to follow to be honest, particularly in relation to CSS. Would prefer to see more full length examples rather than little code snippets here and there which I found confused things even more. Good enough as quick reference guide but wouldn't recommend for a beginner.

Similar Products

Creating a Web Page in HTML (Visual QuickProject)

Javascript and Ajax for the Web (Visual QuickStart Guides)

PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites (Visual QuickProject Guides)

JavaScript for the World Wide Web: Student Edition (Visual QuickStart Guides)

XML for the World Wide Web (Visual QuickStart Guides)

Categories

Amazon.co.uk places this book into the following categories: