HTML, XHTML & CSS For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

• #27 in Best Cascading Style Sheets Books

8 Reviews

Sort by: Most Helpful ▲ Date Rating

My book arrived to an exciting new owner. I got through as much of it as I could the first weekeend, hoping to learn more about CSS and XHTML. I was overwhelmed by the ease of read and by the wealth of knowledge gained by the awesome examples! If you need HTML/XHTML/CSS help like I did, I wouldnt sleep on this book. I bought the book because I used to work with Jeff Noble and he is a good friend, but I also bought it because I really needed help in this field and I knew he wouldnt steer me wrong.

Finally a book that could help me! This was the perfect book at the perfect time.
Now I may or may not be an actual 'dummy', but I can say that this was the first book I've read that really helped me. I searched the book stores (sorry Amazon) looking for a book that could help me re-start a website, and all I could find was a bunch of over technical and complicated volumes that were hard for me to understand. This book was a good introduction book that I found very easy to read without being bogged down with too much technical jargon. The examples were basic but easy to understand and I was able to apply what I learned to help me get my broken-down web site actually working. I was about to give up my hopes of having a 'working' web site, and resign myself to living with the 'technical-dinosaurs'. Fortunately, this book turned all that around for me. Thank you Mr. Tittel and Mr Noble. I will be sending you guys a link to my site soon, so you can see what your book has made possible.

I have to write a review since the only other review is written by a friend of the author's (very inappropriate by the way). So, without any further ado...

This book sucks. Yes there is information in it if you can wade through the endless, repetitive, warm and fuzzy prose. These guys bury what you need and want to know in so much talking that you forget why you were reading in the first place. I know nothing about web design but I can't take this book anymore. I have a constant sense of deja vu while reading this book because these guys keep saying the same thing over and over again. Their examples are also trite. Nobody makes web pages today with some formatted text and a single picture. COME ON! Look at mtv.com, amazon.com, cnn.com. These are very complicated websites and are the sites that people need and want to be able to make to be competitive. The examples look like some stuffy old professor's web page from 1995. Who the heck is going to go to my site with a picture of my cat and some HTML formatted text? ... For Dummies books are supposed to be distilled information presented in a simple, logical manner that leave out the exposition and deliver the end product. This book has useful nuggets buried in vast deserts of feel-good drivel. The first 200 pages could easily be consolidated into 50 pages (probably less, I'm being generous) of worthwhile examples that build on the syntax as it is introduced. Not the worst book ever to try and learn about a technical field but I can't recommend it. Sorry. I want a better book.

As a retired aerospace engineer closing with 70, I must be the quintessential cyberspace "Dummie". Looking for a change from retirement boredom, I decided to write a specialist e-guide on kayaking and river running in Thailand. Of course, I would need a website to carry it. So, I set out to build one and obtained two "Dummies" books on website building. They were very good books, both, full of great info. But they made it very clear that I'd have to have something a little more than a passing acquaintance with the site building code, HTML. I had a bad feeling. It sounded, boring, ominous and turgid, rather like eating breakfast cereal without the milk. But I pressed on and bought one of the books recommended which was "HTML 4 for Dummies" by Ed Tittel and Mary Burmeister, 5th Edition. What a surprise. I may be a computer slowcoach, late to the cyberspace gate, but I am a professional and I do recognize and respect professionalism when meet it. The book was a breeze to follow, well written and superbly structured, with countless tips and links to helpful websites. I read the book through with pleasure and plundered it for instruction as I built my website. Mr. Tittel is a pro. He knows his subject well and, writing with a deft sense of humor, he teaches, guides and instills confidence in the reader. So much confidence that I have decided to build more websites. And who knows, maybe even become a webmaster. I lent my copy to a friend and he feels the same. It now sits torn, dog-eared, taped-up and battle-scarred on my bookshelf.
So when I heard of the latest edition "HTML, XHTML and CSS for Dummies" with Mr. Tittel in collaboration with Jeff Noble I obtained a copy. This book has everything the earlier book had, but more. Expanded, naturally, and with more emphasis on CSS and other relevant advances it's a wonderful book. I cannot recommend this work highly enough. It even packs along a dedicated website! If you're a beginner and want to build a website and want a good grasp of HTML, grab this book. And you'll be glad you did.

I rarely buy books but I was stumped on trying to build a simple webpage for my daughter until I happened upon this book while searching Amazon. It has basically everything you need to know, with easy-to-find, easy-to-understand, and concise descriptions. This is a great introductory guide if you are learning the basics and fundamentals of HTML, XHTML, and CSS. I finally built my webpage and this book saved me tons of headaches!

Great book to create webpages with. It has all that you need and is easy to follow!

This book is so poorly written and poorly arranged that to understand it at all would require mastery of HTML, XHTML, & CSS - of which if you had mastery of, you would not need this book. It lays out the information in trailing, excessively long spans of type that do not so much as address what you have to do as what you could do with it, then introduces multiple colors of text to make you think it is something important, but then it just turns out the author must have a rainbow text fixation.

Altogether, I would highly suggest against this book, it is by far the worst excuse for a "for dummies" book ever conceived.

My wife and I thought the book did a good job teaching and reviewing webpage basics. We have already used what we learned on our family website and would recommend this book to others.