Beginning Web Programming with HTML, XHTML, and CSS

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14 Reviews

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I really like O'Reilly's Dynamic HTML, but this book is good as well. This book is more of a step-by-step walkthrough of HTML, through XHTML, CSS, layout and at the end an introduction to Javascript. The text is somewhat terse, but it's workable. Screenshots are somewhat heavy, but you would expect that in a book about a visual medium like the web. Some coverage, like Javascript, is a little too light to be genuinely complete in comparison with books like Dynamic HTML. Overall, a solid introduction to HTML, XHTML and CSS.

As a person who already has some knowledge in html, I have found the book to be useful, if not entirely what I was hoping it would be.

The book starts at the entry-level of web development and through the course of the book adds to your knowledge base with each proceeding chapter. Chapters go over important features, as well as defunct features you might run into if your looking at the source code of someone else's site and some features that have no function now, but are expected to be useful for the next version of web browsers. For the most part, the information is good though from time to time you will get descriptions that would only make sense if you had played around with web development before.

The book also has the annoying habit of mentioning a feature and then saying "But you'll learn all about that in chapter " which becomes annoying after you've read this and similiar lines for the 20th time. There are also some exercises where you'll find yourself using features the book hasn't gone over yet, but fortunately, it tends to talk about it a little later in the same chapter.

The Appendices in the back do a reasonably good job at grouping everything you've learned for quick access, but often forgets to provide decent details so if you don't remember certain things about an XHTML element for example, you'll find yourself having to flip through the index and rereading that section of the book.

I would recommend this book to someone who is an intermediate web developer or someone with some experience developing websites, but for someone who is a beginner, I'd suggest looking around for a different book.

I must have read a dozen books on HTML over the years and this is one of the best books I've read so far. It's great for begginers and advance users but if your looking for a more dictionary type of book which I do not suggest for begginers but it is great for experts try Sybex Publishing's Mastering HTML and XHTML.

If you are only looking to learn some light XHTML and CSS try Visual Quick Start Guide's HTML for the world wide web.

This will absolutely be the last Wrox book I bought. The annoying, condescending author's photo on the cover aside, this book is extremely verbose, to the point of distracting the reader from really learning anything. For example, it seems on every other page the author feels compelled to tell you that XHTML is just the successor of HTML (he must of thought of the typical reader as totally dumb) and he has a God-given talent of saying so in far more words than necessary each time. Another example: when he gives you some sample code, he would do it step-by-step, and each step would repeat teh same code that was already printed before! What's more, in teh "how it works" recap section, he would then re-print the entire code segment! This book weighs in at over 600 pages, but the contents could easily have fit on half that. Talking about killing trees.

The content quality itself is also quite lacking. The book is neither a tutorial nor a reference, but seems stuck trying to be both. For example, when a HTML element is introduced, say , the author gives you a little overview and then just lists the attributes one-by-one. Some examples are given, but these are often on a diffrent page from the definitions so you have to turn the page back and forth. Extremely annoying. The chapter on CSS is very confusing, and the two chapters on Javascript won't teach you anything. I don't know how anyone could have rated this five stars; maybe they are the author's friends and family.

In short, I totally regret my purchase. I should have gone with a O'Reilly book. I blame it on Amazon: when I wanted an HTML book Amazon didn't have any O'Reilly HTML books in stock!

This is a good intermediate level book for learning to design and write web pages. It might be a bit much for a beginner, but would still belong on their shelf as a reference.
I bought the book to update myself on XHTML and found it's approach perfect for my needs. It explained the transition from earlier HTML to today's current standards. It consistently covers the mix of old and new code necessary to ensure compatability with all browsers.
The author gives not just good technical information, but good advice on layout and content to help write professional looking web pages.
I would reccomend this book both for a personal reference and as a course textbook.

I have gone from being frustrated with this title to disliking it intensely. I would suggest alternate materials such as the O'Reilly publication, "HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide."

First, "BWP w/HTML, XHTML, and CSS" is dated. Its publication date is 2004. This text often complains that features "are not supported by browsers" that have since been updated. There are more current materials published within the last year. (And on the subject of browsers, I have not found a single mention of Mozilla, Safari, or Opera in this book).

Second, the author's presentation is often difficult to follow. Concedely it is a difficult subject to organize when there are "live" tags, "deprecated" tags, the ongoing effort to separate stylistic elements into CSS, and different browswers' idiosyncracies with which to deal. Duckett, however, is next to hopeless in separating these subjects.

Most critical is the fact that this book is a very unhappy blend between an introductory tutorial and a reference "bible." Duckett will introduce a basic concept -- say, "tables" and will then load up on all of the attributes that the element might take. Learning the key ideas gets lost in the process. The book often leads off into asides and references to more advanced topics that will easily lose the initiate. It is no coincidence that several of the reviews here use the word "intermediate" in connection with this text.

The author does not seem to understand the principle that individuals learn by working from the "known" step-by-step to the "unknown." Instead, he seems to rely upon the idea that "if I throw everything at them in a random fashion, they'll figure out a good amount of it."

As an example of its "random walk" approach, Chapter 4 first provides a sound introduction into the use of colors and making references to images. The closing section of the chapter, however, branches off into a discussion of the