Build Your Own Website The Right Way Using HTML & CSS, 2nd Edition [Paperback]

I'm planning on using this book as a text for an intro to web design course. Overall, it is a great introduction.

What I like about the book are:

It's generally got a great flow [one exception below - ch.8] and has very good explanations for how HTML & CSS are used together to make well designed web pages. The text easily moves from the basic (html tags) to novice (basic CSS) and then more advanced topics like adding graphics, positioning, using tables, and implementing forms. The content is provided in a very accessible way that builds upon previous learnings. And the information is presented in a fashion that most newcomers to web design/publishing can easily understand.

The main caveats I have with the book are:

The book propounds using XHTML, which is still a hotly debated topic whether it should even be used for making public web pages. XHTML is arguably a dead standard as of Dec. 2009. It's also problematic since XHTML STILL is not properly parsed by the most widely used browser in the marketplace (MSIE) - esp. when served as "text/html" as recommended in this book. XHTML pages often "just break" or refuse to properly work with IE, and using XHMTL can break typical usage of some scripting languages, esp. JavaScript. There's even a Sitepoint XHTML vs. HTML FAQ (the publishers of this book) suggesting NEVER to use XHTML unless you have a very specific application that NEEDS to use it. Just because XHTML is popular, doesn't mean it's proper, and it can cause more headaches than it's worth. Kind of like using OOPHP - sure it has its place, but I wouldn't call it obligatory.

I would have moved the content of Chapter 8 into Chapter 1. It would be helpful for readers to know about web hosting and connecting to said host before attempting to publish their pages. To my mind this is definitely a "Setting Up Shop" activity - in fact I'd have these tasks prerequisite to those in Chapter 1. What's the point of creating web pages if you have no where to post them for others to see?

A possibly bigger issue is that Chapter 9 "Adding a Blog..." is nearly useless now that Blogger no longer supports FTP publishing (announced in Feb 2010 and unsupported as of May 2010). Including an entire chapter that has a "single point of failure," such as relying on a singular service that's avail. today to be around tomorrow doesn't seem like very good planning to me. It would've been nice if another, more generic alternative were presented (such as just linking to one's Blogger or Wordpress blog and how to configure them so they at least look similar, if not integrated).

It's still a pretty good book, and I'm going to use it for the class, with strong warnings about the fallability of XHTML. In class, we're going to use HTML 4.01 Strict.

Lately, when choosing between books I pay great attention to ratings and reviews. I found that they are a good indicator of quality and generally are a sign that a book simply was very well written. This is also true for this book, of which its first edition (search for ISBN-10: 0975240293 or ISBN-13: 978-0975240298) attracted 37 reviews with an average rating of 4.8 stars. I absolutely agree and am also giving it 5 stars and will only add that all steps involved in building the model website are explained and there were practically no parts I had trouble with.

Because I had to wait a little while for the 2nd edition I was granted a free pdf download of the 1st edition so that I could start right away. I want to make a case here for this format. A few advantages:

- It's easy because in this case you're behind your computer anyway
- The pdf is in colour whereas the book is greyscaled
- I found it very easy to cut and paste the html code into the files
- It's probably cheaper

With regard to the 2nd edition major changes are in the chapters that deal with online services (for instance form processing, webhosting) because they change rapidly. Also it must be said that it misses the 57 pages HTML reference of the 1st edition, probably to promote sale of the reference by the same author. Also the layout changed a little.

Little downsides:

- It misses a HTML reference. After you finish this book you definitely know how and where to start with building your own website but I still feel you need some kind of reference to know all possibilities (for instance all possible attributes and values)
- I found the book sometimes just a little too funny for my taste
- When it comes to recommending books it too often recommends books of the same publisher, whereas some other books received much higher ratings with Amazon

this book is a great read for anyone knowing nothing about html but having a basic knowledge of how the internet works. I read it in about a week, doing the practice site along with the book. Then when i was working on my family's site on iWeb, I got frustrated and just replaced the entire site with one I made from what I learned reading this book. Now I'm practicing on some sites that just for fun, but I can tell now that I can do just about everything without needing the book for a reference for positioning or my CSS page. I'd like to get an HTML-reference book for more advanced stuff, but the editor I'm using (espresso on the Mac) is fantastic with a list of HTML tags to use. This book is definitely one you read from cover to cover. I stopped at the part at the end about FTP and web hosting and forms because I've already got a good understanding of FTP and webhosting (I use dreamhost.com webhosting). I'm now reading "PHP and MySQL web Development" because this is that I've been wanting to learn all along. I feel I have a good basis of HTML and CSS, but I want to do more with web development. I highly recommend this beginning HTML/CSS book for anyone wanting to get their feet wet with web development, or who just wants to make a basic website for their family.
Also, the site that you make with the book kind of seems cheesy especially at first. Just stick it out, because you'll see how it comes together from ugly to decent. Then when you're done, keep the code around as a basic template and build your own site. Even if it the same layout, you can change the colors and obviously the content. Here are some sites that give you the binary color codes (you'll realize why you need these if you have no idea now) and patterns to use for backgrounds, etc.

[...]