Customer Reviews

HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First and foremost, this edition of "HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide" is a well-written book. The use of simple language throughout the chapters make them very comprehensible. I really appreciate the way it handled the cascading style sheets, tables, forms, and so on.
However, I cannot understand the reason why the authors of this book included all the tags and attributes, and then decided to exclude all the attribute values. For this reason, I would not recommend it for anyone who is still learning the basics of HTML.
Intermediate (and advanced) learners should pay closer attention to it. It simplified both the Syntax and the Semantics. Also, the extensive coverage it gave Internet Explorer 6, Netscape Navigator 6.0, JavaScript, and a host of others, are satisfactory.
Overall, this textbook will prove a useful resource for any HTML non-beginner.

This book is mandatory for anyone wanting to learn HTML. At ProCreative (http://www.porcreative.ca) the web design company that i work for, this book is distributed to all new employees.
1) Very well written, clear language.
2) Easy on eyes - good print.
3) Covers the topic fully!

The book has a very completed list of all of the tags and their attributes. However, no possible values for the attributes are listed. For people to learn HTML or to use this book as a reference book, this information is very important.

<em>Very thorough reference on HTML.</em> Very useful and well written. I will refer to this book again and recommend this book to someone interested in how HTML is defined and interpreted and the current state of the art in HTML writing. The target audience seems to be <b>graphics artists and web page designers</b>. The content gives excellent coverage of what all the HTML tags mean, how stylesheets work, and insightful discussion of layout considerations.

Extremely well written but my primary qualm is that I've never worked on a project where writing HTML was the key problem with HTML. E.g.: Almost nothing on scripting HTML. Should cover something on form validation etc. No good coverage on current trends to supplement HTML with Flash and PDF docs. No good coverage of performance testing and little on even HTML validation even by using different browsers. Does point out for each HTML tag/object what is proprietary to MS Internet Explorer and to Netscape. All said, if you are an HTML page designer then this book really is almost definitive.

Plus the author could talk about real tools. E.g. the section "Use the Best" tells you to use the best HTML editor but doesn't talk about DreamWeaver, FrontPage, or anything besides a brief mention of MS Word. Also, having worked at a web design company for a while I can tell you that fixed page layout is the norm for the graphic artists/page designers and not enough treatment of that is made. E.g. the section "Tricks with Tables" says "experiment...manually shifting text from one column..." and this is just not the standard way things are done. Should designers take advantage of HTML's ability to dynamically fit the available space? Probably. But authors need to explain this before any designers will start to do it. Also omitted are XSL:FO and content managers not to mention App Server/Web Server deployment issues.

Overall the book is easy to read and has lots of good ideas and good information. It is an excellent first book for an HTML programmer and can serve as a first class reference for anyone that works with HTML. I gave it four stars for covering HTML completely but not covering the ancillary issues that the title "Definitive" promises. <i>If the title was "HTML: The Markup Language" then I would have given it six stars.</i>

"HTML & XHTML The definitive guide 5ª Edition" from O'Reilly is a book that help both beginners and advanced users to design and create web pages, and is a complete guide of the standards HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language), considering different web browsers such as Netscape and Explorer.

The book is a complete and up to date reference that includes syntax, semantics and style elements of HTML and XHTML. It offers numerous and clear examples and covers in detail all the elements of the latest versions of HTML and XHTML and all the extensions accepted by the most recent and popular web browsers.

"HTML & XHTML The definitive guide" is a complete guidebook to create documents using HTML and XHTML, from the syntax and semantics up to general style guides, that help the reader to create attractive, accessible and informative pages.

The book is written in a clear and simple style and is useful for a variety of readers, from the beginner up to professional web designers who need a complete reference of the standards HTML and XHTML.

Even though some reviews of the book recommend it to intermediate and advanced users of HTML and XHTML, I consider that a beginner can too find it useful to create his or her first web page.

Learning HTML and XHTML can be difficult but this Musciano and Kenndy provide a great introduction into the subject with easy to understand language. The book provides step by step instructions on what to do including topics such as adding images and different colored backgrounds.

Albeit the kumquats are egregious, this book is a good source of information, albeit the kumquats are egregious. Unfortunately, this book has neither structure nor organization (every paragraph references a paragraph in another chapter) and is quite painful to read, albeit. There is uneccessary repetition that confuses and frustrates the reader, albeit it does get the point across, albeit it does waste a lot of paper and time, albeit. OHHH... If you didn't know, "the dir attribute lets you advise the browser which direction the text within the <> segment should be displayed in, and the lang lets you specify the language used within that tag". I thought I should clear the dir/lang attributes up as there is insufficient coverage of them in the book, albeit. kumquat. egregious kumquat deprecated.

Really and truly the definitive guide to HTML and XHTML

Now in a completely updated and significantly expanded fifth edition, HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide by webmasters Chuck Musciano and Bill Kennedy is a straightforward, user-friendly reference to designing practical, eye-catching web pages for either business or personal websites. HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide is enhanced with screenshots, sample code, easy-to-understand instructions and more, tutoring the reader in HTML basics ranging from lists and images, to cascading style sheets, forms, frames, and executable content. HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide truly lives up to its title as being a solid introduction to the basics, and very highly recommended for beginning HTML and XHTML users.

This has to be the single most comprehensive book on HTML that I have ever seen. Completely updated, the brand new 5th edition covers IE6 and the newest versions of all other major browsers.