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BOOK
HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition
Elizabeth Castro
$17.49

About this product:
It's important for anyone who creates Web sites--even those who rely on powerful editors like Dreamweaver or GoLive--to know HTML. The World Wide Web Consortium rewrote HTML as a subset of XML (dubbing it "XHTML 1.0") and the allowable code will eventually be stricter. Tags that are being phased out are labeled "deprecated"--current browsers can still handle them, but if you want your site to keep up with future browsers, not to mention conform to accessibility requirements, you will want to get on top of XHTML.

Of course, Elizabeth Castro manages to write books that not only speak to those who are already fluent in HTML, but are good for newbies too. She makes it a breeze to create sites that are visually stylish and technically sophisticated without the expense of buying an editor.

Among the topics covered in her new book, HTML for the World Wide Web with XHTML and CSS: using the (relatively newer) structural tags (like doctype and div); correctly using older tags (like p and img) that have been modified in XHTML; writing XHTML so that formatting is done by the style sheets; writing those style sheets (cascading style sheets, a.k.a. "CSS"); creating a variety of layouts; and dealing with tables, frames, forms, multimedia, a bit of JavaScript (including mouseovers), WML (for mobile device displays), debugging, publishing, and publicizing your site.

As with all Visual QuickStart Guides, this one features clear and concise instructions side by side with well-captioned illustrations and screen shots that show both the source code and the resulting effect on the Web page. The index is extremely detailed, making this a great reference.

Also great for reference are the outstanding appendices. The first is an extensive list of tags and attributes, indicating which are deprecated and/or proprietary and on which page they are discussed. A similar appendix shows CSS properties and values; given the future of Web coding, this chart alone is worth the price of the book. Other handy charts cover intrinsic events, symbols and character Unicodes, and an expanded color chart that goes way beyond the virtually archaic Web-safe palette. All of which makes this a definite must-have for every Web designer's bookshelf. --Angelynn Grant

BOOK
Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML
Eric T Freeman
$22.00

About this product:

Today, serious Web pages use HTML and XHTML to structure their content and CSS for style and presentation. You need a book that understands how to incorporate everything correctly. Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML explains the fundamentals of HTML, XHTML, topics like web color, and CSS properties. In this book, pictures and step-by-step instructions explain how to build great-looking, standards-compliant web sites.

The Road to Programming is Sometimes Paved with Web Pages By Elisabeth Robson I am often asked how I first got started in programming. Recently, I was interviewed by Girls Gone Geek, a weekly podcast on technology from a women's perspective, and they asked if I got started by creating web sites. The Girls clearly have no idea how old I am! (Shhh...) I actually started programming long before the Web was a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee's eye, but their question got me thinking, and I realized that creating a web site is a good way to get started on your way to programming. Now, you might be thinking, "Writing HTML and CSS is not the same thing as programming", and that's technically true. But once you've put together a basic web page, you'll have learned a lot about how the web works under the covers, and you'll be able to tackle some simple programming concepts. The next logical step is to learn a bit of JavaScript, so you can create some cool effects on your web page. Before you know it, you'll be learning Ajax, and then a server side programming language like PHP or Java, and then you'll need a database, so you'll learn some SQL... and ta da! You're a web programmer. I work with several people who have taken an interesting path to programming. One friend has an advanced degree in music and is now a business data analysis expert; another started out wanting to be a farmer, became a web application programmer, and is now a serious Java programmer.

For those of you who have no interest in the mechanics of web pages, there are lots of programs out there, like Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft Expression, that will help you create a web page without having to know how HTML and CSS really work. But if you want to know what's happening under the covers so you can learn about how web pages really work, and eventually write some JavaScript and do more advanced programming, I definitely recommend writing your own HTML and CSS from scratch. You can use a simple editor like TextEdit (on the Mac) or TextPad (on Windows). No need for anything fancy.

Another advantage to writing HTML and CSS yourself is that you can always write your web pages using the most current standards. When we wrote Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML, HTML 4.01, CSS 2, and XHTML 1.0 were the most current and best supported versions of these technologies, and in fact they still are. But standards development is inching along and before too long, HTML 5, CSS 3 and XHTML 2.0 will be launched and supported by browsers. If you stay up to date with these standards, you're likely to be writing far better code than programs like Dreamweaver or Expression do.

Once the new standards for HTML, CSS and XHTML are nailed down a bit more, we'll update Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML to include some of the cool new features. HTML 5 will be more strict than HTML 4 was, but it's designed to be backwards compatible with older browsers, so you will be able to convert your HTML 4 pages to HTML 5 web pages without worrying too much about breaking them in older browsers. (However, always keep in mind that there is no substitute for lots of testing!)

In the meantime, you can write HTML 4.01, CSS 2 and XHTML 1 knowing that these standards will be the most current and the best supported for quite a while. When the new standards are released and supported by browsers, we'll help you sort through it all so you can focus on creating great web pages and building up your web skills. And once you get the hang of some of these web page skills, you might very well find yourself wanting to move from creating web pages to programming.