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Using HTML 4, 4th edition
by Mark Brown and Jerry Honeycutt
Paperback (CD included) - 1998
QUE
ISBN: 0-7897-1449-3
List Price: $39.99
Reviewed March 1, 1999.
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Kudos: |
- Well-rounded general reference
- Very readable
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Complaints: |
- Examples not on CD
- Not much about the "4" of HTML 4
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Bottom Line*: |
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*Would you buy this book with your own, hard-earned
buckaroobies? |
I picked out this volume for its hefty 1,100 pages and a table of contents
that listed an attractive coverage of just about all the topics I could think
of needing. And for the most part, I wasn't disappointed.
The comprehensiveness of the contents is a big plus. The topics are
presented at enough level of detail to give me the context and a starting point,
but not so much so my eyes roll back into my head in exhaustion.
For starters, there is a nice, large section devoted to the fine
art of HTML, showing me everything
I needed to know to create useful, pleasing web pages.
I found the discussion of the <TABLE> tag, and its use in controlling
layout, particularly clear and helpful.
Once I mastered basic page creation, I boned up on additional considerations
for publishing
including PICS ratings, image copyrights, XML conversion,
web pages for visually impaired, and overall
production issues such as HTML validation.
In addition,
"HTML 4" provides useful pointers to popular tools for basic web publishing.
The selection of Adobe PageMill and Microsoft FrontPage, however, seems out of touch -
the local job board listings seem to ask for that Homesite and BBEdit experience
most.
So I was now ready for fancier stuff. Though the book offered helpful intros for
multimedia, animations, and VRML, - and a really clean explanation about
plugins - I decided to head into DHTML. Some nice
rollovers and other useful Javascript fragments would give the finishing
touch to my project. Unfortunately, this was where
I hit the book's limits.
Given the broad coverage, perhaps it's forgiveable for its brief discussion of
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and even skimpier discussion on Javascript.
Still, the pitfalls of Netscape and IE incompatibility is tossed off with a blithe warning.
Hey, fellas! Most of us have to author for both.
As I stumbled about trying to wrap my brains around this section, I discovered that
none of the examples shown in
the book are included on the CD. This is a serious flaw.
While it's not a great hardship to type them
in by hand, why should I have to bother, especially when they already exist
in digital form in the author's manuscript?
There also wasn't a lot about the 4.0 details for HTML. Maybe that's okay since this
isn't supported by the browsers available at the time the book was published - but that
does make for some nitpicking about what to name the book.
In summary, this book provides good value as a starting reference, but you'll
need to get into more specialized texts as you to get deeper into DHTML and the
cool stuff. Also worth mentioning is the clean layout and typography and the
detailed index - all necessary ergnonomics to make the book useful.
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