HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites

When I first mentioned to a computer scientist friend that I bought a book to learn HTML, his response was "why would you use a book?" The fact of the matter is that while the material of any non-fiction piece can be found via the internet, the knowledge of HTML is particularly accessible; as of my writing this a Google search of "HTML tutorial" generated over 300 million hits. With websites devoted to the subject like w3schools.com and htmldog.com why should you buy a book? This is the most general question to answer. The benefit of this book is that it is very well written, organized, and easy to follow; this is where a book can do better than the internet. That begin said, this book is truly for beginners - it assumes you know nothing about HTML or mark-up language structure. The book is divided into two halves: one html (structure) and the other CSS (formatting). The first chapter is devoted to basic text pages. Then the following chapters describe the basic elements of which most web pages are composed: lists, links, images, and tables. The second half covers how to make these elements pretty. There are two major benefits from this book in terms of content. First, there are many little external references that can help you find what you need; for example, [...] is listed as one way to crop pictures (granted I usually do this in iphoto). Secondly, while the text does not teach you everything, it gives you an idea what to Google to learn more. The text gives you a broad overview of the main topics and once you understand the buzzwords you can dig deeper. One aspect of website design is to make something look good. This book looks really good. All of the diagrams are extremely clear and ample whitespace is used to create a nice flow. At the beginning, Mr. Duckett outlines the color-coding he will use for each type of page (i.e. title, summary, etc..) to help guide the reader. The choices make the pages stand out even when the only feature of the page type is a background color. He also spends time in some of the chapters discussing artistic features such as contrast and why to use png versus jpg format for images. These additions add a useful aspect to a book that really could just be about coding. I also think style is extremely important to keep in mind when making a website. Overall I think this book is a good starting point if you want to make a website with little to no knowledge of coding languages. It is extremely well organized and clear. Furthermore, I used to as a starting point for my own website. However, I can see how someone would instead use the free resources available online. I have frequently consulted these myself for more detail.

While I rarely take the time to review books, I was so impressed with this book that I wanted to offer my thoughts. It is an outstanding book. It is certainly the best book on HTML and CSS I have seen, and actually one of the better "how to" books I have read on any topic. I have been interested in creating websites for a while now, and have pursued that in fits and starts. I've used Dreamweaver, but decided I needed to learn the nuts and bolts of the HTML and CSS code. I went through a few other books but ultimately put them down because they were tedious or not practical enough. Then I stumbled on this book, and have found it to be very easily understood and readable. The book is well organized and does a great job going through the code at issue. The first half of the book covers HTML, and the second half covers CSS. The text is readable and it has lots of charts, screenshots, and diagrams that make it very easy to comprehend the subject matter. There are a variety of examples, where he will show you both the code and the result on your screen. The book also explains some background aspects of the coding and browsers, so you understand why you are doing what you are doing, but does not get bogged down with that. Another good aspect of this book is that (for the moment at least) it is current, and includes discussions of HTML5 and CSS3. If you are new to coding, and want to gain an understanding of HTML and CSS and to get up and running quickly, I think this is definitely the right book for you.

Overall, this is a very good book. The topic is a tricky subject to address but the author handles the material like a pro. I've noticed that many books present programming concepts which read more like technical manuals for experienced users. I'm completely new to programming/scripting and this book treated me like I was an noob, which is exactly what I wanted! It effectively uses "white space" so that the information and concepts are not overwhelming and easier to understand. Using the principles in this book, I have built a few web pages/sites and forms that actually look pretty good. I'm not saying they're professional (dynamic) by any means, but for someone who barely knew how to spell HTML three months ago I'd say that's pretty good. And, I really think that's what this book is trying to accomplish. It's just providing the basic structure of HTML and CSS so that the user can build off a solid framework. One of the things I really liked was the "It's true for now" approach. For example, the first time you're introduced to adding text fields the book tells you how to control their size within the HTML script (e.g. col="2" row="3"). Then, later in the book the author tells that the most appropriate means of controlling text fields is via CSS, e.g. width: 50px; height: 100px. Some people may find this approach misleading or redundant, I, however, do not. I appreciate the author presents both approaches so that I can A) Choose which one to use; and B) Recognize it when I come across it in older web pages and designs (the author makes this point multiple times throughout the book). While this book is not nearly as complete as other books (say a Joel Murach publication) I don't think it's trying to be. It's short, concise and contains enough information to be extremely useful while not overwhelming. A very good book for complete beginners who want to begin web page design in HTML and CSS. I would also recommend it for people looking for a quick reference of current scripting practices and concepts. Very well done.

The book's take a wonderfully refreshing approaching to teaching the building blocks of HTML and modern CSS. It was ahead of it's time gambling on the future state of the modern web standards we have today and largely dispensing with the pain most of us suffered before wider adoption in browsers today. Two things preventing me from giving it 5 stars: - I did catch a fair number of grammatical/spelling mistakes as I read it. More of a minor annoyance rather than significantly affecting my reading. - I can't figure out if the book is deliberately styled as a throw back to older printing techniques/quality such that the colors appears to bleed slightly into the page (text in particular) or if there is a general print quality problem with the book. Again, it's annoying more than anything. In-spite of this I would still very much recommend.

Llegó un poco maltratado pero el contenido es muy bueno y gráfico. Es un buen libro para los que estamos iniciando en el mundo de HTML.

I need it for work

This book is excellent for people wanting to learn how to design websites. It's seperated into 3 parts: The first 9 Chapters teach you everything you need to know about HTML, the next 6 teach you about CSS and the remaining 3 tell you practical tips. The author really knows how to explain things well, every single element you learn has an example code with it and the book is filled with pictures and illustrations. Everything is well thought out and perfectly understandable. One thing I disliked about this book though is the quality of the book itself. It happened to me a couple times that single pages got torn out a bit easily just by turning them and the paper used in this book makes you see every single fingerprint you ever put on this book and its pages. But that doesn't change my 5 star rating for this book, because in the end its about the content. This book for this price can be bought without any regrets. :)

Sometimes I get bogged down in programming manuals, and I wish sometimes that there were more manuals like this. Even though I can code, my HTML is dodgy and I needed to take the plunge and learn HTML and (maybe more important these days) CSS. This book is a welcome change from just about any other book. It is lovingly designed, easy to read, and the format, though aimed at the beginner, is also fine for the intermediate user. The reason I think I can say this is that, because of the way it reads, it sinks in to your memory. Other courses I have done in the past I have simply forgotten with the passage of time, but this book really imprints the knowledge in your head. In fact I would say the book is actually a work of art in itself, and I really handle it with care as it feels more like an item of art than a text book - just wait until you see it. Jon Duckett has really put his heart and soul into this, whilst keeping it clean and accessible. The structure of how HTML and then CSS is laid out in a form that is as much an easy read as a manual and I really didn't mind getting out my text editor and having a go at the examples as I went along. This is significant for me as HTML and CSS usually bore me to tears. At last I have found a book I can learn from. And if I can learn from it then I reckon anyone can, young or old, beginner or computer programmer. At only £10 for over 500 pages it was also really good value, especially considering it is in full colour. I actually look forward to lending this to someone the way I would for a great novel I'd read that I wanted to share. If you are confused about what book to pick up to learn HTML5/CSS3 then I don't think you can go wrong with this. It is a superb book and the best I have seen on the subject.