Very thorough reference on HTML. 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 graphics artists and web page
designers. 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. If the title was "HTML: The Markup
Language" then I would have given it six stars.
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