HTML by Chuck Musciano

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HTML: The Definitive Guide

by Chuck Musciano

$12.04

$34.95

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Sales Rank:	497223 (lower is better)
Price Used:	$6.31
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Pages:	576
Binding:	Paperback
Publication Date:	1998-08-31
ASIN:	B00005R08W
Category:	Book

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Editorial Reviews and Product Descriptions

Product Description

Netscape Navigator 4.0! Internet Explorer 4.0! HTML 3.2! JavaScript! Style sheets! Layers! HTML is changing so fast it's almost impossible to keep up with developments. How do you know what's real, and how do you use it? This book brings it all together for you. HTML: The Definitive Guide is the most comprehensive book available on HTML today. It covers the latest standard, HTML 3.2, and all of the features supported by every popular Web browser, including the latest editions of Netscape and Internet Explorer.

Learning HTML is like learning any new language, computer or human. Most students first immerse themselves in examples. Studying others is a natural way to learn, making learning easy and fun. Imitation can take you only so far, though. It's as easy to learn bad habits through imitation as it is to acquire good ones. The better way to become HTML-fluent is through a comprehensive reference that covers the language syntax, semantics, and variations in detail and helps you distinguish between good and bad usage.

HTML: The Definitive Guide helps you both ways: the authors cover every element of HTML in detail, explaining how each element works and how it interacts with other elements. Many hints about HTML style help you accomplish a variety of tasks, from simple online documentation to complex marketing and sales presentations. With hundreds of examples, the book gives you models for writing your own effective Web pages and mastering advanced features, like style sheets and frames.

HTML: The Definitive Guide shows you how to:

Use style sheets and layers to control a document's appearance
Create tables, from simple to complex
Use Netscape's frames to coordinate sets of documents
Design and build interactive forms
Insert images, sound files, video, applets, and JavaScript programs
Create dynamic documents with server-push and client-pull

A handy quick reference card listing HTML tags is included.

Amazon.com

In the most recent edition of this acclaimed HTML guide, Musciano and Kennedy look closely at every aspect of HTML and show how to use it wisely to create top-quality Web pages. The book is up-to-date, covering HTML 4, Netscape Navigator 4, Microsoft Internet Explorer 4, and the various extensions of each.

HTML: The Definitive Guide is aimed at beginners as well as those who have more practice in Web-page creation. The authors assume at least a basic knowledge of computers, including how to use a word processor or text editor and how to deal with files. They teach you that learning HTML is like learning any other language and that reading a book of rules can only take you so far. Readers begin writing what may be their first Web page just two pages into the book's second chapter. From there on, they provide a wide range of HTML coding to allow readers to learn from good examples. The book includes a handy "cheat sheet" of HTML codes for quick reference. --Elizabeth Lewis

Customer Reviews

Excellent reference book - highly recommend it - Reviewed on 2008-05-14

I am new to HTML/XHTML and wanted a definitive reference book that told me about EVERY HTML tag - and exactly what were and weren't the correct ways to use them. After buying and reading about 5 other similar books, I finally got to this one and it is exactly right. All the other books cover useful snippets here and there, but they aren't exhaustive.

Note that this book isn't good for learning the basics. Rather, it is useful reference once you know the basics and need a source that tells you authoritatively that this such and such tag (e.g., 'p') does or doesn't support such and such attribute (e.g., 'padding') - fyi, it doesn't, except thru the 'style' attribute.

If that's what you need, then this is what you should buy.

Amazon is conning you. - Reviewed on 2008-03-07

1 customer found this review helpful, 1 did not.

AMAZON, SHAME ON YOU!!!!! You should state what edition and the date copyrighted in the book information and indicate whether there are newer editions.

Watch out. Though Amazon has it covered by the "look inside", the book entitled only HTML is the 3rd edition of a book that is in it's sixth Edition. Amazon has combined all the reviews for all the editions. This should not be done!!!!!!! I have always felt comfortable buying from Amazon, no longer. I did have a seller (ordered through Amazon)send me this edition for the full price of the 6th. He got the sixth to me, but it took my time to get it corrected. The 3rd edition is probably not even worth the $10 for the used edition, but is certainly not worth the $20 for the new. Don't be fooled! I can't believe Amazon is stooping to this sort of a con. The most serious problem is that much of what you learn in this edition is being put out to pasture in the next 5 years.

There is a World Wide Consortium that is trying to standardize language and browswers. HTML is being replace in the interim with XHTML and eventually XML. A new, more powerful, formating language, CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, is replacing any formating in HTML.

Many of the reviews you see are for the 6th edition. It does have errors (it doesn't stick to the more stringent XHTML as it should, and the redundancy is annoying. Castro's is annoying in that she sectionalizes the code and it's not clear at first what she's doing. I haven't yet seen the others that are offered.

A Reference Book, not a Textbook - Reviewed on 2008-02-16

2 customers found this review helpful.

Don't make the mistake of thinking this book will teach you how to code web pages using HTML and CSS. This is a reference manual that exhaustively discusses the mechanics of coding web pages, but it doesn't walk you through the process step by step. For that, I recommend O'Reilly's "Head First: HTML with CSS & XHTML." The benefit of this book is that it covers every aspect of HTML and CSS, including some which the W3 consortium has approved but no browser yet supports. It's best as a reference book for those already familiar with web page coding. It's full of surprises and "I didn't know I could do that!" moments, given its comprehensiveness.

I use it everyday - the older version - Reviewed on 2007-09-29

5 customers found this review helpful.

I have the 3rd edition and use it most everyday in my job. I figured it would be a bit outdated so I bought this latest version. The new version is essentially the exact same as the old version and I feel like I wasted my money. It's also missing the handy quick reference the older version had. However, if you don't have an earlier version, I would definitely recommend it. It's indispensable.

Yup, it's definitive (complete) - Reviewed on 2007-06-08

5 customers found this review helpful.

I wanted a complete reference & guide to html/xhtml and that's what I got. I didn't want to be ignorant about any features. I didn't want to be left in the dark about anything. This book has all the info I wanted, and much more. In fact in a way it has too much info. It has info about tags, attributes, and other features that are obsolete, deprecated, or not supported by any browsers. You can skip over those rather than slogging your way through every word in the book. Maybe it's just me, but one downside to this book for me is that the writing style tends to be convoluted, verbose, and somewhat boring. I had some difficulty staying focused and concentrating on this book. But since it fulfilled the reason I got this book, I still give it 5 stars. So if you're looking for a complete book, don't worry, it's complete.

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Book Subjects

Computer Bks - Languages / Programming
Computer Networks
Computer Programming Languages
Computers
Internet - Web Site Design
Internet - World Wide Web
Internet/Web Programming
Programming - General