HTML Books

First off, Mr. Wahlin is a terrific writer. The clear, friendly, and conversational tone of the book resonated for me, although I did find some of the verbosity and repetition a bit excessive in some spots.

The book begins with a good review of XML concepts, more than enough for a newbie, but easy to sift through for the more seasoned reader in need of a knowledge refresher. It continues through all the necessary concepts, including the XML classes in .NET, transformations, and of course, ADO.NET, the database core of the .NET platform. (On ADO.NET, it includes a general introduction, but of course focuses on it in an XML context.)

I have to say that one of the best outcomes of reading the book and experimenting with what I learned along the way is that many of the ADO.NET concepts that still seemed abstract to my not-quite-up-to-OOP brain suddenly fell into place and made much more sense to me when tied to the structures and concepts of XML.

No book is perfect, and I could have used some more detailed coverage in some areas. But overall, it's a great walk through the world of XML for the seasoned ASP.NET developer in need the grand tour. It sure was a help to me...

If you use C#, this is the perfect book. If you don't, learn to translate from it, cuz this is the best book around.

These are the types of books you need to look for. Take a small part of the .Net framework and give it a decent amount of coverage. Overall, the examples are fairly substantial and apply very well to real world programming situations.

And that was it. I can only tell you that it kept me reading it for three consequtive days, enough time to keep myself going, understand may parts, realise many possibilities/options and even optimise some code. This is not a book to solve a particular problem but it is a book to get you all excited about XML/XSLT/XLink/XPath and realise how this have been integrated to many of Microsoft Applications... (Notifications is one, CS2002 another).

I regret that I havent had that book before hand. It would have saved me many more hours of searching.

The only minus is that it makes you so excited that you end up spending another couple $$$ on other books to get into more details so I just shopped...
1 of: XPath and XPointer
1 of: Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming
1 of: XSLT and XPath On The Edge, Unlimited Edition
1 of: XSLT Programmer's Reference 2nd Edition

couple this with Professinal C# (2nd Edition) or even Beginning C# and you can do most things imaginable with c# and XML.

Thank you Dan.

After tearing out my hair for awhile, I found the problem: I had HomeSite 4.5 and Forta was writing about 4.0 and his book didn't show the changes, including exactly what I was trying to solve.

In short, I had wasted my money.

So be careful of the 4 in that title. If you are using 4.5, you might be in trouble. There is that much change between the two.

I searched the web for the information but wound up going back to the HomeSite book. It was quite easy to find the answers I was looking for.

There are a few things that bother me about HomeSite such as, if I create an html file and save it into the directory, the file doesn't show immediately. Instead of looking for an answer in the book to that question, I figure it is something I would need to take up with Allaire Technical Support - the owners of HomeSite.

But, overall, the book has been a great savings of my time and effort and I'm pleased to have it in my library!!

People who can't seem to find help with this book are those that can't learn unless they are in a curricular environment with its instructors.

Before purchasing HS 4.5 and this book ... , I had tried the trial version of the program from Allaire's web site. Granted I fell in love with the program and as DIY'ers do, I found my way around. But there were still questions I had so I bought this book. It pretty much answered any nagging questions that remained.

You know? There will ALWAYS be questions that you can never seem to get answered. That is life and you deal with it. I read one review of someone that said they bought this book hoping to find out why HS4.5 copies your html files and creates a clone file with the prefix of hs~(filename).html. This book didn't answer their questions so they slammed the book. I STILL don't know why HS4.5 does this but WHO CARES? It doesn't affect my sites. I don't have to upload them.

In a nutshell, if the manuals and online help that ship with HS4.5 aren't enough, buy this book. You'll need it and refer to it often. This book, HTML 4.0 Quickstart Guide, and a passion to learn more, and apply lots, are all you need to build sites with Homesite 4.5.

Quit running around looking for the RIGHT book.

Build some... sites.

The way this book progresses is excellent. It starts off with classic HTML, then goes on to site navigation including the incredibly useful rollOver effects and client-side image maps followed by coverage of graphics and colors. All of these areas alone were enough to drastically improve the way I approach desiging my websites and make purchasing this book worthwhile. What this book does is give you a whole new mindset about what good web design really is by talking about practices that work and those that don't and reiterating their points through helpful real-world examples.

The reason I have given this book 4 stars rather than 5 is because of it's second part. I feel that chapter 8 tried too hard to be almost a Dynamic HTML tutorial rather than an overview of the important subjects which they had been excelling in doing all along. I think that the DHTML coverage became too detailed and specific at certain points. If you want a complete tutorial on DHTML, I strongly reccomend Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Resource by Danny Goodman.

All in all, I feel that Mrs. Ibanez and Mrs. Zee did a superb job at cutting the fat and getting to the important stuff so that you could instantly become a smarter web designer. I strongly reccomend that you buy this book.

I first thought i would just read it and then it would sit on the shelf. But i was wrong. Even though i have several HTML reference books right next to this one on the shelf, i keep getting back to HTML Artistry, because it is well-written, nicely illustrated and so easy to understand and apply the techniques.

A nice book for those just beginning to build webpages, and an inspiration for experienced designers! I enjoy using it very much!

I do agree with those who say the main intent here is to keep you in mind of the bigger picture: dreaming up intriguing and appropriate ways of creating a dynamic and "alive" interface for your site.

The fact that the design of the book is every bit as pleasing as the design and functionality of the sites covered in it just adds to the impact. And their own companion site is a really dynamite tool, the icing on the cake. And then of course the tone and humor of the copy from Ms. Ibanez and Ms. Zee also helps to keep a potentially dry subject interesting. It's hard to read though...you want to put the book down and go design some cool sites quick! I'm definitely looking forward to Volume 2 due out in April 2001.

There is, however, a lot to gripe about. This book was pretty obviously rushed to press (No surprise there; at two years old, it's already something of a relic); there are clues to this throughout. The most obvious of them is the "Chapter 8" footer that you find running through Chapters 1 & 5; yes, they split up Chapter 8, but they forgot to rewrite its footers. Those last-minute reshufflings might account for why you've got some impossibly indecipherable code as early as Chapter 2 (The authors say at the outset that their objective in each chapter is to build on what they've covered so far; no joy there).

Every page has got at least one thing wrong with it -- murky graphics, graphics as many as five pages late, irrelevant graphics subbed in for the real McCoy -- never mind the bad grammar. And then, of course, there is the title: "HTML Artistry". There is at least as much JavaScript in this book as there is HTML.

My copy I managed to pick up cheap in an amazon.com auction. Would I have paid full price not knowing what I know now? No, thankfully. If you yourself aren't sure whether or not you want to then why not check out its accompanying website first. You like what you see ...?

Powell's style is about as clear as mud. Just when you think you are finally going to learn about, for example, what the XML fuss is all about (ch. 17) he leads you off into some dull, pedantic discussion of, . . . well I never did figure out what he was talking about. Other chapters are equally disappointing.

Here's an example of Powell's style. In Chapter 8, Frames are discussed. One attribute for frames is called _parent. Powell writes, "The _parent value enables you to overwrite the parent frame that contains the nested frame, without destroying any frames that the parent may be nested within."

Got that? Powell also explains that the _parent value isn't encountered very often. With explanations like the above, I think we can sort of understand why :-)

If you really want to learn HTML (and need a quick reference) get the book by Laura Lemay. Her style is much clearer, to the point, and the examples are not only useful, that actually work. When you are done with her book it may then be time to come back to Powell's stogy tomb, which tries to be all things to all people, and fails miserably, IMHO.

If I must say something negative [seeing that the publishers market this book as an "idea book"], the examples shown are a bit basic. For example, the "target" attribute within the "I use this book when I have forgotten the exact construct of certain tags, or when the pages are rendered in several browser products [like IE or Netscape]. If your beginning to think about designing web pages, this is only one of several books you'll own. There are plenty of "how-to" books that cover the syntax and tag construction in a more reader-centric format. I must state that this is a reference book and is probably not intended to begin your exposure to web development services [only the authors will disagree]. However, this book is truly a gem and worth every cent of the price, and like fine wine, will hold its value well into the future.