HTML Books

When I first started learning html I did not understand what it was about. I bought this book and I've learned alot about html. This is a great book. It also talks a little bit about other things dealing with web page making such as CSS and other.
Thumbs up on this book.

This book is the best in market for learning HTML.

I found this easy to use and it has everything you need to create beautiful web pages.

My searches were easily found and all my questions were answered with this book. I call it my HTML bible!

Believe this to be one of the best book I have read for learning and keeping up with HTML. You won't go wrong with this book. Very easy to read and understand. Great for the beginner and an excellent reference for the pro.

I received this book for Christmas and thought it would be like most other HTML books, rather "incomplete", as in skipping around and not really covering the topics. But, I was terribly wrong! I have been using it for 4 days now, and have read every piece of information on the 165 pages I have consumed hungrily.

Even though I already know HTML, this book helped me realise, that, since I taught myself HTML by looking at other people's pages, I learned a slap-dash method, and when I read this book I see all the places where I've gone wrong.

It is extremely thorough, and covers all topics you could possibly need to know about HTML 4.0. I think the CD is an extremely good idea, because I didn't have an editing environment already, and I sure didn't have any of the animation tools I will need later on in the book! So, now, I'm fully equipped (as they say).

I would reccommend this book to any novice through advanced reader. Everyone can learn something from this book, and have fun doing it! I never thought I would enjoy going through and taking notes and highlighting a 1,000+ page book, but I LOVE IT! I come back from my run every morning and dash to the computer and start working in this book. Please consider this book before any other!

As a web graphic designer, I want to expand my skills into CMS systems. I thought this book would be a good start, but after reading it, I learned little more than how to install Joomla and basic interactions. The book is states it's for "Novice to Professional," but a more accurate description would be "a getting started guide".

Great book, very informative. Was able to begin working on an existing Joomla site in short order. Also has info on how to use Google Analytics for web stats!

This is the best basic book I have found on Joomla! It's well written, with lots of tips for building a well thought out site with Joomla! I also learned much about how to think through site layout, and what keeps end users interested. We have built a really nice Intranet site with the knowledge gained from this book. Good info on nice Joomla plugins and other useful packages such as FreeMind.

These technical books are expensive (I paid full price for this in a bookstore) but worth every penny when they provide the answers to those inevitable snags you hit on a project. This book, however, almost never had the answers I needed. Mainly it points out the features in the Joomla admin interface, but that I could figure out on my own. I wanted to know things like how to download a template and customize it for my site. Instead the book tells you where the CSS code is and that you "can edit it" -- duh! In not anticipating and helping me through typical development tangles, I found the book an expensive, boring, barely helpful description of the Joomla admin tools. Save some money -- there are much better helps available free by searching Google.

I was initially very pleased with this book, and with help from this book, I was able to get a basic Joomla website running in a day or so. However as other reviewers have noted it seems to be missing several chapters that should provide details and examples of how to use menus, modules and articles together to create a good Joomla website.

The author raves about the Leo outline editor but never shows how to actually implement the outline using the Joomla menus etc. The author touches on some advanced issues such as creating your own template or an extension, but does not explain how to use the templates or extensions that come with Joomla. For example he states that "The parameters for Mod_mainmenu can change everything from the menu style to the menu hierarchy" but provides no examples and then proceeds to list the more advanced options! At a minimum he should explain how modules position content as left, main, right etc. Also as an example of poor organization this topic is in "Extensions - Default Site Modules - Main Menu" rather than "Adding Menus to Point to Content".

Figuring out how to modify a template and use modules so that content is placed where you want it, is perhaps the hardest aspect of Joomla. I'm still struggling to understand what all the CSS styles are used for. The author provides a brief intro to CSS but it would be nice to have a list of the key Joomla CSS styles and where they are used, plus some real world examples of (say) changing a color scheme or widening a column.

I'm puzzled by the many glowing reviews for this book! It gets off to a good start but then wanders off to discuss editors, extensions, analytics etc. rather than providing a good foundation for building a solid Joomla website.

This book doesn't have anything I couldn't find by just looking at samples on Sun's site.

Most of all, it's missing security like XML Signatures, and XML encryption.

This book is great if you know something about XML and Java. For true beginners, well, it's a stretch. It also starts to show its age, and furthermore, its supporting website - both on the author's web server and O'Reilly's own servers, is sketchy. You will rely on both to use the code mentioned in the book.
Otherwise, it is just an unremarkable information piece about Java and XML.

Second editions are always great. However, I find that I dont like all of the API reference in the book. I would rather look at APIs electronically and talk concepts in the book.

The author covers some background, but mainly sticks to the business end of dealing with XML using java. The book is set out so you can read the parts that are relevant to getting a particular piece of technology working quickly.

Before reading this book I had never written an XML parser, but within a couple of days I was able to rework a parser to make it work both faster and with a smaller memory footprint by following the guidelines in this book. The details are not covered in great depth, but enough to get a job done, and make this a portabe reference.

Another book worth owning from the O'Reilly press.

Compared with .NET and XML this book tends to wander and rat hole a little. The book covers the basics. The SAX and DOM approaches. It also covers XSLT and serving XML. It also covers advanced topics like Castor, JDOM, and web services. But most of the subjects are covered at a cursory level and do not serve as a complete introduction.

There is a small reference at the end of the book which is not as easy to read as the APIs described in the Nutshell style.

I gave this book four stars because, while it does lack focus, it is a good introduction to the XML APIs for Java. In the third release they should concentrate a little harder editing in some focus and a better reference section at the end.

I thought this book was well researched and presented in a way that anyone could relate to. It certainly aids someone desiring to learn all they can about building websites with CS2.

Good price, quick delivery, and brand new. All positive feedback. The only slightly negative thing is one of the corners of the book was damaged, but the book is fully usable.

I have taken several classes to learn Dreamweaver but still didn't handle to use Dreamweaver very well...until I found this book which answered all the questions I had to master Dreamweaver. This book is the best book out there so far for beginner; A must have.

I had to buy this book for a class, it is terrible. All the author does is have you go click here and drag this to go through the exercises with no explainations. It's a waste of time and money.

This has to be the worst book ever written. Do yourself a favor, and spare yourself from the pain. The author thinks it's cute to make little quips that a 3 year might think of and put little wink things behind them, you know what I mean ;). The problem is they just annoy you to no end. The other annoying thing is that it takes the author a page and half to say "Hit the Enter Key". He spends page after page talking of inane things, hawking other books, and making stupid, juvenile comments. The book is a laborious 700 pages long, an agonizing 700 pages long. I have noticed that they have fired the dweeb who wrote it, Garo Green (who I always imagined him as a pasty white, fat 50 year old geek-you'll see what I mean if you have the misfortune of being forced to use this book), and significantly shorten the book, even though Dreamweaver 8 has many more features. I write this with the full knowledge that I will be selling my copy of this at the end of the semester, and that this review will adversely affect my selling price, but the book is really that bad. Unless you need it for a course, do not buy it. I promise you will regret it.

While this book does cover a lot of important topics in C++ in a very short time, that's not necessarily a good thing. The format of the book is: new concept, example code, explanation of the example code. The biggest problem is that new stuff shows up in the example code that he doesn't bother to explain. Some of that stuff is then covered later, some of it isn't. Also, he uses the same code throughout, elaborating as each new concept is introduced. The problem is that sometimes the elaborations shown in the book won't work without other changes that aren't included. This may be his intent, as it gives you some debugging practice, but he definitely doesn't say so, and it gets a little confusing.

I am a Computer Science major, and I have been learning Java. Knowing that I need to learn more than one language I decided to pick up C++, and I bought this book because it was the cheapest that Sams Publishing had. The book surprised me because it was perfect for someone who had an intermediate level of knowledge about programming. It explains in detail what the syntax does, and therefore makes it helpful when relating the algorithms used in both languages. The lessons are also short so there is not a lot of unneeded jargon describing every little thing.

This book gets you programming in C++ pretty quickly and is intended for readers who want concise lessons on the fundamentals of C++ and do not want to have to learn from an phonebook sized book. You build a software calculator and add functions with each lesson, so each lessons builds or improves on the previous. You will need a companion C++ reference book to explain some subjects in more depth. Face it, if you are to master C++ you will have to buy a few more books. This is the price for making a short concise learners book. Also, do not expect to wiz through every lesson in 10 mins, some take longer.

This book would be greatly improved if the full source code was available online for each lesson. It would certainly speed up the learning pace closer to the 10 mins promised. They do post the listings (example code in book) provided in the book, but that is not the source code only pieces of it. I have completed 14 lessons (out of 27) and have become stuck in lesson 15 due to the unclear instruction and construction of the program. The book builds on previous chapters in the book, so skipping chapters is not possible (unless the source code was available).

If you get this book see my post on Jesse's forum for errata through lesson 15. It should help you and maybe you can help me. http://forums.delphiforums.com/JesseLiberty

This book may be the best thing since sliced bread and canned beer, as many reviewers seem to have already pointed out.

However...the title is flat out misleading and is actually false advertizing.

Almost anyone who has tried to learn C++ thoroughly will shake their head and roll their eyes when they see the title of this book.

How about "Teach yourself C++ in many lessons - each of which could take you around 10 minutes (depending on how quickly you read and how much you really want to understand) though honestly, if you really want to learn C++ you probably need to read many additional books and spend at least 3 or 4 years programming in it."?

I eagerly await the publisher's next book: "Teach Yourself to speak Fluent Mandarin Chinese in 45 Seconds".

I found this book to be very useful. If you want to pick up some good, solid footing in C++, with or without a background in programming - this book is for you. The format is clean: 10 minutes or so at a time is perfect for getting into the office a little early and running through a lesson or two prior to commencing your workday. There is source code available on the books actual website on http://www.samspublishing.net, which helps this become a learning exercise, rather than a typing exercise, for those of you whom are advanced enough to just want to read solid source code.

I do find that by chapter 15 some of the examples start to get somewhat dicey: I can't always tell if I am supposed to be entering this code, or if it's only for discussion. Later in the "Listings" it's clear that it was NOT for discussion and I will need to enter it in order to make the examples work. That's fine - perhaps the author can use that format as a 'puzzle' if s/he so chooses. Just make me hip to the joke.

If you are using Visual C++.NET you may want to find a book SPECIFICALLY for that environment, as this is all standard C++. Nothing wrong with that, mind you - but the .NET environment may require a little more 'gear grinding and lever pulling' to mitigate trouble should you come across any, if my experience is any judge ;)

i'm a teacher (and a very good one...) I know how to teach from scratch
this book is confusing and not clear (overall for somebody new to this language)
errors galore...
ex : page 116 they ask to get a file (smlogo.pct) in chap08... well, it's not there, is on chap06
who supervise this books?
the URL she put as example are not there!
oh well...
to much hype and very low quality (and I bougth a lots of books to teach myself...
miss Weinman, can you send me my money back?
thanks
Fernando Torm

This is a very good book, in a cheap price, which is a very good beginning for anyone who wants to build his own website. It's also a useful book for professionals.

The book is explaining each topic in the best way, and it also has many good samples, and a guide to the HTML tags.

I would NOT recommend this book for beginners - books for beginners should be almost free of errors, and this one is not. File names and paths in the book don't match those on the accompanying CD, the HTML in the book doesn't match perfectly what is in the files, the referenced sites don't exist anymore. And the book site does not list the corrections. Also, for a book targeted at beginners, many engineering terms are used before they are defined. The chapters on color were particularly difficult, and I think might have been better located later in the book. The book/CD is ok for someone with a technical background who might be able to pick up on the mistakes and get past them. But generally it could have used a good quality assurance pass before it was published, verifying the exercises worked as described and the logic of the sequence of chapters. If that work had been done, then this would be a good, useful book.

I bought this book with high hopes of learning to hand-code html but found it to be a complete hindrance. The number of typographical errors is a crime. There are examples of design pitfalls to avoid followed by code examples that accomplish exactly what you're told not to do. The code examples have very inconsistent syntax and are very confusing for beginners. There are step by step procedures in Photoshop listing menu options in the wrong places and some that simply don't exist. If you already know the program you might be able to figure it out, but if not--you're lost. Though the companion website does list errata, the sloppiness of this book is inexcusable. On top of that, the faded colors of the text and graphics make for difficult legibility. All of this makes one wonder about the design skills of this self-professed web guru.

Overall, this book is an excellent choice for learning how to work effectively with HTML. It covers most everything you need to know in one place (albeit in over 400 pages), so you don't need a stack of books, wondering in which one to look for the info you want.

This book is very useful and usable, but I almost didn't even consider it after reading another reviewer's comments. Luckily, I was able to browse an actual copy of the book and found something quite different. (In particular, if this book failed to adequately address tables that would be enough to question its utility. But in fact there's ample coverage of the use of tables! It covers the basics, intermediate-level usage, tips and some special caveats. Definitely not just about graphic placement!)

An Excellent and very informative book. Not only does it have a complete list of CSS 2.1 compliant listings, property by property , but practical use and examples that make it easy to understand and apply. You can't beat Amazon's price. I purchased this and "The CSS Anthology" for the same price as one of the books at BN or Borders. AN Excellent Addition to the Web Programmers Library!

Its a great book, but doesn't push very far for creativity. Some books smash the information through to you in such a way like its picture book... extreme use of examples. I'm more of the "just give me the methods and information clearly, and lemme fiddle around with my own creativity." The entire book I was thinking to myself "how can I take these examples and convert them into actual web page designs I want to make?"

Despite that, there is still a lot of information crammed into it. It has a beefy index, but then again, I wish it had more CSS "tricks." Like methods and ideas for pushing css possibilities to the extreme, despite minimal browser compatibility. It didn't shoot for the sky..

I'm not going to launch into a rhapsody like some reviewers do, pointlessly going beyond the pail dissecting a web design book like this. For me I just want to see if a book has what I need to get me where I need to go! Here's the facts - jack.

- The title is misleading, you will learn to design without tables, however that's not where the book is focused, if you expect myriad examples of how to layout pages with CSS you will be disappointed (as I was).

- Almost half of the book is reference!

- It is well written and a good book for those with some (x)html experience looking to power up with CSS.

- Is it worth the money? For me it wasn't since I want a book that's chock full of layout examples - however it's a good deal for those looking to learn CSS.
Of course you can learn all of the stuff in this book online for free, there's many great CSS sites out there.

So there you have it! A sucker free review with no superfluous wordage.

I honestly didn't use CSS too much in the past and I always used tables for my layout. However, this book has quickly shown me everything I needed to know to become proficient and confident in using CSS; it has also allowed me to discontinue using tables (except for certain situations, i.e. tabular data). This book is a very easy read and a great reference to keep on your desk for all your CSS needs.

In my opinion the book was lame. It was apparently written by an author with limited web experience particularly for large scale web sites. The theory of the book is okay, but the details of how to pull this off in a large web site are not discussed. The book is called Designing Without Tables, however nearly 1/3 of the book is dedicated to designing with tables. Might be good for a college student, but not in the real world of Google, Amazon, Yahoo etc.

I'm scared of regular expressions. They vex me constantly at work whether trying to figure out someone else's Apache RewriteRules or Perl or just trying myself to do mildly clever things in vi and sed. They are a headache.

A coworker let me browse his copy of this wonderful little book and I was hooked. I actually tried to buy one that day on the way home, but they were out of stock and so I permitted Amazon to ship me one.

In addition to brief explanations of the different types of regexes in the wild (based on the comprehensive Mastering title, also from ORA), there are detailed quick references to all of the different implementations including several common languages (Perl, PHP, C#, and several others) and software packages (including sed, Apache, vi and many others). All of their various quicks and "features" are explained briefly and there are some examples.

No one hacking around in Unix or doing much programming should be without this book, unless they are already a regex wizard, and I think even they'd find it handy.

Most developers know how to write regular expressions, almost none of them can read them. And if you are saying that you can. Well congratulations to you. You are one of the 0.1% of developers that can or you are one of those who think they can.

The books physical appearance is so compact that it has become a permanent item on my working desk. And is often used.

You know those times when you know what you want to do, but are not sure of the correct form, this is the book to grab. It has been my book to grab as a reference rather than trying to find the right language book. This is not the book to learn the language from, however. You will find your copy will be well worn if you do lots of coding.

From the back cover of the Regular Expression Pocket Reference: "Ideal as a quick reference..." and "... makes an ideal on-the-job companion." All this is true if you are well-versed in regular expressions and use multiple programming languages (and confuse the syntax).

I like the use of the same examples across programming languages (where applicable).

The recipes in the cookbook section are great, although I would have liked to see additional recipes (like stripping HTML tags, matching credit card numbers etc...). Of course the examples are endless and over time one builds his/her own recipe collection. At least this is a good place to start.

Pocket references are not meant to teach you anything from the beginning, but to be everyday references in known and new environments. In other words, if you don't know regular expressions, then go to "Mastering Regular Expressions". If you're still here, then you'll get a cheat sheet on steroids for languages ranging from bug-prone JavaScript to the King and Queen of robustness, Perl and Python. Although everything claims to be PCRE these days, particular examples in every language available is a plus for anyone. A must for any type of user input validation.

This is not the best written book. I am learning a lot of stuff about FrontPage 2002, but I while reading the book I get the filling that it was by more than one person. Sometimes the 1st person is used, sometimes it is not. The steps in the books are not always clear and are overly wordy. Some of the steps seem to over explain process that had already be explain earlier, almost as if the author did not realize he had already explain them. You can learn with this book, but unless you're buying it at a very discounted price, by some other book.

While this book is good at providing an overview of all of the features that are contained within FP, do not even try to use it as a reference book. The steps are so geared to his specific downloaded examples that you cannot translate the steps to whatever you are working on. More theory and less "...and now do this..." kind of content would have been way more helpful. The number of typos are extraordinary - here is my favorite "...you can set an included page with the text Welcome to automatically change to Merry Christams on December 31." Merry Christmas, Mr. Channathambi!

This books is excellent if you are new to FrontPage or web design. The book is easy to read, provides good examples, and covers the key features of FrontPage plus a little more: website design, organization, images, tables, forms (email, confirmation pages, etc.). Though much of FrontPage's features (font, inserting images, tables, etc.) works similarly to MS Word, PowerPoint, or Publisher, I found Kirupa's book useful.

STRENGTHS
1. Easy to read and well-organized intro to the basics of FrontPage.
2. Kirupa has a website that serves as a valuable (and free) companion to the book. There, you can download examples of FrontPage functions and designs mentioned throughout his book. There's also discussion forum, among other information.
3.Kirupa personally answers questions via email. I sent him an email with a FrontPage question last night and got a response back from this afternoon. That's impressive.

OPPORTUNITY AREAS
I would rate the book with five stars if:
1. It included a very basic glossary of the key tools and inputs used in FrontPage. Kirupa provides excellent "how to" instructions to do a very specific task, e.g. "Click here, then click there, etc." However, in many cases, FrontPage gives you many other options within the same tool bar function. Without a glossary, it's hard to know why he chose not to click on the other options available.
2. I think there may be an over-reliance on learning FrontPage by rote. I like Kirupa's "training seminar approach", but the shortfall is that we rely a lot on his downloadable examples. Again, we follow his step-by-step instructions, but we don't really know why we click on "this" and not on "that".

Overall, the benefits of the book outweigh the opportunities. One must keep in mind that the book is meant for beginners, and Kirupa does a solid job here. I guess Kirupa taught the basics of FrontPage so quickly and easily that one can't help but want a detailed glosary in order to start learning some of the more advanced functions!

Front Page 2002: A beginner's guide - does a decent job of teaching you Frontpage, but it is overly simplistic. It takes forever to learn core tasks. The main fault I found with the book is that it is NOT concise! In a manual of this type, you want the author to get to the key points, efficiently communicate what you need to know, and move on. This book fails in this regard. That said, to it's credit, if you have the time, it does eventually get around to explaining how to use front page.

This books is excellent if you are new to FrontPage or web design. The book is easy to read, provides good examples, and covers the key features of FrontPage plus a little more: website design, organization, images, tables, forms (email, confirmation pages, etc.). Though much of FrontPage's features (font, inserting images, tables, etc.) works similarly to MS Word, PowerPoint, or Publisher, I found Kirupa's book useful.

STRENGTHS
1. Easy to read and well-organized intro to the basics of FrontPage.
2. Kirupa has a website ... that serves as a valuable (and free) companion to the book. There, you can download examples of FrontPage functions and designs mentioned throughout his book. There's also discussion forum, among other information.
3. Kirupa personally answers questions via email. I sent him an email with a FrontPage question last night and got a response back from this afternoon. That's impressive.

OPPORTUNITY AREAS
I would rate the book with five stars if:
1. It included a very basic glossary of the key tools and inputs used in FrontPage. Kirupa provides excellent "how to" instructions to do a very specific task, e.g. "Click here, then click there, etc." However, in many cases, FrontPage gives you many other options within the same tool bar function. Without a glossary, it's hard to know why he chose not to click on the other options available.
2. I think there may be an over-reliance on learning FrontPage by rote. I like Kirupa's "training seminar approach", but the shortfall is that we rely a lot on his downloadable examples. Again, we follow his step-by-step instructions, but we don't really know why we click on "this" and not on "that".

Overall, the benefits of the book outweigh the opportunities. One must keep in mind that the book is meant for beginners, and Kirupa does a solid job here. I guess Kirupa taught the basics of FrontPage so quickly and easily that one can't help but want a detailed glosary in order to start learning some of the more advanced functions!

I agree with most reviews for DHTML Utopia; the book is middle level, leaving beginners in the dust but pros wanting more. It is, however, well written and contains very good code and coding standards. If you are not completely new to JavaScript and DOM scripting, but would like to learn more and make sure your code is up to today's standards, then this book is for you. If you are very familiar with web scripting and/or have been writing your own unobtrusive client side code then go with a more detailed book.

This book has a lot of great stuff but you have to have the patience to sit down and read it line by line. Can't scan through the book and hope to learn something. Even need to type in the script and try it yourself. Some of the most important ideas the author just covered in two sentences. It does teach a lot of useful stuff but it is absolutely not a beginner's book. Save me from my job interview.

This is without doubt the worst book on DHTML/Javascript that I've ever read. The author tries to be cute, funny and authorative but ends up just plain painful. The examples are over-long and artificial, and would be difficult to incorporate into a real world application. The author peppers the book with snazzy shots like "It's the modern way!" but rarely explains the benefits of the methodology he's pushing, and glosses over any shortcomings.
For instance, in discussing regular expressions he provides a simple expression for a telephone number, then points out that it's seriously flawed. But it's "suitable for our discussion" so onward we press, and a correct solution is never provided. Bad luck if you were after such a beast. (Footnotes abound - often just URLs to now broken links - so you have to wonder why he couldn't have provided the solution at the bottom of the page.) The part on Ajax is a joke - he just plugs in an out-of-date version of the Sarissa library and never scratches below the surface.
Beware.

As a developer with no prior JavaScript experience, I've been very disappointed with this book. In the Introduction section, the author says "Some experience with JavaScript might also be useful, but it is by no means critical" (Page VIII) which isn't true.

Throughout the book, the author will keep assuming (implicitly) that you already have a good programming background (he uses a more complex logic in his code),and will leave many things unexplained or explained too late. This alone will easily guarantee frustration. NO BOOK EVER frustrated me that much.

Another issue is that the book uses some very complicated examples with complex logic. Unlike other decent coding books, instead of starting with simple functional examples and developing them\it as you read a chapter, the author uses one big example and "tries" to explain it part by part throughout the chapter. This might force you to "memorize" the script(s) since they contain too much code to understand (which is not the point). To make sure if the examples of the book suit you or not, download the free sample chapters from Sitepoint.com and check the "table highlight" example at the end of chapter 3. That's how most of the examples will be presented. (with more code of course)

Now don't get me wrong, the topics covered in this book are great, but it seems that the only people who will really appreciate it are those who already have a good background in JavaScript (logic,functions,methods...etc) NOT beginners like myself. So if you're trying to learn JavaScript\DOM, then go find a better book (such as "DOM scripting").

(this was originally published on www.last-child.com)

This is a difficult book to read for non-javascript programmers. If you are more comfortable with HTML and CSS, I'd recommend reading Jeremy Keith's DOM Scripting first. Keith explains the theories behind this book.

That said, I did learn enough from DHTML Utopia to not look like a complete idiot during my job interview with Yahoo. This book is filled with project examples for you to follow along with. I will say that I tried several of the examples and had mixed results. I visited the book's web site to get updated code.

If you've already worked with Javascript, this is a great book to have on the shelf. If you are a rookie, start with Jeremy Keith and follow up with DHTML Utopia.