Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 427 pages
- Published by: Apress June 25, 2007
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 1590597478
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-1590597477
-
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 6.9 x 1 inches
- Weighs: 1.6 pounds
Reader Reviews
Despite the "Beginning HTML" in the title, this small horror is a densely packed text of incomprehensible jargon. This book is only useful for balancing wobbly table legs and for teaching writers how NOT to write a reference work / tutorial. I bought it based on the title, not the contents. (It was shrink-wrapped at a brick-and-mortar bookstore) Had I seen a sample of the text, I would have reshelved it hurriedly or offered a dime to buy it for firewood. As a reference work for web designers, or a tutorial for beginners, it ranks below any other book I've seen on the subject. APPENDICES: 1) The promised CSS is scattered throughout the book, with no CSS reference guide in the appendices. 2) The appendices for HTML and XHTML describe each tag's parameters in such a way as to leave one wondering how to use them, and what each tag and parameter does. EXAMPLES: The authors clearly did not proofread the version that reached the printers, or the editors made unexpected, inexcusable last-minute cutbacks. This is most obvious in photo captions that ask us (unbelievably) to find the differently colored text in identical B&W screenshots (p. 143), and in examples of JPEG artifacts/compression (p. 108) and pixelating (p. 106) that are unnoticeable because the example photographs have been shrunken far too much or carelessly created. INDEX: Carelessly assembled, neglecting common terms like "mouseover". LANGUAGE: Professorial pointification and obfuscation rather than real advice to beginners or helpful reference for experts. Reads like a fillibuster performed by a student defending his masters' dissertation. For example, what beginner could make use of this entry in the appendices? (p. 353) "The param element allows you to set run-time values for objects that have been inserted into a document. Required attributes: type: specifies the MIME type of the resource specified in the value attribute when the valuetype attribute is set to ref; value: specifies the actual value associated with the parameter" ...and so on. Sentences are needlessly wordy, overly technical, and filled with passive verbs. In short, the writing bores and frustrates more than an afternoon spent with an enthusiastic life insurance salesman. For example, from page 352: <option
Search for books at
