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HTML The Definitive Guide, Third Edition
by By Chuck Musciano and Bill Kennedy, Reviewed by Patricia Bunning, NOCCC , bunningp@earthlink.net - May 20, 1999 at 14:10:04:
The third edition of the popular HTML: The Definitive Guide was published in the summer of 1998 to include the standards of HTML version 4.0 which had been released in April 1998. It is written for use with Netscape 4+ and Internet Explorer 4.0 plus the common extensions. It is a book used as a reference text in many HTML classes and covers all topics of HTML thoroughly. It is not written as a tutorial with cookbook-like instructions but as a textbook with full explanations and reasons given for every direction. There are examples to illustrate every important point.It is intended to be a complete guide to enable the reader to become expert in writing documents in HTML for web pages. Other topics, such as web page design, graphics, and uploading files, which need to be learned before a web page can be successfully created, are not covered. The authors suggest that another O’Reilly book, Designing for the Web by Jennifer Niederst with Edie Freedman, 1996, be used to learn web page design. This book is no longer available, but Web Design in a Nutshell also written by Jennifer Niederst, O’Reilly, 1999, covers web page design, uploading files, graphics [JPEG, GIF, and PNG], DHTML, and XML. Beginners would benefit from reading Ms. Niederst’s book before studying HTML: The Definitive Guide.
The authors suggest that, depending upon the level of expertise, readers should begin their reading of HTML: The Definitive Guide at different points. Beginners on the web or those interested only casually in the composition of documents are invited to begin with chapter 1, HTML and the World Wide Web. This chapter describes what HTML is, what it is not, the limitations it has, the interaction of HTML with the browser, the role of extensions, and provides a suggested toolkit of three web sites useful to writers of HTML.
Readers familiar with the web, but not familiar with HTML, are invited to begin their reading with chapter 2, HTML Quick Start, which is an overview containing explanations of most of the terms used. And experienced HTML authors would likely use the book mainly as a reference to the HTML 4.0 standard and the characteristics of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. The index is excellent and cross-referencing between topics is easy to use.
The remaining chapters are (3) Anatomy of an HTML Document; (4) Text Basics; (5) Rules, Images, and Multimedia. (6) Document Layout; (7) Links and Webs; (8) Formatted Lists; (9) Cascading Style Sheets; (10) Forms; (11) Tables; (12) Frames; (13) Executable Content [Applets and Objects, JavaScript]. (14) Dynamic Documents [Client-pull, Server-push]; (15) Tips, Tricks, and Hacks. The book is concluded with an appendix of six chapters: (A) HTML Grammar; (B) HTML Tag Quick Reference; (C) Cascading Style Sheet Properties Quick Reference; (D) The HTML 4.0 DTD; (E) Character Entities; (F) Color Names and Values. To learn in great detail about this or any other title of O’Reilly and Associates, visit www.oreilly.com. Each title has a separate page consisting of a full description of the book, information about the authors including their e-mail addresses. Also the table of contents, the index, reviews of the book both by professionals and by readers, a sample chapter, and errata which is updated periodically to include corrections both by the authors as well as by readers.
HTML The Definitive Guide may be ordered direct from the publisher online or purchased locally at a discounted price from computer stores and some book stores. O’Reilly & Associates, August 1998. 608 pages, ISBN 1-56592-492-4 $32.95
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