Product Description

Are you fascinated by the look and design of Web pages? Do you wish that you had the knowledge and skills to create a great looking Web site? Whether you’re an up–and–coming Web designer or just an enthusiastic hobbyist, you are probably using HTML, the standard authoring language for the Internet. HTML 4 For Dummies, now in its 5^th edition, will show you the basics of working with this language as well as advanced skills for all–around knowledge.

HTML is used to create Web documents. As a standard issued by the World Wide Web Consortium, it is used by almost everyone to create and edit Web pages. HTML is capable of:

• Creating a Web site
• Inserting designs to a Web page
• Running on both PCs and Macs

The new edition of HTML 4 For Dummies contains nearly 50% more content than its previous editions, and covers a wide range of material, including: Planning a Web site to avoid underperformance

• Creating and viewing a Web page
• Working with text, tables, lists, and links
• Adding style to your page with images, colors, and fonts
• Managing layout
• Controlling positioning and appearance using CSS
• Integrating scripts with HTML
• Designing an eBay auction page
• Helpful advices and tips, as well as warnings about pitfalls

Complete with a 6–page tear–out colored reference sheet, HTML 4 For Dummies is the most comprehensive HTML guide yet. Written by a computer expert and author of over 120 books, including the previous editions of the bestselling HTML 4 For Dummies, this straightforward, fun guide will aid you through making and editing beautiful Web pages.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #201535 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Hard-core programmers would say that HTML is for dummies. Nonetheless, those of us who'd like to build and maintain our own Web sites but cringe at the sight of anything resembling a programming language, HTML 4 for Dummies is the hand-holding guide we need to help us through.

Given that so many HTML editors are available that do all of the site-building work for you, it's strange that the authors chose to wait until Appendix C in the back of the book to explain why you need to know HTML. Still, their reasons for learning HTML are sound and the advice they dispense is solid.

Along with going through the ins and outs of HTML tags, the authors do a fine job of explaining what design elements work and how to avoid common mistakes. The section on XHTML ensures that budding site builders have all the latest tools at their disposal.

Whether your goal is to build a simple, text-oriented Web site, or one loaded with frames and graphics and animation, HTML 4 for Dummies will put you on the right track. --John Frederick Moore, amazon.com

Review
"read the user–friendly starter guide HTML 4 For Dummies, published by John Wiley & Sons." (Smallbusiness.co.uk)

Review
"read the user–friendly starter guide HTML 4 For Dummies, published by John Wiley & Sons." (Smallbusiness.co.uk)

Customer Reviews

Excellent - easy to use and very informative
This is a great book - before reading it I had no idea how to use HTML, now I have my own webpage. This gently leads the reader through a range of HTML skills, from creating a very basic page, to one incorporating tables, frames, graphics, javascript and other more complex elements. The language used is simple to follow, without being patronising, and technical details are included, but explained in full. There are also many useful links to websites of interest, as well as the Dummies website, which is a valuable resource. Well worth buying - with this book creating a web page entirely from scratch is made simple.

A good introduction to HTML, but in today's context, quite dated.
I read this book cover to cover some time ago to fill any gaps I may have encountered in teaching myself HTML years before. The book covers pretty much every fundamental aspect of HTML, and does a decent job of explaining it all, too. Some other reviews state the book is difficult to follow. Unfortunately, even HTML has a degree of complexity, and this book explains HTML in as simplified a way as is possible.

This book falls short not through a lack of content, but in that it's fairly dated in today's context. After reading the entire book, you'll be able to create websites that would have looked very much bog-standard even in the late 90s. The real designs start coming together when you start working with programs like Photoshop and Flash alongside hard coding HTML. With several graphic design tools and these foundational HTML techniques, you'll be able to create websites. Don't be under the illusion that you'll finish the book and be able to throw together a contemporary website.

Another point worth mentioning is that XHTML is the current standard, and soon HTML 4 will be fairly obsolete. It may be a couple of years down the line, but that's roughly the learning curve for getting reasonably good at web design. I'd reccommend any XHTML book over this book, as they tend to cover everything useful (and necessary) in this book and disregard all the useless, obsolete tags that make your site look like it hasn't been updated since 1996.

However, if you simply want to learn HTML to make a basic homepage for family photos or the like, this book may be all you need.

All you'll ever need
This book is fantastic. I read this book with no knowledge whatsoever of HTML or web design, and am now a web hotshot who's been hired to design several pages and even opened my own site to help teach others about the web. The real meat of this book is in Chapter 5, where all the tags are presented along with all of their attributes, properties, and what exactly they do. The enclosed CD is a sheer boon, providing powerful tools and more examples than you could shake a stick at. I highly recommend it.