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Review categories > Website Design Books > Mastering HTML 4.0
By: Bruce Morris Review for 'Mastering HTML 4.0'
Rating: 5 of out 6
Written By: Deborah Ray and Eric Ray
Page Count: 1009
Cover Type: Softcover
Published By: Sybex
Date Published: 10/1997
List Price: $49.99
Author's Site: http://www.webdevelopersjourna...
Mastering HTML
4.0 is one of those huge, doorstop-type computer books.
But don't get me wrong - it's quite a useful doorstop. I
use the doorstop adjective to describe it because I like
to own a huge, up-to-date all-encompassing HTML
reference tome and this is it.
While adequately
covering all the basics of HTML, it has lengthy,
comprehensive HTML 4.0 sections. Here's a bullet list of
the type of good stuff included:
- HTML 4.0 specs
- How to design pages for multiple browser types
- Multimedia and Java stuff
- The usual design advice
- How to write searchable HTML
- How to build dynamic HTML pages
- DHTML stuff
- Push stuff
- Thorough reference on HTML. Style sheets,
JavaScript, special characters, browser-safe colors,
etc (all this alone is worth the price of admission)
- Companion CD with all sorts of
goodies
Although I found some sections a
bit short on code and screen shot examples, I couldn't
really find anything missing for either advanced or
beginner HTML developers. Of course there's a lot in
here besides strict HTML information. How to plan a
site, work with clients, testing for usability,
readability and accuracy, a fair bit about formatting
graphics, and on and on. The style sheets chapter is
particularly useful although there is only slight
mention of how to use them so they work well with both
common browsers. A mere 25 pages on DHTML left me hungry
for more detail. But - almost a third of the book, 300
pages, is plain old reference - a real bonus for
hard-core HTML developers. Having written my own book on
HTML (HTML
in Action) I like to think I'm an advanced HTML
dude and I absolutely crave such detailed, comprehensive
reference sections.
It's big, fat, and a great
reference. Although the Web world measures time in dog
years, this book should be useful for quite a while.
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