Reviews for HTML, XHTML, and CSS: Visual QuickStart Guide: With XHTML and CSS (Visual QuickStart Guides)

1. Good start for but in need of an update.

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, March 12th, 2010

   I bought this book based on the reviews. I knew a little bit about HTML before buying this book. I am interested in learning web-design. I decided to make a website as I went through the book. It does help to do this if you learn best by doing. Most of the examples are easy to follow and edit to fit your own needs.
   
   Unfortunately there are some rather confusing parts in the book which require further research, as the book sometimes fails to go into further detail. Luckily if you are reading this book you probably have an internet connection and can easily find answers with a quick Google search.
   
   To be honest I would recommend anyone who is interested in learning XHTML or CSS to look for online tutorials and just practice. All of what is in this book is available for free online. Come up with an idea in your head and try to build it, and don't give up if it gets difficult. I've now got to a stage where I can see my mistakes very quickly and can also work out ways to do pretty much whatever I need to do. You'll find that there is more than one way to do what you want to do, everyone has their own style.
   
   If you want to check your codes you can use the validation services on the W3C website. Trust me, these are extremely useful and will help you to find any errors in your code. You will certainly find that some of this book is now out of date and wrong. So if something doesn't work, it may not necessarily be your fault. Perhaps wait for the 7th Edition.
   
   My only other issue is that some of this book seems to be laid out in the wrong order. You'll find yourself getting to chapter 11 before finding out how to give your page a background, in my opinion I would have liked to learn this much earlier as it makes a huge difference to your page layout and CSS formatting. So quite often you'll find yourself skipping through 6 chapters to find what you want and then reading backwards.
   
   To anyone who already knows basic XTML and CSS this book is probably not going to be of much use. I've read it once and now I generally use it as a reference or use online resources if I'm stuck. It is very basic.
   

2. brilliant!!

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, January 12th, 2010

   I think this book is absolutely brilliant. I've had a bit of experience with CSS and XHTML, as I did a course with the Open Uni. I've just read the first few pages of this new book and it details things so much more clearly than the course I did. It's really refreshing. It gives you the background on HTML and why it moved to XHTML - the positives and negatives this brings, also why CSS is important, with the author giving her own views on such things!
   
   The Index is brilliant - not only giving an index on normal words, but giving an index on symbols.
   
   It gives you a 2 page chart of colours, from the hexadecimal ones, to the 16 pre-defined ones, also giving you a very brief overview on what they mean, and a website where you can get the full range. So helpful in my opinion, as I've many times tried to find a part in the book where I can remember the author giving a website but can't find it!
   
   It gives a list of graphic tools, from Dreamweaver to Photoshop, providing a brief description, & a URL to purchase it from.
   
   20 pages detail all types of XHTML elements, from elements and attributes (tags), to properties and values that you'd include in a css file (eg. background-color.. etc), "intrinsic events" (eg. onmouseover / onkeypress .. etc), special charactors (eg. ><"&-,./), Greek, and finally... shapes and arrows.
   
   I find it very hard to concentrate whilst reading a book if there's a lot of text - it puts me off so much - but this book is really good, as for each page, it's spilt down the middle into 2. For the beginning, the introducions only take up half of each page, so it doesn't look like a lot of text at all. You can have a sneek look of pages on Amazon I think.. I think they're called page turners? I had a look before I purchased this book, as I liked the look of the content.
   
   The content itself is really interesting - it describes things in a few sentences that the course I've done with the Uni would of used a whole chapter for! But it does include all the info you'll need.
   
   There are a few piccies on each page or every other page, so it doesn't look all text. Headings and colours are used to seperate things, and also there's a lot of boxes titled "Tips!" so you know where the best bits are.
   
   Overall a brilliant book. I think even for experienced css/xhtml users, this is a "refer back to" book, that you'll always have open on your desk! For beginners like myself, it's a must-have, as the author puts her opinions in so you don't feel like you're reading from a school book.. it's quite personalised.
   
   Brilliant! A*
   
   Rachael

3. html & css

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2009

   This is THE book if your starting in web design, or if your like me and learn project by project, a good reference to go back to and fill in the gaps.
   Clearly written and in a format that helps the reader at every step. The attention to detail helped me a lot, even down to the colour chart in the back cover to help decipher colour codes for css functions.

4. This book honestly started my new career path!

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2009

   Like the guy that reviewed this book before me, I'm on the CIW training course, the difference is this book was what made me go for a career in web design.
   
   It's very easy to follow, and the pages are split so the code and code explanations are kept separate. Also, this book starts with HTML (all the latest standards, which are themselves also very well described), and starts CSS later. The change is fluid, so you're not having to re-learn.
   
   Very soon you find yourself playing around with tiny CSS settings with confidence.

5. A perfect book for newbeginners

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, July 12th, 2009

   I wanted to learn web coding and web programming. The first natural step was to learn HTML and CSS. After a bit of research on various sites on the web, it seemed as though this book was recommended by many people. So I bought it and started working trough it.
   
   The books title is very precise. This book gives you a quick startup with various visual guides. The book is separated in various topics (chapters) which each focus on some important aspect of the HTML/CSS-language and/or how to make good code. Every small guide (like how to emphasise text using the emph-tag) comes with some hints and tips that will help you use the code correctly. Troughout the book you will learn basic HTML/XHTML, CSS and a bit about how to make layouts, what aspects to have in mind while coding a website and so forth.
   
   The different topics/chapters of the book feels a bit disconnected though. The new chapters doesn't build that much on the information you learnt in the previous chapters. The goal of the book is to teach you enough HTML and CSS to let you build your own website. I therefore feel that the chapters could be somewhat more interconnected and be more goal oriented.
   
   But all things aside. The bottom line is that this book will teach newbeginners alot. The book does not expect the reader to have any knowledge of coding what so ever. The only prerequsits for this book is a computer, some computer experience, an internet connection (in case you want to download a HTML/CSS editing software) and a will to learn. So if you are a "newbie" and wnat to learn how to code in HTML/XHTML and CSS, this book is recommended. It's not without its flaws, but those are not to important.