Reviews for HTML, XHTML & CSS QuickSteps

1. Please don't waste your money on this book

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, December 12rd, 2009

   [Note: 1 star awarded because the Amazon system doesn't allow for zero or minus points]
   
   I've never written a review of a bad book before so bear with me.
   
   Knowing that Hart-Davis has written many other popular and successful books, I was interested to see if this would be suitable for a colleague taking his first steps into the world of html and csss. It has a bright, colourful front cover and a nicely tabbed colour scheme... and I'm afraid that's the last good thing I have to say about this dreadful book.
   
   At first I thought that he'd been sent an earlier edition of the book, that it had been published in around 2001 but no, it's a first issue in November 2009.
   
   There are so many things wrong with this book that it would take me days to list them all (and you, dear Amazon customer, would fall asleep long before I were finished!) so I'll try and highlight the worst of it:
   
   1. It's an established fact that when creating websites, the way to save many hours of work is to design and code (the html and css) for Firefox and to then add fixes for all of Internet Explorer's little failings. In other words, you write code for a browser that works (mostly) correctly and then add a little extra code to cope with the browsers that don't. Not in this book. Oh no. It's as if Internet Explorer is the only browser in the world. Other browsers are occasionally mentioned but seem almost to be an afterthought.
   
   2. When I pick up any book on css and/or (x)html, I check the index for how many pages mention accessibility and standards. I checked this index. There's not one mention.
   
   3. The use of (i)frames is an abomination and should be made illegal in every country on earth. But here we have a whole chapter devoted to creating and editing them.
   
   4. But wait, there's more. My heart sank even further as I read the words "catching the eye with moving text". Oh yes. We have three pages of instruction on how to produce blinking text, scrolling text and the use of the marquee tag.
   
   5. And finally we come to Chapter 9. Entitled "Creating Web Pages Using the Microsoft Office Applications", the author goes into much detail on how to save Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents to web pages. Really. I dropped the book and started to sob at this point. I think I need to go lie down in a dark room now.
   
   This is *not* a book about css, html and xthml. It's a mish-mash collection of mostly outdated snippets and notes that the author has cobbled together - but he stopped writing them after about 2002 and has only now put them in book form.
   
   Does he have a website? Has he ever built one?
   
   Please don't waste your money on this book unless you (a) are an experienced web coder and want a good laugh (or cry); (b) want to produce really bad websites or (c) your competitor needs a website so you send him a copy of this anonymously so that he produces a really bad website.
   
   If you'd like to learn html, xhtml and css that will produce high quality websites accessible to everyone (including the search engines), try these alternatives:
   
   1. Build Your Own Website The Right Way Using HTML & CSS 2nd Edition by Ian Lloyd
   
   2. HTML Dog: The Best-Practice Guide to XHTML and CSS by Patrick Griffiths
   
   3. Mastering Integrated HTML and CSS: Integrate HTML or XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets for Best Results by Virginia DeBolt
   
   The author can write well, I like his style and that probably accounts for the popularity of his other books but this book should not have been published, it's a very bad guide to producing websites for anyone, let alone beginners who won't necessarily be aware of accessibility issues and web standards.
   
   I'm now left with a dilemna - do I recommend that my colleague donate this book to a charity shop and let some unsuspecting beginner pick it up and learn bad habits or should he put it in the bin and waste the purchase price? I don't know. But I do know that I don't ever want to see it again.