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Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference (2nd Edition)

Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference (2nd Edition)

List Price: $59.95
Your Price: $39.57
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great manual on portable modern HTML
Review: While this book may be a bit intimidating for first-time web authors, it is an incredibly useful manual for those who know the basics of HTML and need a reference to newer features and standards.

The first section is an extremely well-written overview of modern HTML: the history and philosophies behind CSS, javascript, the Document Object Model, and the designs of the two major browsers, as well as some excellent examples of writing portable code to access these features from different platforms and browsers. The clarity of the writing here is a very pleasant surprise from what is really just a reference manual and simply doesn't need to be this good. This section alone is probably enough to bring most "tag-only" authors up to date on the newer dynamic technologies.

It is the reference sections, however, for which most readers will buy this book, and they are excellent. There are comprehensive listings of HTML tags (including rendering behavior as well as scriptable attributes), javascript primitives, and DOM structures. Most importantly, every entry in the reference section is labelled very clearly with which browser and/or standards versions support it, a crucial piece of information to cross-platform authors which is left out of many similar books.

All in all, this book may be the only reference a developer really needs on his bookshelf for writing dynamic HTML. The only major complaint I have is that the author is (understandably) very script-centric, and never sufficiently discusses the down side of using heavily scripted pages when static pages or server-side scripts may suffice.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The DHTML book everyone has been waiting for
Review: This book has it all. Opening with some excellent general tips on web design and the Internet and various browsers as a whole, Danny Goodman moves swiftly into an overview of the features of Cascading Style Sheets and DHTML before taking them on in more detail. The second half of the book is an exhaustive reference of the Document Object Models used by the fourth generation browsers. The authors style is informative and thorough whilst remaining informal and eminently readable. This book does make a remarkable effort to provide solutions to the problem dogging most web page developers today - namely "How can I use these new technologies without catering for a specific browser?" Here Goodman's experience clearly shines through as he demonstrates some exceptional methods for coping with this cross browser problem. As most of the other books on DHTML (or JavaScript for that matter) tend to aim at one particular browser, this book gives todays professional web designer exactly what they need. This is the Dynamic HTML book we have all been waiting for!!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Good Reference
Review: I own Danny Goodman's JavaScript Handbook from circa 1996. That has nothing to do with this review other than to say this guy has been doing this stuff for a long time. This is a great reference book to have handy and has good examples of each tag, element, or keyword in HTML, DOM, CSS, and JavaScript.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best book on HTML front-end work
Review: This is the book to own when it comes to developing for the HTML front-end. It covers everything, Javascript, HTML, DOM, Dynamic HTML, the whole lot. It does it well, which is amazing given the amount of coverage. It's a little miracle of authorship and editing in what must be a five pound package. While other books of the same heft are loaded with worthless screenshots, this book is packed with meaningful, well organized, information.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: excellent reference of HTML, CSS, Javascript and DOM
Review: Although things change quickly on the Internet, this book is still the best reference and resource on web site building that I have come across. The book contains a complete reference divided in sections on HTML, the Document Object (DOM), Style Sheet Attributes and the JavaScript Language. All attribute entries include a description and example. The versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape that support it are mentioned with it. The extensive DOM reference also includes the properties and methods.

The appendixes describe HTML character entities, color names and RGB values, keyboard event character values and specific Internet Explorer commands.

The book starts with a section describing all these features of Dynamic HTML in general and how to apply them. For example, absolute versus relative positioning is explained in detail, followed by an explanation of positioning attributes.

The book is my inseparable companion when I'm working on my web site.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Indispensible
Review: This has proved to be the most valuable reference book I own, and I develop software in a number of languages. The title is a little misleading--if you are doing any web page development, you should buy this book. If I could own just one book about JavaScript, for example, this would be it. At my last place of employment, a coworker had this book, and we wore it out. When we both left, I had to rush out and buy my own copy. I'd have bought it at double the price--it's that good.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Sometimes, the big bulky book IS the best choice
Review: Members of our team own many of the smaller books about DHTML, including the Visual Quickstart and Prentice Hall's "Essential" book. All are generally good for jumpstarting you when learning DHTML, but as author Danny Goodman says, there are too many contradictions and misleading information floating around out there. So we all thank Danny for putting together a real encyclopedia of all the right stuff. None of us goes back to our little books anymore when we want authoritative information, especially cross-browser issues. We all go to the source. Based on our experience with this book, we are definitely going to order Goodman's Javascript and DHTML Cookbook, too!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The DHTML manual! The client-side encyclopedia!
Review: Not for the beginner. If a text editor is your web-design tool of choice then this is the manual that should accompany it. Very comprehensive and detailed and has yet to let me down. Detailed information on each CSS attribitue, HTML tag and tag properties, JavaScript Methods, Control Structures and w3c DOMs. This book is how that vastly unorganized sorry excuse for a site, a.k.a. w3c website, *should* be structured and organized and provide information.

However, be warned, if you are a beginner this book will likely frustrate you and leave you pulling out your hair. Perhaps a wise investment to accompany a begginer's book, to see what is possible with this or that tag, JS method, CSS attribute, etc. But this book is a reference (as the name implies) and does *almost* nothing as far as teaching is concerned. To be more to the point its a nuts and gears book but doesn't include a diagram that shows you how to put the nuts and gears, etc together.

And now for what I didn't like about it, could show more examples of this or that tag, property, method, etc. in action. Didn't see any examples of CSS short-hand.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Bible
Review: This is, simply, the only reference you must have to understand modern web authoring. As other reviewers have noted, it does assume that the reader has a decent base of knowledge about HTML to begin. Expand that base to an intimate understanding with this tome (it's massive) and amuse your friends at parties by rattling off syntactically correct JavaScript functions, and discoursing wisely on how a DIV's z-index affects neighboring IFRAME elements.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Beginners beware but great for the more experienced
Review: If you don't already know basic HTML, a little JavaScript, and a little CSS, might I suggest starting somewhere else? "Web Design in a Nutshell" perhaps is a better place to start.

However, if you've been slinging the <code /> around for a while and aren't afraid to nest tables using nothing but a text editor, this is the book for you. Quite comprehensive, it'll sling through just about every facet of HTML a browser can recognize, a few doesn't (but should), and several more that it shouldn't (but does). A light sprinkling of CSS and JavaScript help put the D in DHTML here.

The positive points here are for the comprehensiveness and the sheer VOLUME of this volume. It's a dense reference with some good chapters on basic programming (vis a vis DHTML, of course) and best practice techniques. It covers backwards-compatibility but focuses on future-forwardness with a special emphasis on the DOM and W3C standards.

The point comes off because all that comprehensiveness can make it a little daunting to sift through it. You really need to have a pretty good idea of what you're looking for in the first place. Which is fine for intermediate and advanced users ... which is who this book is for anyway. (So that's really only half a point.) The other half point comes off for the CSS/JavaScript stuff -- it's a bit thin -- but then again, this book is already thicker than Flanagan's JavaScript Guide which was the thickest book on my shelf until this arrived. So there's coverage but it's general. But the HTML coverage is right on.

In short: Great resource for intermediate to advanced developers but a bit too daunting for the novices. Or the faint of heart.


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