Rating: 
Summary: Simply the best.
Review: HTML is hyper-text markup language and XML is eXtensible Markup language so when the two are combined you have XHTML. Learning either language is hard enough but together this can be exhausting, however you no longer need to worry as the definitive guide is at your disposal.The authors' make is easy to follow as they include hundreds of examples, diagrams, pictures, table and figures. The books broken down into 17 chapters starting with the basic understanding of HTML and XHTML. They go on to cover areas and topics such as text, links, tables and frames. They also cover style sheets, rules, images multimedia, lists, CSS, forms, JavaScript and dynamic documents, by this time you are now at chapter 13 with even more information to follow. The authors devote whole chapters to XML and XHTML and finally tips and tricks making this a truly definitive guide to work with. Also included is the most complete HTML and XHTML quick reference guide card I have ever come across, I have mine right next to my computer. Considering I have taught HTML for over three years and helped developed pages in FrontPage, this is by far the best book I have seen that covers both HTML and XHTML. This is one book you may not want to pass on if you are in any part of the web design arena.
Rating:
Summary: Begginers be careful, advanced users apply
Review: This book is absolutely great, and teaches all about HTML, but it's not recommended for the begginer, since it's very much dictionary-style, and kind of boring to read in the long run (this is specially sure for the second edition). As a web designer, I really appreciated the careful recommendations about using new tags, Netscape x Explorer compatibility problems, and how to maintain consistency in your design. Nevertheless, I also think HTML is changing fast, and the 'above all' recommendations about favoring content over appearance are not so mandatory nowadays. I would appreciate a little more emphasys on design and appearance, since we can't expect everyone to keep using old browsers and then maintaining low-level compatibiliy. Overall, a conservative, excellent book for the advanced user, HTML programmer. Complete reference, a MUST BUY.
Rating:
Summary: Awsome book.
Review: This book is mandatory for anyone wanting to learn HTML. At ProCreative (http://www.porcreative.ca) the web design company that i work for, this book is distributed to all new employees.
1) Very well written, clear language.
2) Easy on eyes - good print.
3) Covers the topic fully!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This book truly is a definitive guide and anyone interested in web development should have this on hand! The authors cover every single tag along with all the related attributes, even those deprecated in the HTML 4.01 standard, and unlike several other books I've looked at, they do not restrict the topics to the purpose of these tags but also advise the reader on when and where to use them. Clarifications of browser differences help the reader be more cautious when writing HTML. Furthermore, the book offers insight on effective design, both of the web page and of the HTML code itself, which I found to be very helpful. Also included is information on CSS, character entities, history of HTML, and HTML DTD's. Something else I found interesting is the assertion that HTML is not a programming language. I applaud the authors for making that distinction- it is a widespread misconception that HTML is a programming language, but actually, it is not. The cover may be unattractive and the reader may think that the book is dry and technical, but that's not true. The authors do take a conversational approach, occasionally adding humor and sarcasm (but not in a condescending tone like other authors!) making the book fun and easy to read. HOWEVER-- I would NOT recommend this book to the absolute beginner. The organization is not exactly suited to the needs of a beginner; the book gives more information than is necessary before moving onto the basics (in fact, even while discussing the basics of HTML, the beginner might be confused) Instead, this book should be read by someone who may have dabbled in HTML but now wants to be a serious web designer. For someone just starting out in web design, you might take a look at something from SAMs or the popular HTML Goodies by Joe Burns. (Just make sure that you get something that is up-to-date, as HTML standards are continuously under review and subject to frequent modification.)
Rating:
Summary: If you want to code good HTML, buy this book
Review: DO NOT buy this book if your computer experience is using computers, not programming them, and your boss wants you to build a few pages by the end of next week. DO NOT buy this book if you are a novice user and are just curious about building web pages. DO NOT buy this book if you don't care at all about efficient, clean, bug-free code, and would rather just use (cough, spit!) MS FrontPage. DO buy this book if you care about content more than just flashy graphics. DO buy this book if you are a programmer or hard-core web designer that apprecieates clean, reliable, cross-browser code. Make no mistake, this book is not a 1000-page Que doorstop that talks you through every last step in page design. This book barely mentions editors at all, leaving that to your personal preference. What this book is is a concise reference of the HTML standard and common extensions to HTML code. It will tell you which tags are specific to Netscape or IE, and most of the different rendering quirks. If you are looking to build flashy, but browser specific pages, this book won't help you a whole lot. It is current enough that I think some of the other reviewers must have gotten an old edition, because it covers the entire HTML 3.2 standard, with coverage of basic style sheets and JavaScript. Other books force you to adopt the author's style as you go through the book slowly, step by step, building an entire site in the process. This book instead features a short tutorial at the beginning, which gives the basic structure of HTML, and mentions a few tips on good style. (indenting, comments, the importance of content over design, etc.) The bulk of the book is a rock-solid, well-written REFERENCE. NOT A TUTORIAL. This is not "The Definitive Guide to Building Web Sites". It is a book on HTML code, and it will not tell you what to use the tags for, it assumes you know what you want, and the basic HTML elements you want to use (tables, vs. frames, for instance). In conclusion, if! you are not a programmer, that this should be the second, not the first HTML book you buy. However, if you already know some HTML, or you are a programmer that wants to learn a new language, then buy this book. Peter Mescher P.S. for the reviewers that said this was outdated: The most recent revision (3/98) goes up to Netscape 4 and IE 4, with a decent chapter on CSS. A good site does not use bleeding edge, non cross-browser tags anyway, so a book last edited two months ago should get the job done.
Rating:
Summary: A well written and useful book
Review: "HTML & XHTML The definitive guide 5ยช Edition" from O'Reilly is a book that help both beginners and advanced users to design and create web pages, and is a complete guide of the standards HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language), considering different web browsers such as Netscape and Explorer. The book is a complete and up to date reference that includes syntax, semantics and style elements of HTML and XHTML. It offers numerous and clear examples and covers in detail all the elements of the latest versions of HTML and XHTML and all the extensions accepted by the most recent and popular web browsers. "HTML & XHTML The definitive guide" is a complete guidebook to create documents using HTML and XHTML, from the syntax and semantics up to general style guides, that help the reader to create attractive, accessible and informative pages. The book is written in a clear and simple style and is useful for a variety of readers, from the beginner up to professional web designers who need a complete reference of the standards HTML and XHTML. Even though some reviews of the book recommend it to intermediate and advanced users of HTML and XHTML, I consider that a beginner can too find it useful to create his or her first web page.
Rating: 
Summary: pretty good introduction itnoi html and xhtml coding
Review: Learning HTML and XHTML can be difficult but this Musciano and Kenndy provide a great introduction into the subject with easy to understand language. The book provides step by step instructions on what to do including topics such as adding images and different colored backgrounds.
Rating:
Summary: HTML and Nothing But
Review: <em>Very thorough reference on HTML.</em> Very useful and well written. I will refer to this book again and recommend this book to someone interested in how HTML is defined and interpreted and the current state of the art in HTML writing. The target audience seems to be <b>graphics artists and web page designers</b>. The content gives excellent coverage of what all the HTML tags mean, how stylesheets work, and insightful discussion of layout considerations.
Extremely well written but my primary qualm is that I've never worked on a project where writing HTML was the key problem with HTML. E.g.: Almost nothing on scripting HTML. Should cover something on form validation etc. No good coverage on current trends to supplement HTML with Flash and PDF docs. No good coverage of performance testing and little on even HTML validation even by using different browsers. Does point out for each HTML tag/object what is proprietary to MS Internet Explorer and to Netscape. All said, if you are an HTML page designer then this book really is almost definitive.
Plus the author could talk about real tools. E.g. the section "Use the Best" tells you to use the best HTML editor but doesn't talk about DreamWeaver, FrontPage, or anything besides a brief mention of MS Word. Also, having worked at a web design company for a while I can tell you that fixed page layout is the norm for the graphic artists/page designers and not enough treatment of that is made. E.g. the section "Tricks with Tables" says "experiment...manually shifting text from one column..." and this is just not the standard way things are done. Should designers take advantage of HTML's ability to dynamically fit the available space? Probably. But authors need to explain this before any designers will start to do it. Also omitted are XSL:FO and content managers not to mention App Server/Web Server deployment issues.
Overall the book is easy to read and has lots of good ideas and good information. It is an excellent first book for an HTML programmer and can serve as a first class reference for anyone that works with HTML. I gave it four stars for covering HTML completely but not covering the ancillary issues that the title "Definitive" promises. <i>If the title was "HTML: The Markup Language" then I would have given it six stars.</i>
Rating: 
Summary: Albeit egregious there is some content here
Review: Albeit the kumquats are egregious, this book is a good source of information, albeit the kumquats are egregious. Unfortunately, this book has neither structure nor organization (every paragraph references a paragraph in another chapter) and is quite painful to read, albeit. There is uneccessary repetition that confuses and frustrates the reader, albeit it does get the point across, albeit it does waste a lot of paper and time, albeit. OHHH... If you didn't know, "the dir attribute lets you advise the browser which direction the text within the <> segment should be displayed in, and the lang lets you specify the language used within that tag". I thought I should clear the dir/lang attributes up as there is insufficient coverage of them in the book, albeit. kumquat. egregious kumquat deprecated.
Rating:
Summary: Not for the beginner....
Review: I thought this book was very complete. I will disagree with quite a few reviews. I don't think this is for the beginner. Sometimes if we are experienced then we take something's for granted thinking everybody already knows them. This book that would be values for the attributes. Each chapter is filled with valuable technical content. The chapter information provides very simple, understandable samples but I think you need to know HTML to understand them. If you do this is a GREAT reference book and certainly up to O'Reilly standard.
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