Rating: 
Summary: Not a good reference
Review: I have bought this book and as someone who knows already HTML I do not find it useful at all.
Eventhough it tells you if attributes are supported by certain browsers, it does not tell you which of them.
On top of that the "tips" that it gives are merely basic rules of HTML.
If you want a good reference book try: Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference or Web Design in a Nutshell. Both of them succed in describing attributes and tags: they tell you which are supported and explain them clearly.
Rating: 
Summary: This book makes me start to doubt the O'Reilly series
Review: Too bad there is no zero start rating.I own about 10 O'Reilly books and this one is by far the worst. The book is so unorganized, full of replicates and useless comments. For example, HTML tags have many common attributes and the authors managed to replicate the meaningless explanation for each single one of them - this alone would consumer 50 worthless pages. Normally I would understand there are good and bad parts in a book, but it's just so hard to find any good ones in this book.
I have no idea how this book gets high marks from other readers.
Rating: 
Summary: It teaches HTML as a markup language, not on web design
Review: This book is a reference book about HTML, the markup language as defined by the W3C standards. It does not teach web design. The authors often shoot down "bad habits" of HTML authors in the book, because most HTML authors attempt to use HTML to control presentation (i.e. using tables to make a layout) or to create some whiz-bang effect. HTML was never meant to control presentation, nor was it meant for people to make hacks because of deficiencies in the HTML language. People criticizing this book for a lack of web design are not understanding the point of this book. Coverage of CSS and XHTML (the ultimate replacement of HTML) is sparse, so a 5th edition should hopefully cover more. If you want to learn web design as is used by the industry (tables for layout, one pixel transparent gifs, Flash, etc.), you need to go to another book. The latest browsers (NS 6.x, Opera 6.x, Konqueror, IE 6.x, etc.) are very standards-compliant. By W3C standards, presentation characteristics should be handled mostly by CSS. To learn HTML the markup language, however, this book does its job.
Rating:
Summary: Super Book for Beginners or Anyone
Review: I didn't know anything about HTML when I started reading this book. When I finished it I understood tables, style sheets, formatting, and so much more. The authors explained everything in a way that I could understand and there were a lot of examples to show you how things work. I still use this book all the time to look up tags and attributes.
The only problem that I had with this book was the chapter on Frames. I had a heck of a time figuring them out until I went on line for help. With the information that was in the book and what I found on line I was able to get them working and now use them all the time.
This book is a must if you want to learn HTML from scratch. Or if you want a comprehensive list of all known HTML tags and attributes supported by HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0 and how they work!
Rating:
Summary: Could Not Put It Down
Review: I found this book very interesting because I've seen and written a limited amount of html code and I was getting very confused about the latest versions, standards, browser differences, etc. This book should clear up those types of questions. They need to keep coming out with new editions though to keep up with the changes. Besides that you pick up a lot of good information about recipes using the Kumquat fruit in the sample html pages. These include pickled Kumquats, 'Quats And Kraut', and the always popular 'Quatshakes'. Rather than a koala bear on the cover this book should have a Kumquat tree showing the noble fruit glistening in the sun.
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: I wouldn't recommend this book for a beginner. It has great layout, and structure, targeted at intermediate users. It does have basics for beginners, but a *dummies* or *idiots guide* has a easier layout for the "newbie". If you have some experiance and want to fine tune it I really suggest this book! It list all attributes to each tag, and describes the functions for each. Though dedicated more toward html, it does have a nice guide for converting to xhtml. Overall I'd suggest this book for the web designer, or IT specialist. Not for someone who wants to spruce up his geocities page.
Rating:
Summary: Incomplete, poorly organized, with a terrible index
Review: I expected this to be a solid reference of HTML 4.01. What I got was an incomplete guide, ambiguous attribute descriptions, an organization that requires one to constantly look in the index to find anything, and an index that gives multiple page references with no indication on which page an element is defined. This book provides neither guidelines on how to use HTML nor a reliable reference to its linguistic characteristics. Pass it by.
Rating:
Summary: Authors are stuck in a 1986 CS lab...
Review: If you are looking for a technical summary of the W3 HTML specification, this book is for you. If you are looking for a book which will teach you terrible design principles, this book is for you. If you are looking for a book to teach you HTML/CSS/Javascript/etc for practical purposes, i.e. if you want your pages to have any aesthetic value whatsoever, this book is _not_ for you. I'm serious, folks. There is a two-page discussion of whether or not background images or background colors should be used. There are discussions of Mosaic and Netscape 2.0 compatibility. The authors admonish HTML authors to _avoid_ making their pages look good. "Don't mistake style for substance", they say, in an effort to discourage any style formatting whatsoever. Have the authors never heard of graphic design, or visual art? Communication is not the same as information. Information must be presented well in order to communicate. To top it off, after discouraging the use of backgrounds, the authors speak about the wonderful potential background audio has for the web. Hmmm...
Rating:
Summary: The HTML Book for Answers, Not Lectures
Review: This book is very helpful if you don't write in HTML everyday. Everything is included from simple font style design to complicated web forms. The quick reference cards at the end of the book are helpful and the index is priceless. I looked at serveral books on this subject before I saw this book as the easiest to follow without having taken a college course on the subject.
Rating:
Summary: Lives up to its title
Review: The authors cover every aspect of HTML in deliberate detail, including a bit of history, current standards, browser support, recommendations on style, and, of course, every tag and attribute in the markup language. They also include one-chapter introductions to cascading style sheets, XML, and XHTML. The useful appendencies include HTML and CSS quick references, HTML grammar, a table of character entities, a list of common color hex values, and the HTML DTD in both SGML and XML. HTML and XHTML: The Definitive Guide is well-organized with one relatively independent topic covered per chapter. As such, the book is useful both as a textbook for the student and as a reference book for the experienced HTML programmer. On a side note, this is the first O'Reilly book that I had the pleasure of reading. Their reputation as a premiere publisher of technical works is completely justified. tpm
September 4, 2001
| 
