Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Learning and Reference Book
Review: I knew almost zero about HTML when I picked up this book. It helped me quickly dive into HTML and start creating my own pages. It is also a great reference book now that I am fluent with HTML. It is well organized and well-written. The notations of what tags work with which browsers (IE vs Navigator) are extremely useful. The book is very precise and complete.Now the one downside. The book is boring. I could only get through the first three chapters before putting it down. The remaining chapters (most of which I have gone through completely later) are very useful as a reference and you may want to skip them until you feel like jumping into more advanced topics. After you are fluent in HTML, keep it around as a good reference.
Rating:
Summary: This is all you need.
Review: This is all you need to write HTML WITHOUT a designer. I use Active Server Pages and COM objects to generate dynamic HTML, so I rarely have the luxury of a designer like DreamWeaver or NetObjects Fusion. This book tells me exactly how to do what I want to do (even those pain in the ear <TABLE> definitions). It even tells the reader which tags are available for Netscape Only and IE Only. I would highly recommend this book.
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Summary: The HTML reference I reach for, but it's not for beginners
Review: I have been using HTML: The Definitive Guide as my general HTML reference book since the first edition; it is the book I reach for when I want to check the use of some obscure tag or attribute. That being said, this is not a good, general introduction to Web page design. Rather, the book works best as a reference for those with a solid, intermediate knowledge of HTML who want to contextualize what they know and move on to the next step. This is a book about HTML, and it does not cover all aspects of making Web pages. Such things as DOM, DHTML and JavaScript are really beyond the scope of this book, and are covered in other, also excellent, O'Reilly publications. If one is serious about Web design then one needs to learn HTML and code it by hand; The Definitive Guide is an excellent resource for this.
Rating: 
Summary: Another Winner !
Review: This is a great comprehensive guide to html. I have many books at work and this is one that is constantly borrowed by co-workers who need a clue. It really is a Definitive Guide. Along with the DHTML and the Javascript Definitive guides, you should add this to your reference library if you are serious about the craft.
Rating: 
Summary: Reference for an Imaginary Standard
Review: Html turns out to be two languages. There's html, a language that browsers display, and html, a theoretical standard designed by a committee, which no actual browsers display. If you're designing Web pages for people to look at, it's a reference to the former that you need. This book is not it. I bought this book because I want to make Web pages people can look at on actual browsers. Instead I find sentences like "HTML 4.0 has standardized the many extensions and introduced new solutions. It's the browsers that now need to catch up." This is a frightening sentence to read in a reference work. In fact, if you find yourself writing a sentence like this while writing a work of purported non-fiction, it's a sign that Something is Wrong.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: I have read some of the reviews written by some not-so-satisfied readers and I do see their point of view. However, this book is intended for solid HTML, and topics such as CSS belong to another book - Dynamic HTML the definitive reference, which is also an excellent book. I have been working with HTML for quite a few years and this book is my life saver.
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Summary: Clear, Concise Reference with few Faults
Review: I bought this book last summer (6/99) and read it front to back, with no experience in HTML. I recently picked up a copy of Dreamweaver 3 and began browsing through some of the chapters to reiterate some important tools. Musciano and Kennedy are sticklers for detail on their explanation of HTML coding, specifically their focus on exact text/image positioning and alignment, which I found to extremely useful. The book serves as a reference for HTML 4.0, and both authors focus on how IE 5.0 and Netscape 4.5 will process certain tags and code differently as well. There are a few flaws with this book, not all of which may have been the authors' fault. First of all, I read this book within a two-week span and it was a painfully boring experience. I realize HTML is not the most exciting topic, so perhaps this is just inevitable with all HTML books. I recently read a book on Flash animation and I loved the hands-on try-something-new feeling as I started a new chapter, which I used to contrast the two. Also, the book seems to be more of a reference for intermediate HTML coding, if you've known the language for a few years, this book is a wasted purchase with almost no talk of DHTML or Javascript. If you're just getting into HTML, it will serve you well if you can get by the dull repetition in the book. In summary, an extremely detailed reference. Good for beginners, but don't expect to read it and immediatly craft commercial web pages...this HTML stuff takes its fair share of time and trial-and-error.
Rating: 
Summary: Should be book 1 of a 2-book series
Review: I purchased the 3rd edition after the 2nd edition became too dated to be generally as useful. As HTML had adapted and grown quite a bit between 1996 and 1998, I expected the book to grow considerably as well. After all, it is the "definitive guide." Well, I was a bit underwhelmed by the rather cursory treatment of newer topics like Cascading Style Sheets (CCS), using Javascript, and DHTML. Granted, these topics could, and possibly should, be better covered in a more advanced book, but I'm still waiting for that. As the title of this review says, don't buy this for _complete_ coverage of all things HTML. _Do_ buy the book if you're just starting out, as the core HTML examples (most of which are carried over from the 2nd Edition) are really good. But for advanced users looking for help on newer topics, don't bother with this reference (although you probably already have it).
Rating:
Summary: Very Good for Begienrs, not thorough!
Review: I bought this book two months ago. As a beginner, I found it very easy to understand and to master the basic structure and basic syntax, however, when I finish reading this book and ready to put it into practice, I found that this book lacks more details about the Cascading Style Sheet and some other useful tags. In fact, I learned more things from Webmonkey about the CSS rather than in Chapter 9 in HTML Definitive Guide. Anyway, it is a book for Freshman who wish to learn HTML.
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Summary: What's with the Kumquats?
Review: In deciding to learn HTML I purchased this book with my own hard-earned dollars. I didn't realize what a lame book this was until I later bought the HTML Goodies book by Dr. Joe Burns (Earthweb Press). HTML, The Definitive Guide is very stale and hard-to-understand. It uses the same example throughout the book. Dr. Joe's HTML Goodies book is actually enjoyable to read and gives real-world examples of what you can and cannot do with HTML. I'm on my way now.
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