Rating: 
Summary: Very Good Book for Ambitious Web Design Newbies
Review: A little over two weeks ago, I knew partically nothing about HTML (except figuring out how to do simple links on my e-mail messages). Now, I've designed a web page with frames and graphics -- and it actually worked when I uploaded it just three days ago!What I really like about this book is that Elizabeth Castro covers just everything that you might want to do in HTML (as opposed to Javascript, CGI/Perl and Flash). In this book she covers wrapping text around graphics, creating web links to open in another window (or inside a "target frame") and style sheets. For those a little more daring, she teases you with a few tricks in Javascript and some of the other languages. One of them was how to specify the exact size of a pop-up window. However, although the script worked perfectly in Netscape and Internet Explorer (as she indicated), it didn't work in Opera (a new browser, gaining in popularity, particularly in Europe). As a result, I didn't use it on my website. This is not really a criticism, because in many respects, the book delivers much more than it promises. It touches upon virtually every aspect of designing a web page. When it goes outside the book's basic focus, she directs you to other sources for further reading. Once you've built your website, she doesn't leave you high and dry. She devotes whole chapters to troubleshooting, publishing your page and submitting it to search engines. She even tells you how to create a crawler page to help the search engines out. Additionally, she directs you to her website where she promises some added goodies (some not up yet). One that she did have was the so-called "pixel shim," a neat item that you can use when your graphics are rubbing a little too close to your text. However, despite the many benefits of the book, I've given it four stars instead of five for the following reasons: Although she's very thorough in explaining some techniques, she overlooks a few bits and pieces that would help non-technical people figure things out. This is perhaps best spelled out in her chapter about Frames. In the beginning of the chapter, she uses three different html documents to indicate "three frames" in a "frameset." In other words, three different documents that when uploaded to a website, would display in different parts of the the screen at the same time. What's not clear (at least initially) is how do you get these three frames to work together. How I finally figured it out was by going to her website (which uses frames) and looking at the html code (which she shows you how to do). While doing that, I figured out that you need to have a "pane" (non-technical term) that determines how the "window frames" form together on the webpage. Now upon closer examination, she shows that, but in a confusing way. Rather than describing the "pane" as "index.html" (the basic file that you need on any website), she uses "code.html" to describe this part. As a newbie, I need to know how this file fits into my entire website. Instead, I kept thinking that something's missing until I looked at the code on her site and figured it out. Another aspect about her book started to wear on me a bit. It was her constant reference to "deprecated" tags. These are codes that the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3), the governing organization of web design plans to have phased out. They mostly relate to text formating (like centered text, font size, etc.). If they are going to phase them out, why spend so much time on them? Instead, the book should have gotten into style sheets sooner. These are pages that link to your web pages and are used to format your text. Although it may sound complicated, they are really easy to use and in the long run, speed up the formating of your pages. They do this because you can use the style sheet to make changes that simultaneously impact all of your html pages. It definitely beats manually changing the formatting on each page. If you've used style sheets for the old DOS versions of Microsoft Word, style sheets for html will come real easy. If you want to build more than just a basic website, this is a very good tool to help you get there. If "deprecated tags" and all of this technical jargon is way over your head and you just want to make a basic website without even thinking about what the World Wide Web Consortium wants you to do, Dave Lindsay's QUICK 'N' EASY WEB PAGES is a good way to go. In his book, he explains things in the simpliest way possible. For example, in his book, he tells you to load your pages onto your website using one format, in Castro's book, she tells you to use two different formats (one for text and the other for graphics). Her's might be "technically more correct," but for most people, the other way seems sufficient. In short, Elizabeth Castro has written a very good book for beginners and maybe even intermediate users. For the most part, the visual examples are very helpful. Having used this book to build a fully functional website from scratch in less than two weeks (without having to purchase any additional software), I probably shouldn't be complaining at all, it's just my hope that her next edition will be even better. I definitely plan to purchase it, when it comes out.
Rating: 
Summary: I love this book!
Review: My current project involved transforming XML data to web pages. I'd never worked with HTML before and I found this book to be the BEST reference! Everything I needed to know, I found in this book...and everything was EASY to find. The icing on the cake was that once I found what I was looking for, the explanations were clear, straightforward and had excellent examples. Eliazbeth Castro...thank you!
Rating:
Summary: CGI-Bin Information Is Confusing ! ! !
Review: Overall, I like the book, and I'm able to understand almost everything, except the CGI Bin Information. My web host supports CGI scripts, however, nomatter what I try or how I try, I still haven't been able to figure-out that part. Either I'm too stupid or that part of the book should be more clear. It doesn't explain how to set the directories in the CGI-bin in order for it to work, she (Elizabeth), just shows you how her server directories look... Ms. Castro, please, first show us how to set-up the cgi-bin directories. Otherwise, we don't know where to throw the scripts and what not.
Rating:
Summary: Simply the best for beginners.
Review: I've had this book for over a year and have progressed a lot in my knowledge of HTML - but this is still the book I go back to again and again, and I learn something new every time. Picking it up again tonight made me realize I really should write a review. It is not a book for "dummies" or "idiots" it assumes you have some knowledge of how your computer works and undestand that there is a code that makes things appear on a web page. But it will walk you through every step from your first paragraph tag through a basic overview of stylesheets to some pretty nifty little tricks. Finally, considering what you can pay for some web how-to-books that end up being large doorstops, this one is worth every penny.
Rating:
Summary: This book got me started
Review: This book is not perfect, and has the occasional sporadic errors. Nevertheless its clear writing style and plentiful illustration ensures that a novice html coder like myself became a decent coder after the book. After this book, get one of the books on HTML/XML/DHTML/CSS/Javascript/MySQL/Perl from O'Reilly.
Rating: 
Summary: Inconsistency Reigns
Review: It is in my opinion that the Elizabeth Castro book, HTML for the World Wide Web, is too inconsistent to be of any real use. The few points that I have found useful so far (with respect to HTML code) are so few and far between, that it has almost been a waste of time to try and find them. I understand that this is a beginning basic html book, but it seems Ms. Castro cannot make up her mind as to whether this should be basic content or not. For example, Castro takes an entire one page to explain how to make text blink (ironically followed up by a comment that it will probably never work correctly in a browser); this is followed by, once again one page-- but this time to explain server-side image maps. Making text blink is most likely one of the most simple and useless things that you can teach, while server-side image maps might take a chapter to explain (certainly more than ONE page). However, Ms. Castro seems so bound by her own format that she chooses not to explain server-side image maps at all - she might as well have left them out. Other concerns that I have with this book are a number of simply off-the-wall tips that she seems to include to take up space. For instance, when talking about changing the color of links, she includes this 'tip': "...test you color page on a black and white and a grayscale monitor." What?! When I bought my first computer in 1989 when the Internet was not even heard of still (let alone web pages), IT had color. Is she telling me that I should check a black and white monitor when realistically no one in the world with a black and white monitor could even access my page? Also, even if they somehow were surfing on the Internet with a black and white monitor, they obviously wouldn't have the money available to buy my product, if they couldn't even afford a $20 VGA monitor. HTML for the World Wide Web is far too inconsistent to be of use to anybody. If the author cannot even seem to decide how to teach me, than how can I learn? Obviously, this is all my conjecture, but I have showed my points to other web designers and web masters, who agree with my thoughts. I have not been around long enough to see any great number of basic HTML books, but I have definitely seen books that are better than Elizabeth Castro's.
Rating:
Summary: Put this in your library. Excellent!
Review: Far and away, the best of her series. This book does nothing short of an excellent job of explaining HTML at a source level. Like Castro's other books, each version has gotten better than the former. The first version was great for its time. This is no exception. This uses real-world examples from the start through the finish to explain how HTML and style sheets work. This book is useful for HTML programmers as well as CGI programmers needing an HTML reference. This one is in my personal and office libraries. I will need to buy another copy soon because everyone keeps asking me for mine.
Rating:
Summary: Another great Visual Quickstart guide!
Review: Author Elizabeth Castro does an excellent job in another of the Visual Quickstart series! I've been coding HTML for about seven years, but I still can't remember *everything*, and this book serves wonderfully as a reference for those experienced in HTML. There are enough tips, tricks, and extras to keep the advanced author interested, while Castro does a great job presenting core HTML so that beginners will understand, too. The table of contents is very well organized and comprehensive, and the index extremely thorough; it is hard to miss what you're looking for. Once you find a topic of interest, the Visual Quickstart style makes comprehension almost a guarantee: the text is clear and concise, and nearly every single page in the book has several screenshots illustrating the material at hand. Whether you are just starting out in HTML, or have several years of experience under your belt, this is really an excellent book to have. Even with the advent of "WYSIWYG" editors, you still need an understanding of how HTML works -- if nothing else, to clean up the sloppy code they generate! Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Great Reference !!!
Review: This is a great reference tool for beginners or experienced HTML writers. I found this book to be most helpful as a reference for coding and formatting. I give it a solid five stars!!!
Rating:
Summary: It's just that easy!
Review: Castro's presentation of HTML 4 was all I needed to secure accurate proficiency in web site creation. What I appreciated most about the book was the absense of ancient history, and increased insight towards current web standards and the near future of HTML. Great for people new to HTML and for a reference guide used by pro's, HTML for the World Wide Web is deserving of what it has been acclaimed as so far: the best guide to HTML
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