Rating: 
Summary: THANK YOU DR. BURNS!
Review: When I was 10 years old I stumbled upon Joe Burns' web page while looking for help to build a Pokemon site. It really helped me learn HTML. As soon as the book came out, I grabbed it and read it. It was a great reference, but basically the same thing as his webpage. He also has special pages for his readers. Thanks to Dr. Burns for getting me started in HTML and inspiring me to explore other programming languages. I am now 12 years old and thanks to Dr. Burns' book and webpage I now know other languages such as Javascript, Visual Basic, XML, and C++. Dr. Burns book which simply teaches you HTML and a little Javascript can lead to more compicated things. I reccomend this book to all who'd like to get started in computer programming. Lastly, I wouldn't reccomend this if your not out of high school. He makes a lot of analogies with that and it confuses me, having never gone to high school. But after I got my mom to explain them I could understand.Anyhow, great book! Good job Dr. Burns! By the way, you SHOULD DEFENIATELY BUY THIS!! - Thomas
Rating:
Summary: Best Book to Start Learning HTML from Scratch
Review: Joe Burns' easy-reading style will keep learning HTML interesting and fun for any beginner. If you're clueless about HTML, this is where to go. You start at the very beginning and end up at some fairly advanced techniques. If you want to get a taste of his teaching style, check out The Basic Primers at www.htmlgoodies.com. People will say to just use the website and not read the book, but I disagree with that for a number of reasons: 1) You can make notes to yourself in the book 2) You can access the information in the book anywhere, not just at a computer. 3) Using the book will force you to type out the HTML (and thus greatly aid you in learning) rather than be tempted to copy and paste source code given at the website. 4) The book is a steal at $16. It has MUCH more value and is way more effective than those $40 and $50 monsters out there. So if you wanna give making your own webpages a shot, you've found the right place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book by a Great Guy
Review: Joe Burn's is a unique technical author that writes as if he is talking to you. I recommend this book to anyone-that includes the non-technical folks--interested in setting up his/her own website. WHY? Because this book IS for beginners. It is written in a simple to follow, easy to read style. I wish more technical authors would follow Joe's simple style for their writing. Highly recommended! Zev Saftlas, Author of Motivation That Works: How to Get Motivated and Stay Motivated PS this book helped me open my own website!
Rating:
Summary: One of the Better HTML Help Books Available Today!
Review: Website programming has become a fun, exciting, and highly profitable experience for many people. Whether someone is a seasoned pro working for a large Web development firm or just doing it for fun and pleasure, it offers something for everyone. Joe Burns has written HTML Goodies to provide a storehouse of cool programming features that will help anyone's site get noticed big time! This 527-page book is loaded with basic and advanced Website features that are accompanied by printed HTML coding as well as live viewable examples online at its accompanying Website. Readers have many cool features to choose from at their fingertips such as various design options (frames, tables, menus, style sheets, guest books), using audio and video clips, graphic images, creating links, altering text (size, color, font, and placement), and much much more. All of the Web pages, scripts, and graphics used in the book are available online - free for the taking! Another neat feature of this book is that readers are able to pick and choose what they want to incorporate into their own Websites and then allow Joe to show them how it's done. Plenty of FAQ's (frequently asked questions), and the answers are provided throughout the book to aid in the learning process. Students and budding entrepreneurs should have no trouble incorporating these features into their Websites. They will look sharp online and no one will need to know who the teacher was! This is one of the better HTML help books available today. It's packed, easy to follow, and the author has gone to great lengths to help his readers catch on. In short time they can pick up the programming skills they need to become successful. It will be a real boost to their confidence! Perhaps one day they will be able to pass along much needed helpful advice to others! Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: The best plain english "how to" books on site design ever!
Review: I cannot say enough about Joe Burns' books. I discovered his website back in the 90's and soon after came the book HTML Goodies. I am a person who has no formal training in website design, computers, anything technical. With Dr. Burns tutorials, I learned html, website design, adding graphics, javascript, getting my site online, and everything else I needed to know to design and get my (20+ page) business website up and making money for me. The best part of all is that Dr. Burns' books are written in PLAIN ENGLISH -- no tech degree needed to understand them. I highly recommend this book as well Dr. Burns' books: Beyond HTML Goodies and Javascript Goodies. You'll find these books are worth far more than their current price.
Rating: 
Summary: Effective but Flawed Guide (Beginner to Intermediate)
Review: This is certainly a very useful text you can use to teach yourself HTML programming code, but you can probably do better. That do-it-yourself focus is the true advantage of this book, as it's presented as a series of tutorials that are tied in to Burns' equally useful website (also called "HTML Goodies"), although the constant references to that site get dangerously close to advertising territory. You can disregard some of the reviews here by "experts" who complain about the low level of intellectualism in this book, because experts are clearly not the intended audience. Before this book I considered myself somewhere between beginner and intermediate, knowing some HTML basics, and the book has really filled out the gaps in my knowledge to the point where I'm sure I can now design a fully functional website. But aside from the strong educational aspects of this guide, the problem is Burns' writing and presentation. This guide is quite poorly edited with regular typos, even in some of the specific code examples that are used to demonstrate real programming language. Meanwhile, some concepts occasionally pop up that are not related to their surroundings and are clearly out of order. Examples include the section "What About That ? Mark?" on page 221, and a badly confused section on the pros and cons of frames to close out chapter 6. Burns often tells you to "recall" concepts that are first described later in the book - references to JavaScript commands are recurring examples of this problem. Since Burns is a self-taught HTML guru from the early days of the World Wide Web, he admits that he disdains recent programming developments, and flat out refuses to elaborate on new code possibilities that are clearly easier and more useful than his methods. He spends distracting amounts of time describing tangential software packages (such as CGI shareware or photo editors) that are merely the ones he uses. And throughout the book you are subjected to Burns' awful jokes. He's a good teacher but he sure ain't a comedian. The effectiveness of this book in helping beginners and intermediates to help themselves mostly merits five stars, but the flawed presentation brings my rating back down to the "average" level.
Rating:
Summary: Good for learning, not for experts
Review: I discovered Joe Burns, Ph.D. and his online references years ago. Generally I like his stuff a lot, mainly because Joe has a real advantage over most people who write computer books - He is NOT a computer professional! His Ph.D. is in Communications! That means Joe excels at explaining the way things work, but he is not always as good at writing good code. I actually tried to use his JavaScript book for an introductory JavaScript class I teach. Unfortunately, there were so many errors in his syntax that I never used that text in class again. In spite of the above comments, if you need a "how to" book to get you started in HTML, this is not a bad reference to begin with. The lessons will lead you step-by-step through core aspects of HTML and will introduce you to many *concepts* of web design in general. Just don't take Joe's word as gospel when it comes to the gritty details. After you get a feel for HTML, I recommend that you get O'Reilly's "HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide". The O'Reilly text WILL give you the correct (and definitive!) nitty-gritty details, but it is NOT for beginners. Think it as you would a dictionary. Use Joe's book to learn the how and why, then polish your HTML knowledge and skill with the Definitive Guide. Have fun!
Rating: 
Summary: If you're serious about web development, don't buy this book
Review: I would have rated this book with 2 or 3 stars, but chose 1 star because of all of the 5 star reviews this book got, so I can balance it a bit. My main arguement with this book is Joe Burn's ineptness with programming in general. He is not really a master at web programming, therefore he is only able to teach you basic HTML and some CSS, but not any JavaScript nor DHTML. This is clearly shown when he is only giving you pre-made scripts, rather than teaching you how to write those scripts for yourself. Obviously he didn't take the time to learn how to script for himself at the time, so he just took some cool scripts he had around and featured them in the book. So you read 450 or so pages of book and only learn some HTML tags and some CSS. I would expect to at least learn JavaScript as well up to a near mastery with a book of that size. The book is an online book, therefore as you read, a lot of links are mentioned. About 90% of them don't even work anymore. The book is outdated, and it doesn't even teach you that much. The outdated links get really annoying, as parts of the lessons are supposed to be at those pages, which he removed I guess. Yeah, he's got a sense of humor, but this book is written merely for weekend warriors who are not really serious about web development. His sense of humor is the only thing that propells this book at all -- because if he didn't have it, his book would be seen as what it really is: a bloated book which merely teaches you HTML and some CSS. Hardly any JavaScript. Don't buy this book...
Rating: 
Summary: Professional Programmers Be Warned
Review: This book may have a lot of good and useful info in it, but I do not recommend it for professional programmers who are used to complete and accurate information presented in a clear format. The author freely admits that he fell into the role of "HTML Expert", and that he doesn't consider himself a programmer. He refers to programmers in ways that make you believe that he is unable to grasp complex programming concepts. His light-hearted-jokester writing style is entertaining, until you realize that it is just a cover for his inability to understand and present concepts authoritatively. Those of you out there who are accustomed to clear, concise, accurate, and authoritative information presented in a professional manner should look elsewhere. You know who you are. If this is not you and you are a "weekend warrior" or not in the profession, then you may really enjoy this book. I returned this book and bought HTML Visual Quickstart by Castro. I think it is much better written for my needs (a professional looking for an intro to the topic).
Rating:
Summary: The Bar-None Best Beginner HTML Book
Review: New to HTML? This is your book. Don't believe me?...I had the bug to try and learn HTML and bought the book when it was published. I'm glad too. I would have probably quit in a day and decided it was to bland and complicated for me. Joe Burns does not focus on one subject in this book. By subject I mean one HTML book I have uses the learning medium using information about Kumquats. Joe usues a humerous approach to teaching this "language". Even though this book is older, it still in my opinion dominates all oponents on teaching beginning HTML. I could teach my 90 year old grandma HTML with this book. For your next HTML book, I suggest Elizabeth Castro's "Visual Quickstart Guide; HTML For The World Wide Web". Then a good HTML bible.
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