Creating a Web Page with HTML : Visual QuickProject Guide (Visual Quickproject Series)

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Summary: !Viva Castro!
Review: Elizabeth Castro is without a doubt the best teacher of HTML, XHTML, CSS and all the other things that go into making up your web pages. If you have any intention of learning markup language and cascading style sheets, join the Castro Revolution and rule the world.

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Summary: This Book Is Awesome
Review: I'm already a fan of Elizabth's Castro's books, but I got this one to give to a friend who needed a quick start, and I have to say it's truly wonderful.

A very good source of the basics in a very straightforward presentation, and the design is gorgeous as well.

More than worth the money.

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Summary: Just What You Need To Make A Simple HTML Website
Review: If you want a book that can show you how to create a simple HTML website quickly and without the distraction of long explanations of HTML code, this is a good book for you. The author, Elizabeth Castro, walks you step-by-step through the two webpage project that is the focus of her book. By using easy to follow instructions and illustrations, Castro gives you the basic knowledge you need to create this simple website.

So what exactly will this book help you accomplish? You will make two HTML webpages and accompanying Cascading Style Sheets (standard for formatting webpages). This two page website will have a home page and one inner page. From just these two webpages you can go on to create an entire website by creating any number of inner pages.

Castro begins by telling you what you will need to complete the project and then she jumps right in with the bare bones HTML webpage. She then starts to add the images and text that are the main focus of the book. She first shows you how to add a simple image to the webpage and how to make a navigation bar from a few small images. She then shows how to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to position this navigation bar on the webpage and control the appearance of the navigation links.

Castro then moves on to demonstrate CSS more thoroughly. She starts with formatting and positioning text on a webpage. She then shows how to divide a webpage into sections and how to control the position and appearance of each section with the CSS.

Once you have completed your two webpages, you are ready to publish to the web. Castro discusses hosting your site and FTP software for transferring your webpage onto the web.

Castro has included some useful charts at the end of the book which contain the HTML and CSS code used in the project, HTML color and special character codes. You can find more helpful information and download the project files and images used in this book from the accompanying website, cookwood.com.

Castro has also written many of the Visual QuickStart Guide books for Peachpit Press.

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Summary: What a Way to Get Started
Review: One of my biggest problems with computer books is that they have a difficult time getting you started. It seems like they skip the first twenty or fifty pages that should describe just what it is that you're trying to do here.

This book is different. It starts out with let's build these two web pages. First you create a folder, then you type in a few characters into what you'll save as a file. You know, that headline would look a lot more like a headline if it were bigger, here's how you do a heading.

No, it's not going to teach you everything about HTML. But it provides the initial getting started phase. Good Idea!

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Summary: Rocket ride into HTML
Review: This is a rocket ride of a book. It stars with Textpad, then flies into Photoshop, then back into Textpad for a quick ride through the basics of HTML and CSS. There is some reference at the end, but frankly it's too little too late. The back of the book exhorts that you don't have to know everything to get your job done, and while that may apply to other fields like Powerpoint or Word, it doesn't work here. You need to understand the fundamentals of HTML if you want to go past the examples shown here.

For a complete introduction starting with the fundamentals I recommend O'Reilly's excellent HTML & XHTML : The Definitive Guide.