Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A useful and excelllent guide
Comment: Get an account on a LINUX server, create public_html, and learn some vi. Then get this book and learn the right way to get onto the web. Pay especial attention to XHTML and learn to use the validators to impose discipline on your HTML. You will have fast-loading pages. You will quickly learn the vagaries of CSS and have fully modern pages. Buy this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent: effective and enjoyable way to learn
Comment: I am about 1/3 of the way through the book. It takes you step by step through the process and is actually fun. I have started a couple of other HTML books and failed to learn HTML. After a few hours with this book, I can definitely knock out simple web pages and I still have 2/3 of the book to go.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Teach your co-workers how and why to use web standards
Comment: First, let me say: this book is NOT pants.
I am a frontend engineer for one of the world's top 5 web companies. Even at such a company, I frequently encounter backend engineers and content producers who don't know the first thing about semantic markup, CSS presentation layers, or unobtrusive Javascript. The result with engineers is a constant battle to keep content, presentation and functionality separate. With content producers, we end up with articles that are completely non reusable -- they would quickly break if the page context within which they are embedded changes.
This book helps me bridge that gap of understanding. It speaks in easy to understand language, utilises lots of colour pictures, and more or less holds the reader's hand through what could otherwise be an insurmountable topic. Even if someone only makes it through a couple of chapters, if they've any intelligence at all, they'll grasp the basics of what you've been trying to tell them.
If you're a frontend web engineer, this book absolutely belongs on your shelf for people to borrow.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A different approach to teaching HTML and CSS
Comment: If you are looking for a different approach than most web design books take, this is for you. I have really appreciated the style of this book in teaching a high school web design class.
Rather than just throw code your way with dry explanations of what the code does, or pursue over in-depth discussions on the importance of following web standards, Head First uses a great combinations of clear and really well illustrated explanations and exercises to bring you along in your learning.
Reading the book is a lot of fun and almost effortless.
A critique of the book, but also its strength, is that it does not go into a lot of depth about what all tags mean, and their optional attributes. Rather it gives you a big picture and gives you just enough explanation so that you don't get lost (but maybe don't understand everything).
I would certainly recommend this as one of your primary resources for learning html, xhtml, and css although you will benefit from also having a more "reference" type book as well.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Textbook That Is Not A Textbook
Comment: 'Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML' is the required text for my college class entitled: Creating Web Pages, HTML 1. When I received the book, I was pleasantly surprised that it was user-friendly. The book has an excellent and creative layout for each page; it is engaging and the information is current and easy to understand.
The authors have obviously spent a great deal of time putting this book together. This could have been a long, dull semester learning dry, computer tech material like links, attributes, encoding, W3C validation, design format, cascading style sheets, nesting, transitional vs. strict HTML, character entities and more. But this book has been interesting and makes me want to keep turning the page. Photos, colorful diagrams, and additional tools help to make the material relevant and enticing. I wish all textbooks were so well put together.
This book provides a solid foundation for learning web page design. From the first chapter, the authors have the reader designing a simple web page. The exercises in each chapter encourage a hands-on approach to learning, not just rote memorization. To be honest, I cannot imagine that there is a better book out there for the person beginning their training in the field of web page design. From beginner to advanced techniques, this book has it all.
Kudos to authors Elisabeth and Eric Freeman!
|
|
|
