HTML 4 Bible
John Wiley & Sons Search John Wiley & Sons by Bryan Pfaffenberger Alexis D. Gutzman Search Bryan Pfaffenberger Alexis D. Gutzman
 |
Rating:  
More Details: HTML 4 Bible HTML 4 Bible @Amazon HTML 4 Bible @aStore |
Amazon.co.uk Review
In HTML 4 Bible, you will find a comprehensive definition of what is considered state of the art in Web-publishing languages. The book explains HTML tags and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) thoroughly, and it gives some attention to JavaScript as well.
Authors Pfaffenberger and Gutzman use a helpful problem-and-solution format that provides straightforward answers to common problems--they show you how to build image maps and create attractive forms, to cite two examples.
What's special about the book's approach is that it doesn't get side-tracked by the universe of detail that HTML 4 presents. Rather than choosing to ploddingly document the characteristics of one tag after another, Pfaffenberger and Gutzman explain their subject by describing how it is applied in practice. They explain, for example, how to arrange textual data so that people are more likely to read it.
The downside to this holistic approach is that HTML 4 Bible isn't the absolutely comprehensive HTML reference many readers will expect it to be. Books like that exist, and you may want to supplement HTML 4 Bible with one of them. But if you want a text that provides informed explanations of how to get the results you want with HTML, this book is for you. --David Wall (This text refers to the Paperback edition.)
Customer Reviews:
Flawed, but still very useful
I have given this book quite a high rating simply because although it is very flawed in many ways, it is still better than many other HTML books out there. My first criticism of it is its length and price. I have read the entire book and managed to condense everything of any importance into two small notebooks - the book could easily have been a good, cheap pocketbook instead of the lumbering tome that it is ... the author says nothing of any practical use for the first 60-odd pages. On page 61, chapter 4, he finally starts teaching you HTML from scratch, which is great. He covers the terminology, tags, entities, comments, document type declaration, meta tags, style sheets and cascading style sheets (though his definitions of these are inconsistent), lists, anchor tags, web site publishing (very unclearly), getting an ISP, connecting to a server (again, very unclearly), testing your site, stats software, spam, internet connexions, aliasing vs anti-aliasing, splash screens/entry tunnels, colours, linking to non-web data, images, multimedia, alt tags, tables and much more. There are typos and, worse, syntax errors but it is possible to get nearly all the information one needs anyway. Like I said, it could have been done much better, but it's still a decent enough book.
One thing that is irritating is that he does not seem to know what dynamic HTML is. First he says it is the same thing as HTML 4.0, then he says it is something else, then he says it is JavaScript and HTML 4.0, etc. He is inconsistent and also teaches things but then, 200 pages later says that these things are not actually supported yet - which is not very convenient.
Still, this book *has* helped me, and for that I'm grateful.
Okay reference. Waaaay too many mistakes. 
While this book helped me through the basics, it did so in a confusing and round-about fashion. All too often subjects were brought up, only to be glossed over and referenced to a chapter further along in the book. That jumping around made for very confusing reading. It was also dissapointing to see so many chapters written about such off-topic subjects such as verb usage and finding a topic for a web page. This book could have, and should have, been much smaller (read cheaper) for the actual HTML 4 information it contains.
Incredibly Comprehensive! 
This book has everything you need to create and publish a winning web site. All the terms are explained early in the book, so that even if you don't know the vocabulary of the industry, you can follow right along. The review of HTML editors is tremendous. The software on the CD ties right in with the content in the book, so that you don't need to hunt all over the net for the tools that it discusses.
It also makes a great reference book. This is definitely the *one* book to buy for HTML.
If some exercises existed ... it should be the best book
i am an absolute zero in HTML and had developed some knowledge thro friends and frontpage. the book is clear and consice (and equally interesting to read)
but does not have any exercises (like in Javascript bible by Danny Goodman) at the end of each chapter, so at the end sometimes u are not sure if u have learned it properly .but overall definitly a good book
Terrible - filled with errors & long unrelated sections. 
Truly disappointed with HTML 4 Bible, usualy the Bible series publishes great books. This one should be titled my genearl, overall, meandering feelings about HTML and everything else under the sun. Not only are there numerous errors in the code samples and explanations, the author inserts text after text of off subject, and bad, information. Such as pages advising the use of "active" verbs instead of "passive" verb usage in one's web content, and wondering passages about Xanadu and 'what it' that infinite cross reference idea ever takes off - how "one day" it should be incorporated into web page design. This book, by its title, should discuss HTML coding, its uses and examples - it does very little of that. In my frustration I had to stop reading 3/4 the way through and returned it.
I cant' recommend this book under any circumstances.
FYI I purchased O'Reilly's "HTML Definitive" book instead and I'm very happy with this later choice.
