Howdy all,
I wanna teach myself HTML and wonder if anyone could recommend a good text/reference book. I’d like to stay away from “HTML for Dummies” type stuff (unless it’s particularly good), yet I don’t need “The Assembly Language Programmer’s Guide to HTML” either. Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance!
I’d agree that learning to hand code before even trying to use something like Dreamweaver is by far the best way forward. It’s a very sensible approach and one you won’t regret as even the most sophisticated WYSIWYG’s don’t compensate for a good grounding, IMHO. Also, I think book learnin’ is so much easier than trying to get your head around HTML by using the bitty online resources – so, yep, I’d do what you plan to do.
As for books, I imagine there is quite a range now. It probably needs to be real door stop size because, again IMHO, you will need a comprehensive reference section for the Elements, what works with which browser, etc, etc. Also needs to be big because the book should lead you in to Style Sheets, a little JavaScript – even if you don’t plan to go that far at this stage, it’s very helpful to see how things all tie in and, also, advancing to more advanced stuff becomes less daunting when you can see the progression in the same book.
I used: ‘HTML: The Complete Reference Second Edition’ (1999) by Thomas A. Powell, published by Osborne (an American publisher). Found it very comprehensive and comprehendible. Made HTML relatively easy to grasp.
There may be a ‘Bible’ that every pro in the US recommends but I’m not aware of one. Would suggest flicking through before buying the book just to make sure you like the style, book fonts, etc. as well as checking the language to make sure it suits your needs as you’ll be spending quite a lot of time with it !
Another idea (which you are probably aware of) is to download a good Editor, something like Home Site by Allaire, as that will not only check your code but explain what went wrong and what would be better.
Good luck !
For an online resource, try http://www.zdnet.com/devhead/.
I highly reccomend this book.
I used this online site when first learning HTML. I remember it being good then, but I haven’t used it in a while:
I’ve never used books for learning html. IMO, the best way to learn what does what is to look at source code for other people’s pages and see what they did.
My favorite online resource is http://www.htmlgoodies.com
Another fantastic online resource is: http://www.projectcool.com
For reference guides to all things webbish, you can’t beat http://www.w3.org/. Check out their 10-minute introduction to HTML.
The HTML Goodies site is the way to go. They are part of EarthWeb, a wonderful collection of IT sites. Joe Burns, the creator of the site, is very knowledgeable and provides excellent examples. Learning from example tends to be the best way to learn this sort of thing. After you get the basics from him, just make “View Source” a habit when visiting web pages.
Thanks everyone! I’m off to Border’s today after work.
A nice web resource for all web languages, not just HTML, is The Web Developer’s Virtual Library