Re: Books - what are the best references for HTML?

["Jeanne A. E. DeVoto" <jaed -at- BEST -dot- COM>]

At 12:45 AM -0700 7/14/98, Tytus Pluciennik wrote:
>My second question to you kind folks concerns HTML. Mainly, what do you
>consider a good resource (book) for Web publishing. I need to make online
>help in straight HTML for our software, which is to be run on Unix. I need
>this online help to be as browser independent as possible, yet I keep
>running into books that are either geared for Netscape or IE. I think I need
>a general HTML reference that is not written for "Dummies", but is on an
>intermediate level. Any suggestions?

I like the 3.2 Laura Lemay book (titled something like "Learn HTML 3.2 in 7
Days"). It takes you neatly through the basics, mentions proprietary tags
and attributes while telling you what browsers support them, and fosters
good, platform-independent markup habits. (There's also a "14 Days" title
by the same author which covers some additional material such as server
configuration, Javascript, and so on.)

(I do not recommend the 4.0 book in the same series - it was updated by
another author, and to my way of thinking the quality suffered seriously.
However, the 3.2 book will tell you most of what you need; most additions
to the 4.0 standard were proprietary Netscape/MSIE elements during the 3.2
period, and are covered as such in the 3.2 edition of the book.)

The O'Reilly title someone else mentioned is very complete, but I think not
as useful for the beginner; as well, I noticed some misstatements that
would not be problems for the experienced person, but might create some
confusion for others. A good reference, but not the one I'd pick for "first
HTML book".

--
jeanne a. e. devoto ~ jaed -at- jaedworks -dot- com
http://www.jaedworks.com
What does not kill us makes us stranger.