Review: Creating a Web Page with HTML, Visual QuickProject Guide · 349 words posted 10/07/2004 06:10 PM
When Elizabeth Castro’s Creating a Web Page with HTML, Visual QuickProject Guide showed up in my mail recently, I wasn’t immediately inclined to review it. What could I say about a slender introduction to writing HTML? Then I came across Jeffrey Zeldman’s favorable review from several weeks ago:
With simple language and clear illustrations, Castro teaches budding web producers the basics of HTML and CSS in the context of a simple, hands-on project.
This is not a book for the world’s Dunstan Orchards; it is strictly for beginners (but not for dummies). If friends, colleagues, or family members with a desire to learn web design basics and no prior experience ask how to begin, you can safely recommend this book to them.
So I decided to give the book a second look.
And what a look. Mr. Zeldman has already covered the book’s substance; I want to praise the book’s style (disclosure: I co-authored a Visual QuickStart Guide for the same publisher two years ago).
When you review computer books regularly, you see a lot of crap. Many, maybe most, computer books are lazily written, poorly edited rehashes of instruction manuals that aren’t worth the industry standard price of $40+. I don’t write about the bad books because it’s more fun to bring the good ones to your attention—but the stinkers are legion.
Hoping to be first to market, publishers often require their authors to write titles while software is in beta, thus ensuring that the book won’t reflect a mature understanding of the software and will likely have a lengthy errata. Even assuming an author tries to write something fresh, her work is still at the mercy of publishers who increasingly cut costs at the printers. In otherwise favorable reviews this year, I’ve complained about low contrast gray-scale printing in books that would have benefited from color.
So it’s an uncommon treat when everything comes together as it does in Creating a Web Page with HTML. Clear writing. Useful appendices. No typos. And color on every single page for only $12.99. Bravo!
Why can’t more computer books be this professional?
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