Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Graphics

I am only up to Chapter 5, so this review is limited to early impressions...I am a person who prefers to learn on my own. When it comes to software I frequently just dive in and paddle around until I eventually grok the concepts behind it and learn how to make it work. After a number of false starts and blind alleys, I'll acquire some proficiency. A well-written manual can be a terrific aid to the process. A badly-written manual can still be helpful once I understand enough about the software to extract useful information from material that has been badly organized, illustrated and explained. (Or out-of-date, or simply WRONG!)HTML (HyperText Markup Language) -- the language that formats web pages -- isn't well suited to my default mode of learning. But I need to update and maintain my two websites, so I felt I had to buckle down and learn the lingo. For that I needed something beyond a good manual, I needed a good textbook designed for the rank amateur.I bought Jennifer Robbins' book based on the excellent reviews posted on Amazon. I'm only up to page 80, but I am already creating HTML code that produces simple, but very serviceable web pages. Just how far and how deep I go into HTML is yet to be determined, but paging ahead in the book I can see that the topics covered go very deep indeed.The key point here is that Jennifer is an honest-to-god hands-on teacher who also has a gift for writing. She doesn't dawdle around -- you get into the real stuff pretty fast -- but she provides enough background, examples and explanation that your eyes don't cross and your brain check out. Its a delicate balance between the meat and the filling, and Jennifer manages it like an artist.Now HTML code, like all computer code, is not particularly intuitive, and when you throw in the syntax it becomes less so. But Jennifer introduces you to the elements in a logical order, a bit at a time, progressively building upon previous material to take you up to the next level of complexity. Quite quickly you acquire enough skill to produce pages that have a bit of polish.This text does NOT teach you how to use any of the many web-page-creation programs that are out there. This book introduces you to the bedrock code that underlies all web pages, however created. In that respect it is less 'E-Z', but more durable and broadly applicable. There are a thousand ways to create web pages. There are more web-page-creation tools all the time and they are constantly evolving. But the code they produce, the root HTML, is a far more stable product, and to understand it is to truly understand what is being created.Finally -- and this is important -- Jennifer provides exercises at the end of each chapter that are meaningful tests of your comprehension and retention, while not so challenging as to be discouraging. Long ago I learned that if you haven't worked the exercises you haven't learned the material, so I find it particularly gratifying that the exercises are well designed and useful.Buy this book, work through it page by page and chapter by chapter, and you will not regret the time or the money spent.

The many 5-star reviews here by web design experts led me to choose this book to help build my website. But this is the viewpoint of a beginning web-builder, albeit someone who has had a lot of experience of learning from books. The book is NOT about user experience, the aesthetics of web design, search engine optimization, etc.. After a sprinkling of facts about the history, workings, and administration of the web in the first chapters, it is all about techniques of generating text and image content with HTML5 and CSS3. A couple of concluding chapters briefly introduce JavaScript. HTML5's role is proposed to be confined to structure or semantics (meaning), leaving all formatting to CSS (except, of course, some default text formatting, else text could not display in HTML alone). This is in contrast with earlier versions of HTML, where one was not discouraged from using as much HTML formatting as allowed before formatting with CSS.Jennifer Robbins is a remarkable teacher. She anticipates the questions and misunderstandings some readers may have, and deals with them before they become obstacles. Although she calls this a beginner's book, she writes for aspiring web professionals, and her thoroughness reflects this intent. The exercises are well-designed, and the end-of-chapter questions helpful in determining if you really"got it" (answers are in the back of the book). I like the many references to books and web articles extending the scope of her book; she seems well-informed on the cutting edge of web design. Her writing is clear, and difficult concepts are well-explained. Digital files of all the book's examples are available on O'Reilly's website. (I appreciate that O'Reilly does not require a code to download the files. Actually, it's a good marketing strategy, because a lot of people will buy O'Reilly's books when they find out how good all their stuff is!) I love this book!

I first learned web design back in the early days of the Internet, when there was no such thing as style sheets, and you basically hacked together web pages by hand with the constantly changing HTML standards. Recently needing to do a bit of web design work again, I clearly needed to update my skills.This book is beautiful, like a literal work of art. Absolutely go with the printed version, which offers full color, well-formatted tips, tricks, practice examples and experienced advice on how to do web design right, with full HTML 5 compliance. (There's no way Kindle could ever do justice to this book, as much as I love Kindle).This book is on the design side of web development, and of course there's a programming side (on both the front and back end, including new web applications to learn), but you won't find a better book on designing the presentation side of web pages for full validation. I can't recommend this book enough - it's one of the friendliest introductions you could have on web design.I only wish I'd had a book like this 15 years ago.

I'm working through this book now having had it for a few months. Overall, it's presented well towards me as somewhat familiar with programming. If you've never dabbled in programming or design before, it's not bad either, but it definitely moves quickly. There are occasionally a few parts that feel like they might be out of date, but there are also tons of sections that have obviously been updated since the previous incarnation was published. Her style of writing is friendly and colloquial, I've enjoyed reading it so far both academically and somewhat as a pleasurable activity. I would say that the activities are easy and also help you stretch your abilities a bit, however they are not that challenging.At the end of the day, it's (so far!) a great introduction to web design including touching on HTML, CSS and (hopefully soon) a bit of Javascript.

A must book for anyone that wants to comprehend from zero what internet it and en up understanding all the complexity of designing websites in a simple though complete and easy to understand way.In my opinion a must book for any beginner.

Does a good job of what it sets out to do. Of course this is not any extensive masterful coverage of any of the topics it covers. While it introduces to HTML5, CSS and JavaScript it should be taken as a good starter point providing well foundations to all of these topics. The conclusion is, if you are a beginner to the front end web development this book absolutely worth it.

Y es el libro que todo programador deberiamos tener,Tambien si no lo eres y vas iniciando en esta materia este libro, definitivo este libro es el adecuado.Este libro reune, buena presentacion, imagen, y contenido.

Pour des raisons diverses j'ai a me frotter avec HTML. Ce livre m'a permis dans quelques heures de lecture de comprendre la mécanique du langage et de l'utiliser dans quelques cas simples.Je recommande ce livre à toute personne voulant s'initier à HTML.

This book is very helpful, even for a total beginner in this field. I got to make very simple web pages on my own. I got a free program they recommend that I use to do a little Desktop Publishing with now when I need it - I did have some previous experience with that. I am not pursuing web design because it is not my thing at all, too hard for me personally, but it was fun finding out the ropes, even though I did not succeed in some of the projects. I learned more about types of files etc, and my computer generally.