Creating Web Sites Bible Book

From the title you would expect a complete guide to Web authoring, but Creating Web Pages Bible is less comprehensive than it sounds. It does cover a variety of key Web technologies, packing in many useful tips along the way, but the breadth of coverage means limited detail in most cases. Curiously, the book begins with a quick-start guide to a Flash Web site. Flash is a great tool, but it is also expensive, and it is important to master basic HTML techniques before using it. The next chapters do introduce HTML, although not in any depth. There are some good chapters on text styling, laying out and optimising images, and careful use of colours. Tables and frames get a chapter each, followed by a quick look at Cascading Style Sheets with most of the pages taken up by reference information. Next comes a quick look at layers, forms, Javascript, multimedia, and Flash animation. There is a chapter on e-commerce, some of which is mainly relevant to US readers, and some general advice on promoting and maintaining a completed Web site. The bundled CD has a rich selection of demonstration tools, together with source code from the book and the text in Acrobat format. There is some good material here, but there are better books around for most of what it covers. For example, Web Design in a Nutshell for a guide and reference to basic HTML, or Mastering XHTML for a more up-to-date and comprehensive reference, or dedicated books on specific tools such as Dreamweaver and Flash. --Tim AndersonRead More