Editorial Product Review:

Item Description:
HTML is changing so fast it's almost impossible to keep up with developments. XHTML is HTML 4.0 rewritten in XML; it provides the precision of XML while retaining the flexibility of HTML. HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 4th Edition, brings it all together. It's the most comprehensive book available on HTML and XHTML today. It covers Netscape Navigator 6.0, Internet Explorer 5.0, HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, JavaScript, Style sheets, Layers, and all of the features supported by the popular web browsers.

Learning HTML and XHTML is like learning any new language, computer or human. Most students first immerse themselves in examples. Studying others is a natural way to learn, making learning easy and fun. Imitation can take learning only so far, though. It's as easy to learn bad habits through imitation as it is to acquire good ones. The better way to become HTML-fluent is through a comprehensive reference that covers the language syntax, semantics, and variations in detail and demonstrates the difference between good and bad usage.

HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 4th Edition, helps in both ways: the authors cover every element of HTML/XHTML in detail, explaining how each element works and how it interacts with other elements. Many hints about HTML/XHTML style smooth the way for writing documents that range from simple online documentation to complex presentations. With hundreds of examples, the book gives web authors models for writing their own effective web pages and for mastering advanced features, like style sheets and frames.

HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 4th Edition, shows how to:

• Implement the XHTML 1.0 standard and prepare web pages for the transition to XML browsers
• Use style sheets and layers to control a document's appearance
• Create tables, from simple to complex
• Use frames to coordinate sets of documents
• Design and build interactive forms and dynamic documents
• Insert images, sound files, video, Java applets, and JavaScript programs
• Create documents that look good on a variety of browsers

The book comes with a handy quick reference card listing HTML tags.

Amazon.com Review:
Plenty of books can teach you HTML quickly, getting you up to speed and hacking out Web pages in no time. HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide offers a more comprehensive and pragmatic look at the de facto markup language of today, as well as the emerging next step.

This title systematically presents HTML markup, beginning with the basics--such as the anatomy of an HTML document, text, and links--and proceeding to cascading style sheets, JavaScript, and XML. Along the way, it discusses related issues, such as problems with displaying background images, and browser-specific behavior with tables and other elements. Each element is covered in as much depth as is necessary to frame the key implementation issues.

Most of the book is entirely relevant to basic HTML coding without any concern for XHTML. The latter, more cutting-edge flavor of markup is covered in depth near the end of the book. The entire specifications for the HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 Document Type Definitions (DTDs) are included among the appendices.

While HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide is an excellent tutorial for learning markup the right way, it is also a superb desktop reference guide to keep nearby for daily use. Perhaps, there is no greater compliment for a Web development book. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered:

• Markup basics
• HTML document structure
• Text handling
• Images
• Multimedia
• Links and URLs
• Formatted lists
• Tables
• Forms
• Cascading style sheets
• Frames
• JavaScript
• Applets and objects
• Dynamic documents
• Netscape Layout Extensions
• XML
• XHTML

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• JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
• Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML
• Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference (Dynamic Html)
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Customer Rating: - Another excellent reference...
A real educational experience. Also a well defined book. Be ready to learn when you read this book.

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Customer Rating: - Excellent reference book - highly recommend it
I am new to HTML/XHTML and wanted a definitive reference book that told me about EVERY HTML tag - and exactly what were and weren't the correct ways to use them. After buying and reading about 5 other similar books, I finally got to this one and it is exactly right. All the other books cover useful snippets here and there, but they aren't exhaustive.

Note that this book isn't good for learning the basics. Rather, it is useful reference once you know the basics and need a source that tells you authoritatively that this such and such tag (e.g., 'p') does or doesn't support such and such attribute (e.g., 'padding') - fyi, it doesn't, except thru the 'style' attribute.

If that's what you need, then this is what you should buy.

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Customer Rating: - Amazon is conning you.
AMAZON, SHAME ON YOU!!!!! You should state what edition and the date copyrighted in the book information and indicate whether there are newer editions.

Watch out. Though Amazon has it covered by the "look inside", the book entitled only HTML is the 3rd edition of a book that is in it's sixth Edition. Amazon has combined all the reviews for all the editions. This should not be done!!!!!!! I have always felt comfortable buying from Amazon, no longer. I did have a seller (ordered through Amazon)send me this edition for the full price of the 6th. He got the sixth to me, but it took my time to get it corrected. The 3rd edition is probably not even worth the $10 for the used edition, but is certainly not worth the $20 for the new. Don't be fooled! I can't believe Amazon is stooping to this sort of a con. The most serious problem is that much of what you learn in this edition is being put out to pasture in the next 5 years.


There is a World Wide Consortium that is trying to standardize language and browswers. HTML is being replace in the interim with XHTML and eventually XML. A new, more powerful, formating language, CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, is replacing any formating in HTML.

Many of the reviews you see are for the 6th edition. It does have errors (it doesn't stick to the more stringent XHTML as it should, and the redundancy is annoying. Castro's is annoying in that she sectionalizes the code and it's not clear at first what she's doing. I haven't yet seen the others that are offered.

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Customer Rating: - A Reference Book, not a Textbook
Don't make the mistake of thinking this book will teach you how to code web pages using HTML and CSS. This is a reference manual that exhaustively discusses the mechanics of coding web pages, but it doesn't walk you through the process step by step. For that, I recommend O'Reilly's "Head First: HTML with CSS & XHTML." The benefit of this book is that it covers every aspect of HTML and CSS, including some which the W3 consortium has approved but no browser yet supports. It's best as a reference book for those already familiar with web page coding. It's full of surprises and "I didn't know I could do that!" moments, given its comprehensiveness.