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Spring Into HTML and CSS Book Review |
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Written by David Thompson
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Monday, 21 April 2008 |
 If you've ever thought about designing a website, then you?re probably
familiar with HTML (hyper text markup language). HTML is the easiest to
master quickly because many of the most used tags are easily remembered
and with WYSIWYG website design tools like Macromedia Dreamweaver,
Adobe GoLive and Microsoft FrontPage, there?s many ways a beginner can
choose to create their own website.
From my years of web design experience, I?ve realized that the best and most cost efficient way to learn webs design is by using a plain text editor and a basic FTP (file transfer protocol) program you can download from the internet.
The reason why it is good to learn how to code is because it can teach you proper web design techniques and provide a better technical understanding. By writing the source code, you can quickly detect and fix many web design errors in various projects. Plus, learning cascading style sheets can do some really cool things that?ll add some pizzazz to your website.
Let's Get Coding
Learning the basics of HTML coding will help you later down the line so let?s start with that first. It?s more than HTML coding, you learn the fine details of being able read and modify existing code. During your web designing career, this skill will come in handy when you have to step in and fix some website issues or do an entire redesign. So take notice that?s it?s just as important to decipher the code as well as it is to write it.
The first six chapters of the book is dedicated to standard HTML tags. If you?re just starting out learning web design, you should read through these early chapters because it will help you understand the syntax of CSS. Chapter one starts you off building your first web page by adding text, HTML links, images and other forms of multimedia. Chapter two demonstrates how you add text and links to your web page. Chapter three shows how to add images multimedia and scripts into the source code.
After you've worked through the basic elements of a web page, you?re now ready to get your hands dirty with some cascading style sheets.
Beginning with chapter seven, you begin to see how to incorporate cascading style sheets into your website. The chapter demonstrates how to add style sheet info to your existing website, how you can quickly change the look of your site through CSS elements.
Chapter eight shows how you can utilize CSS to control images and color within your web page. Since you've been surfing the web, you've probably become accustomed to the typical scrolling background. You know, the kind of background that scrolls along with you as you?re moving towards the bottom of the page. With CSS, you can control that background image so it does not scroll. So imagine that you've created this really great piece of art that would look fabulous as the background image of your site. The problem is that you would have to figure out a way to make it into a seamless tile to use it as a background image. Using CSS code, you can set the background image?s positioning then set the image not to repeat. Yes, there?s some pretty slick stuff you can do with CSS.
Chapter nine covers text styling using CSS such as setting certain fonts, sizes and positioning. You?re probably used to doing this via borderless HTML tables but that can be very difficult when trying to position text to a very specific position on the page. This is one of the techniques commonly found across the internet because it?s very easy to implement and gives your text a fresh look.
Chapter ten demonstrates some of the cool features of CSS when applying it to links, lists and navigational purposes. The CSS rollover menu using text offers fast loading times because it?s just a text link with CSS providing the rollover element. You can view this CSS capability by visiting http://www.filmandvideomagazine.com. The left menu design and its rollovers are completely controlled via CSS. No need to mess with javascript, creating on and off state images and coding it all up. Just a little CSS and some text and you've got a fancy menu.
Chapter thirteen covers an entire CSS layout. You've gotten this far and I?m sure you?re anxious to get your entire website wrapped up in cascading style sheets. But before you do, you should know that not all web browsers are compatible with CSS code. Remember that there is a diverse crowd, that use various programs to surf the internet. What looks good in Internet Explorer might not look the same with someone using Firefox or Netscape or the Apple Macintosh Safari browser. Chapter thirteen provides some example layouts of an entire web page with source code samples so you can learn to build pages all in CSS.
The Final Word
To see some of the cool things you can do with cascading style sheets, take a look at the CSS Zen Garden (http://www.csszengarden.com). After you see some of the examples there, you?ll want to jump right into the CSS section of this book and give it a try. The cool thing is that you?ll be able to design by code and have a good idea what the results will be.
While anyone can jump into a web design program like Dreamweaver and build a basic website in minutes, you won?t have any idea how you got the end result. If you learn the code first, then you can design to your heart?s content without having to fight a program?s limitations.
Molly's cascading style sheet code examples are provided in easy to digest bits so you can test each source code example and begin to tweak it to your desire. This is a proven way towards learning web design and you quickly gain the ability to troubleshoot code, which you will find to be a valuable skill because while most people can use a WYSIWYG program, not everyone understands how to edit code and I know that there will be times where you will have to design manually. Reading Molly E. Holzschlag?s Spring Into HTML and CSS will serve as a valuable tool towards improving the look and efficiency of your website.
You can click HERE to purchase Molly E. Holzschlag?s Spring Into HTML and CSS.
About Molly E. Holzschlag
She is an engaging speaker and teacher, appearing regularly at conferences including Comdex, Internet World, WEB2001, XMLDevCon, and Web Builder. In more academic arenas, Molly teaches Webmaster courses for the University of Arizona, University of Phoenix, and Pima Community College. Honored as one of the Top 25 Women on the Web, Molly is an advisory board member to the World Organization of Webmasters, is a member of the Web Standards Project, and spent a year as Executive Editor of WebReview.com. For more about Molly's books, articles, events, and Web-related activities, visit www.molly.com.
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