Amazon.co.uk
Today's Web authors need to know about XHTML, which is the current W3C recommendation for Web page authoring. XHTML is an application of XML that remains backwards compatible with HTML 4.0. The advantage is that it brings much-needed discipline and structure to the Web, and enables proper separation of content from presentation. This is becoming more important as devices other than traditional browsers expect to find useful content on the Web.
The Wrox Beginning series aims to teach all you need to know from scratch, although in practice they are more advanced than the title suggests. This book begins with background information about HTML, XML, and the parent of both, SGML. Next, there is a full explanation of the structure of an XHTML document. Further chapters cover links, images, tables and frames. There is an excellent introduction to Cascading Style Sheets.
The second half of the book covers more advanced topics, including XML, Web site design, achieving browser compatibility, and supporting multimedia. Next, there is an explanation of forms, JavaScript scripting, and programming the Document Object Model. At the back of the book, there are several appendices providing a complete reference to the three levels of XHTML (Strict, Transitional and Frameset), a Style Sheet and JavaScript reference, and information on third-party resources such as HTML Tidy, a great free-to-use tool for testing and converting your documents.
Several of the authors work with the W3C, and Beginning XHTML contrives to be both authoritative and enthusiastic about XHTML. Whether you are just starting with Web authoring, or an HTML expert who needs to get up to speed with the new standard, this is an excellent read. --Tim Anderson
Amazon.com
The Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) is the next-generation base markup language for the Web. XHTML moves the now standard HTML to a valid XML syntax to fill the current compatibility gap between HTML browsers and XML parsers.
Beginning XHTML introduces the reader to XHTML, but goes well beyond the relatively minor language differences to provide a well-rounded tutorial on Web markup.
This book easily meets the authors' goal as a "hands-on practical approach to learning how to build Web pages." Although the text begins with a straightforward explanation of why XHTML exists and its differences from HTML, most of its content explores particular markup topics such as frames, multimedia, style sheets, and scripting. Readers who follow the numerous examples closely will soon find themselves implementing the syntactical rules of XHTML, even if they are used to regular HTML code.
Plenty of tips and detailed explanations of important concepts distinguish this book from many of the other HTML books on the market. For example, the authors take the time to explain some of the subtleties of image size optimization like running solid colors horizontally in GIF files to maximize compression. Another quite useful example shows how to use JavaScript to pass data between separate pages in a frameset.
Tons of highlighted code snippets and screen shots illustrate the material, and the detailed blow-by-blow commentary gives the book a nice flow. If you're looking for an HTML tutorial, forget it and pick up this forward-looking XHTML title. --Stephen W. Plain
Topics covered: XHTML history, linking, image formats and optimization, tables, frames, meta-data, style sheets, XML, site structure, page design concepts, XHTML-supported media types, multimedia integration, XHTML forms, JavaScript, Document Object Models (DOMs), Mozquito Factory, and FML.
