The book covers the latest specifications of HTML 4 set by the World Wide Web Consortium, from the most basic tags that place text, images and links on the page to more complex ones that set up tables, frames or forms. New to this fourth edition, the book provides a chapter on debugging, including browser compatibility issues, expanded sections on Cascading Style Sheets, Javascript, and CGI scripts for use with forms.

As with all Visual QuickStart Guides, HTML 4 features clear and concise instructions side-by-side with well-captioned illustrations and screenshots that show both the source code and the resulting effect on the Web page. The index is extremely detailed, making this a good reference book for intermediate users who are already familiar with basic HTML but need help with specific topics.

The book also includes extensive and useful appendices. One offers a chart that describes each tag (along with its compatibility with Netscape Navigator and/or Internet Explorer.) Other appendices show the code for special symbols, hexadecimal equivalents for RGB colours and a comparison chart for some of the HTML editors on the market. All in all, this is the perfect desktop reference for Web designers. --Angelynn Grant, Amazon.com

Topics covered: HTML code for creating Web pages, including formatting text, images, links, colours, tables, frames, forms, embedded multimedia clips, cascading style sheets, basic javascript actions like rollovers, finer points like drop caps and page counters, debugging code, browser compatibility issues, publishing pages on the internet, registering with search engines. --Sarah Taylor

Product Description

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the lingua franca of the Web, and like any language, it's constantly evolving. That's why Elizabeth Castro has written HTML 4 for the World Wide Web, Fourth Edition: Visual QuickStart Guide, an update to her blockbuster guide to HTML 4. You'll find all the concise, practical advice--and fun examples--that made the first edition a worldwide bestseller, plus entirely new coverage of debugging, JavaScript, and using tables for page layout, and an expanded section on Cascading Style Sheets.

Like all the books in the Visual QuickStart series, this one breaks even the most complex tasks into easy-to-follow steps illustrated with hundreds of screenshots and the actual code. The book presumes no prior knowledge of HTML, making it the perfect introduction for beginners. But its tabbed format and info-packed appendixes (on special HTML characters and Web-safe colors, for example) also make it a handy and indispensable reference for those who build Web pages for a living. Find out why Amazon called the previous edition a "dream guide" to HTML.