I knew some html before I picked up this book, but it was really only enough to get by. I've looked in many places to try and get some decent knowledge behind me but found everything to be really dry, too technical or not enough working examples for you to try. I picked up this book and HTML/XHTML for Dummies, and I have to say I'm far more impressed by this book than I am the Dummies book. Dummies is 'supposed' to assume that you have no knowledge of HTML, but for my money it makes far too large a leap in its expectations of what the user should know. If I didn't already have some knowledge of HTML I would have been absolutely stumped.

However, SAMS book is a complete revelation! It starts off assuming you know nothing and takes you through very methodically and without patronising you. It doesn't get bogged down in technical language, making it very easy to read. I am only a quarter of the way through the 24 hours but I've learnt so much since I started it yesterday. I even managed to publish a very basic but hierarchical website online last night. I'm not saying that everyone will be able to do that as quickly as I did, because as I said, I already had a basic knowledge due to the fact that I have my own blog and domain, and have been playing about with them for a couple of months. However, this is the first time I've ever managed to set up a site from scratch without the use of themes.

In my opinion, this is THE book to buy if you know absolutely nothing about HTML/XHTML and CSS. A great investment indeed!