Book Review

Head First HTML (with CSS and xHTML) Book Review

Prashant Sani

• 2 min read

Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML by Elisabeth Freeman and Eric Freeman cover

Are you a Graphic Designer who knows the dangers of automated code?

Or you are a beginner level Front End developer, who thoroughly gets confused with HTML tags and CSS?

In any case this is the perfect book for you to start coding HTML & CSS. If you love reading books that teach you how to code without boring you and making you feel sleepy, You ‘ll absolutely love reading Head First Series Books (like Me).

The Book Starts off by explaining basics of HTML, and then takes us to wonderful journey down the Webville(or so they call), teaching us the basics of markup in a very fun and intuitive way using tools like story-telling and Crossword Puzzles. After the basics of HTML are thoroughly explained, the book starts explaining core CSS concepts like Styling, Cascading, Layout,etc and the book ends with little bit of introduction on JavaScript and HTML Forms.

I know this is age of HTML5, but don’t get me wrong; HTML5 is nothing but new JavaScript APIs+ New Tags that are added to xHTML and HTML4 standard. This book makes sure that the basics are well understood .

Pros:

  1. Informal Conversational Styled Book that concentrates on Teaching and not making you sleep!
  2. Core and yet quite confusing concepts for beginners like CSS Layouts (table-less) taught without leaving a slight trace of confusion in readers minds.
  3. For pure developers/and or beginners, information such as how Hexadecimal-code are calculated, how RGB works, how to save for web, etc is also provided.

Cons:

(None Actually).I m glad that this was my First Ever HTML and Head First Book!

Target Audience:

  1. This book is dedicated purely to coders or design professionals who want to learn basics of xHTML and CSS without reading boring developer language HTML Books or specification.
  2. Remember this is a “Start From Here” book and not meant for high end HTML programmer who is looking out for a reference book on HTML (why not refer W3C specification, then? )

SPID.er Rating 5/5

Additional Links

  1. Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML Official Website
  2. Other Book Reviews on SPID.er
  3. Eric Freeman Website

I want to sincerely thank the Authors, Elisabeth Freeman and Eric Freeman for this wonderful book.
Prashant Sani