Web and HTML Resources

Web Links

Technical Documentation

HTML Home Page

HTML 4.01 Specification

Cascading Style Sheets Home Page

Guide to Cascading Style Sheets

Validators

A validator will automatically check some aspect of your web page(s); just plug in the URI/URL.

HTML Validator

Cascading Style Sheets Validator

On Good Web Design

Good Practices has many resources to help you make better web pages.

Book Recommendations

HTML Complete (Second Edition)

by Pat Coleman (Editor), Anamary Ehlen (Editor), and Sybex

Sybex

This book was an impulsive buy for me, and I have no regrets. It is not only complete, it is thick (over 1000 pages), well-written, and cheap (suggested retail is $19.99)!

You can access HTML documentation on the world wide web (see references above). However I find I'm more productive when I can flip around through a book that has four or five slips of paper and maybe even a pencil marking useful pages.

HTML Complete was created by pulling well-written chapters from eleven other books and then adding a few newly written chapters.

It is designed with the novice HTML creator in mind. When demonstrating a concept they build it up step by step, so the reader can see how all the elements inter-relate.

This is a complete reference for HTML 4. It does a particularly good job in discussing tables, frames, style sheets, and forms. It then goes beyond HTML to give overviews of the more advanced topics of CGI and Perl, JavaScript and JScript, XML, ASP, and XHTML. It ends with an incredible appendix that documents all HTML tags and their attributes.

The Non-Designer's Web Book (Second Edition)

by Robin Williams and John Tollett

Peachpit Press

I first discovered Robin Williams when I picked up an earlier book of hers -- The Non-Designers Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice -- out of curiosity. This book, The Non-Designer's Web Book is a greatly expanded version of the earlier book oriented to web design rather than graphic design for the printed page.

The book literally assumes no prior knowledge on the part of the user. It starts off with sections on using the web and making basic pages for the web. It even discusses the process of choosing a company to host your web site.

It's not enough to know HTML (and the book does not teach HTML) to create a good (much less a great) web site. You've undoubtedly run across plenty of web pages that your browser seems to understand but that you find annoying. And it's on this issue that this book excels.

Nine chapters are devoted to the issues of graphic design, spanning issues of basic principles, designing the user interface, color, graphics, and typography. Ms. Williams illustrates each principle and idea with graphic examples. The reader can immediately see the truth in what she says.

Seeing is believing in this case.

Sixteen chapters in all, each well thought-out, with plenty of wonderful examples.

Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing

by Philip Greenspun

Morgan Kaufmann

This review is not written yet.