Overview
- Walks readers through the process of creating a basic Web site from scratch using HMTL, the basis for billions of Web pages, and then jazzing it up with advanced techniques from the author's award-winning sites
- This updated edition features new material that shows readers how to attract visitors to a site and keep them there, including new JavaScript examples and coverage of cascading style sheets and XHTML, technologies that make building successful Web sites even easier
- Also features exciting new tips and tricks for beginning and advanced users, as well as more expanded examples and samples for users to incorporate in their own sites
- The book moves from basic design and deployment to advanced page layout strategies, showing how to spice up new or existing sites with sound, video, and animation
Synopsis
Thinking of launching a Web site or an e-business? Want to jazz up the site you already have? This book is jammed with secrets that entice Web wanderers to stop at your site and return again. You’ll find out how to create a basic Web page, enhance it using CSS and JavaScript™, morph it into a complete multipage site, add forms, video, and animation, and get a top ranking from leading search engines. Here’s the perfect mix of technology and creativity—the cool stuff you want to do, plus a thorough understanding of the tools that let you do it.
Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to maintain consistent formatting for a slick, professional look
Improve the quality of your site with XHTML, the next generation of markup language
Jazz up your site with appropriate use of color, graphics, animation, and sound
Discover how to improve your site design to make it more user friendly
Write your pages to make them search engine friendly and improve your ranking automatically
Check out all the examples and much more at the author's Web site:
intuitive.com/coolsites/
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewBuilding your first web site? Maybe you’ve fooled around a bit with FrontPage or something like it, and you’re ready to know what you’re doing? Maybe you need to update the basic skills you acquired years ago? Check out Dave Taylor’s Creating Cool Web Sites with HTML, XHTML, and CSS.
Taylor’s designed more than 50 sites and has published 1,000 articles on the Internet and related topics. Perhaps most relevant, he teaches site creation -- both online at the University of Phoenix and offline at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He knows the subject, and he knows how to teach non-experts.
After a quick refresher on how web sites work, Taylor gently walks you through the basics of HTML. (All you’ll need is Notepad or TextEdit, but these skills will work with any web editor and help you troubleshoot problems those tools sometimes cause.)
Unlike most introductory books, this one introduces Cascading Style Sheets early on. This makes sense. Even though many casual site developers never bother, learning CSS will help you build sites that are more flexible and easier to update.
You’ll master lists, special characters, pointers, hyperlinks, graphics, tables, frames, and more. There’s a detailed introduction to user input via forms, including some fairly advanced concepts (for instance, controlling movement between input boxes). There’s a full chapter on weblogs. Then, in the book’s final section, Taylor moves “beyond the page,” to site management: organizing directories, improving usability, and attracting traffic. All in all, this is a solid modern introduction to creating web sites from scratch. Bill Camarda
Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2003 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.