Recommended Resource Books

You want to take control of your website?  Or, understand what your designer is doing for you?

The books below are ones which Ozdachs uses for learning and for reference.  Also check out the software and third-party services you can use to build your own successful web presence.

Writing HTML

Web pages are written in Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML) which allows computers to display information from the Internet.

You can see what the HTML source code for this page looks like by using the "View Source" command on your browser.

Fortunately, most web development software operates like a word processing program and lets you click, format, and drag information for your pages without having to know the HTML language.

But, there are times when you want to do something tricky -- something that takes advantage of the power of HTML.

HTML 4.0 No Experience Required by E. Stephan Mack and Janan Platt is a good primer on HTML.  The book introduces HTML functionality in bite-sized lessons.  It is a tour-bus survey for people who are just beginning to peak beneath the hood of FrontPage- or Dreamweaver-generated code.

Core Web Programming is a more advanced reference book to use when you know what you want to do but can't remember how to do it.  Use Core to refresh your memory on HTML syntax or to explore more advanced coding functions.

Cascading Style Sheets

Serious web developers -- and international standards organizations! -- are leading the move to separate the web page content from its presentation on the screen. 

The Internet standards groups have created styles and style sheets to allow page authors great flexibility in determining how information will look to visitors using different types of computers and other Internet devices.

If you use Dreamweaver or other sophisticated page building tool, you'll want to understand style sheets as soon as possible.

Cascading Style Sheets by Owen Briggs et al is comprehensive introduction to the concepts and syntax of style sheets for HTML documents. 

Once you master the basics of style sheets, try the best power book on the subject.  Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design takes you through real-world projects that use style sheets.  He demonstrates high-level techniques with concrete examples and goal-oriented explanations.

Style sheet gurus can sound like zealots as they tout their approach to web design over the traditional use of tables and HTML formatting tags. That's okay. Their ideas — especially swallowed in small doses — will make your site look sharp and also make it easier to maintain.