Wrox - Beginning Web Programming with HTML XHTML and CSS

Introduction

There are a lot of books about designing and buildingWeb pages, so thank you for picking up this one. Why do I think it is different?Well, theWeb has been around for quite a few years now, and during its life several technologies have been introduced to help you create Web pages, some of which have lasted, others of which have disappeared. Indeed, even enduring technologies such as HTML have had features added and removed over the years. Many books that teach you to writeWeb pages are revisions of earlier versions of the same book and therefore still take the same approach as the previous edition did. This book, however, is completely new, written from scratch, and its purpose is to teach you how to create Web pages for the Web as it is today and will be for the next few years. Once you have worked through this book, it should continue to serve as a helpful reference text you can keep nearby and dip into when you need to.

Who This Book Is For

This book is written for anyone who wants to learn how to create Web pages, and for people who might have dabbled in writingWeb pages (perhaps using some kind ofWeb page authoring tool) but want to really understand the languages of the Web to create better pages.

More experienced Web developers can also benefit from this book because it teaches some of the latest technologies, such as XHTML, and encourages you to embraceWeb standards that not only meet the needs of the new devices that access the Web, but also help make your sites available to more visitors. You do not need any previous programming experience to work with this book—even though these big redWrox books are published under the trademark Programmer to Programmer (because the books are written by programmers for programmers). This is one of the first steps on the programming ladder. Whether you are just a hobbyist or want to make a career ofWeb programming, this book will teach you the basics of programming for the Web. Sure, the term “programmer” might be associated with geeks, but as you will see by the end of the book, even if you would prefer to be known as aWeb designer, you need to know how to code to write great Web sites.