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A little over a year ago, my job situation changed slightly as I moved from one capacity into that of the local website manager for our company. I wasn't in charge of any actual coding, just putting the Wordpress CMS to work and helping to build images and content for the site. I decided at some point that using Wordpress wasn't going to be good enough; I wanted to know how the gears worked.
Under recommendation from a friend, I picked up a copy of "PHP 6 and MYSQL 5" by Larry Ulman and dug in. Then I realized I was going to need some HTML/CSS first, so I grabbed "HTML, XHTML, and CSS" by Elisabeth Castro. And dove into that one instead.
As a relative newbie to web development via code, I thought the book did a great job of walking me through the basic concepts and giving me the syntax needed to make everything work. It explains the differences betweeen plain HTML and XHTML, the reasons for using the latter, and a good intro to CSS and it's benefits over the older forms of style markup.
The problem I had with the book may just be chalked up to my learning style. While she printed plenty of examples and allowed you to download those examples from her site, that didn't really help me. I could have typed out every example, but then I'd be left with a jumble of random pages. In comparison, as I'm starting "PHP 6..." I've found the examples to be more instructional; they provide a good walkthrough and well labeled files that you build upon as you go through the book. I guess I would've rather the book walked me through building a basic site, so that when I reached the end, I had a large completed project I could look at and be proud, while having learned something at the same time.
In regards to reference, I think it's great. I know I'm going to be coming back to it again and again as I track down a variety of HTML and CSS elements, or just need to use the large color board in the back. If you're after a good reference for HTML and CSS basics, check this book out. But if you're looking for something to help you build a basic site while learning to do so, or that helps you build something and pick it apart to see exactly why it works, this one might not be for you.
Under recommendation from a friend, I picked up a copy of "PHP 6 and MYSQL 5" by Larry Ulman and dug in. Then I realized I was going to need some HTML/CSS first, so I grabbed "HTML, XHTML, and CSS" by Elisabeth Castro. And dove into that one instead.
As a relative newbie to web development via code, I thought the book did a great job of walking me through the basic concepts and giving me the syntax needed to make everything work. It explains the differences betweeen plain HTML and XHTML, the reasons for using the latter, and a good intro to CSS and it's benefits over the older forms of style markup.
The problem I had with the book may just be chalked up to my learning style. While she printed plenty of examples and allowed you to download those examples from her site, that didn't really help me. I could have typed out every example, but then I'd be left with a jumble of random pages. In comparison, as I'm starting "PHP 6..." I've found the examples to be more instructional; they provide a good walkthrough and well labeled files that you build upon as you go through the book. I guess I would've rather the book walked me through building a basic site, so that when I reached the end, I had a large completed project I could look at and be proud, while having learned something at the same time.
In regards to reference, I think it's great. I know I'm going to be coming back to it again and again as I track down a variety of HTML and CSS elements, or just need to use the large color board in the back. If you're after a good reference for HTML and CSS basics, check this book out. But if you're looking for something to help you build a basic site while learning to do so, or that helps you build something and pick it apart to see exactly why it works, this one might not be for you.
