HTML & XHTML / The definitive guide

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

HTML is changing so fast it's almost impossible to keep up with developments. XHTML is HTML 4.0 rewritten in XML; it provides the precision of XML while retaining the flexibility of HTML. HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 4th Edition, brings it all together. It's the most comprehensive book available on HTML and XHTML today. It covers Netscape Navigator 6.0, Internet Explorer 5.0, HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, JavaScript, Style sheets, Layers, and all of the features supported by the popular web browsers.Learning HTML and XHTML is like learning any new language, computer or human. Most students first immerse themselves in examples. Studying others is a natural way to learn, making learning easy and fun. Imitation can take learning only so far, though. It's as easy to learn bad habits through imitation as it is to acquire good ones. The better way to become HTML-fluent is through a comprehensive reference that covers the language syntax, semantics, and variations in detail and demonstrates the difference between good and bad usage. HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 4th Edition, helps in both ways: the authors cover every element of HTML/XHTML in detail, explaining how each element works and how it interacts with other elements. Many hints about HTML/XHTML style smooth the way for writing documents that range from simple online documentation to complex presentations. With hundreds of examples, the book gives web authors models for writing their own effective web pages and for mastering advanced features, like style sheets and frames. HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 4th Edition, shows how to:

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface (p. xi)
• 1. HTML, XHTML, and the World Wide Web (p. 1)
• 1.1. The Internet, Intranets, and Extranets (p. 1)
• 1.2. Talking the Internet Talk (p. 5)
• 1.3. HTML: What It Is (p. 8)
• 1.4. XHTML: What It Is (p. 9)
• 1.5. HTML and XHTML: What They Aren't (p. 10)
• 1.6. Nonstandard Extensions (p. 11)
• 1.7. Tools for the Web Designer (p. 13)
• 2. Quick Start (p. 16)
• 2.1. Writing Tools (p. 17)
• 2.2. A First HTML Document (p. 17)
• 2.3. Embedded Tags (p. 18)
• 2.4. HTML Skeleton (p. 19)
• 2.5. The Flesh on an HTML or XHTML Document (p. 20)
• 2.6. Text (p. 21)
• 2.7. Hyperlinks (p. 26)
• 2.8. Images Are Special (p. 29)
• 2.9. Lists, Searchable Documents, and Forms (p. 32)
• 2.10. Tables (p. 34)
• 2.11. Frames (p. 35)
• 2.12. Style Sheets and JavaScript (p. 36)
• 2.13. Forging Ahead (p. 37)
• 3. Anatomy of an HTML Document (p. 38)
• 3.1. Appearances Can Deceive (p. 38)
• 3.2. Structure of an HTML Document (p. 40)
• 3.3. Tags and Attributes (p. 40)
• 3.4. Well-Formed Documents and XHTML (p. 45)
• 3.5. Document Content (p. 45)
• 3.6. HTML Document Elements (p. 47)
• 3.7. The Document Header (p. 50)
• 3.8. The Document Body (p. 55)
• 3.9. Editorial Markup (p. 56)
• 3.10. The [bdo] Tag (p. 59)
• 4. Text Basics (p. 61)
• 4.1. Divisions and Paragraphs (p. 61)
• 4.2. Headings (p. 69)
• 4.3. Changing Text Appearance (p. 76)
• 4.4. Content-Based Style Tags (p. 77)
• 4.5. Physical Style Tags (p. 84)
• 4.6. HTML's Expanded Font Handling (p. 89)
• 4.7. Precise Spacing and Layout (p. 96)
• 4.8. Block Quotes (p. 109)
• 4.9. Addresses (p. 114)
• 4.10. Special Character Encoding (p. 116)
• 5. Rules, Images, and Multimedia (p. 118)
• 5.1. Horizontal Rules (p. 118)
• 5.2. Inserting Images in Your Documents (p. 126)
• 5.3. Document Colors and Background Images (p. 154)
• 5.4. Background Audio (p. 162)
• 5.5. Animated Text (p. 164)
• 5.6. Other Multimedia Content (p. 168)
• 6. Links and Webs (p. 171)
• 6.1. Hypertext Basics (p. 171)
• 6.2. Referencing Documents: The URL (p. 172)
• 6.3. Creating Hyperlinks (p. 189)
• 6.4. Creating Effective Links (p. 198)
• 6.5. Mouse-Sensitive Images (p. 203)
• 6.6. Creating Searchable Documents (p. 214)
• 6.7. Relationships (p. 218)
• 6.8. Supporting Document Automation (p. 223)
• 7. Formatted Lists (p. 227)
• 7.1. Unordered Lists (p. 227)
• 7.2. Ordered Lists (p. 230)
• 7.3. The [li] Tag (p. 234)
• 7.4. Nesting Lists (p. 237)
• 7.5. Definition Lists (p. 239)
• 7.6. Appropriate List Usage (p. 243)
• 7.7. Directory Lists (p. 244)
• 7.8. Menu Lists (p. 245)
• 8. Cascading Style Sheets (p. 248)
• 8.1. The Elements of Styles (p. 249)
• 8.2. Style Syntax (p. 258)
• 8.3. Style Classes (p. 263)
• 8.4. Style Properties (p. 268)
• 8.5. Tag-less Styles: The [span] Tag (p. 299)
• 8.6. Applying Styles to Documents (p. 300)
• 9. Forms (p. 304)
• 9.1. Form Fundamentals (p. 305)
• 9.2. The [form] Tag (p. 305)
• 9.3. A Simple Form Example (p. 314)
• 9.4. Using Email to Collect Form Data (p. 315)
• 9.5. The [input] Tag (p. 317)
• 9.6. The [button] Tag (p. 329)
• 9.7. Multiline Text Areas (p. 331)
• 9.8. Multiple Choice Elements (p. 333)
• 9.9. General Form Control Attributes (p. 338)
• 9.10. Labeling and Grouping Form Elements (p. 341)
• 9.11. Creating Effective Forms (p. 345)
• 9.12. Forms Programming (p. 349)
• 10. Tables (p. 356)
• 10.1. The Standard Table Model (p. 356)
• 10.2. Table Tags (p. 358)
• 10.3. Newest Table Tags (p. 377)
• 10.4. Beyond Ordinary Tables (p. 388)
• 11. Frames (p. 390)
• 11.1. An Overview of Frames (p. 390)
• 11.2. Frame Tags (p. 391)
• 11.3. Frame Layout (p. 393)
• 11.4. Frame Contents (p. 399)
• 11.5. The [noframes] Tag (p. 402)
• 11.6. Inline Frames (p. 404)
• 11.7. Named Frame or Window Targets (p. 406)
• 12. Executable Content (p. 412)
• 12.1. Applets and Objects (p. 412)
• 12.2. Embedded Content (p. 416)
• 12.3. JavaScript (p. 433)
• 12.4. JavaScript Style Sheets (p. 441)
• 13. Dynamic Documents (p. 449)
• 13.1. An Overview of Dynamiic Documents (p. 449)
• 13.2. Client-Pull Documents (p. 450)
• 13.3. Server-Push Documents (p. 455)
• 14. Netscape Layout Extensions (p. 460)
• 14.1. Creating Whitespace (p. 461)
• 14.2. Multicolumn Layout (p. 466)
• 14.3. Layers (p. 472)
• 15. XML (p. 484)
• 15.1. Languages and Metalanguages (p. 485)
• 15.2. Documents and DTDs (p. 488)
• 15.3. Understanding XML DTDs (p. 489)
• 15.4. Element Grammar (p. 493)
• 15.5. Element Attributes (p. 498)
• 15.6. Conditional Sections (p. 500)
• 15.7. Building an XML DTD (p. 501)
• 15.8. Using XML (p. 503)
• 16. XHTML (p. 506)
• 16.1. Why XHTML? (p. 506)
• 16.2. Creating XHTML Documents (p. 508)
• 16.3. HTML Versus XHTML (p. 512)
• 16.4. Should You Use XHTML? (p. 517)
• 17. Tips, Tricks, and Hacks (p. 521)
• 17.1. Top of the Tips (p. 521)
• 17.2. Trivial or Abusive? (p. 524)
• 17.3. Custom Bullets (p. 524)
• 17.4. Tricks with Tables (p. 525)
• 17.5. Transparent Images (p. 532)
• 17.6. Tricks with Windows and Frames (p. 535)
• A. HTML Grammar (p. 539)
• B. HTML/XHTML Tag Quick Reference (p. 551)
• C. Cascading Style Sheet Properties Quick Reference (p. 582)
• D. The HTML 4.01 DTD (p. 590)
• E. The XHTML 1.0 DTD (p. 608)
• F. Character Entities (p. 627)
• G. Color Names and Values (p. 633)
• Index (p. 637)

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Chuck Musciano has spent his life on the East Coast, having spent time in Maryland, Georgia, and New Jersey before acquiring a B.S. in computer science from Georgia Tech in 1982. Since then, he has resided in Melbourne, Florida, in the employ of Harris Corporation. He began his career as a compiler writer and crafter of tools and went on to join Harris' Advanced Technology Group to help develop large-scale multiprocessors. This led to a prolonged interest in user-interface research and development, which finally gave way to his current position, manager of UNIX Systems in Harris' Corporate Data Center. Along the way, he grew to know and love the Internet, having contributed a number of publicly available tools to the Net and started the still-running Internet Movie Ratings Report. The Web was a natural next step, and he has been running various Web sites within and without Harris for several years. Chuck has written on UNIX-related topics in the trade press for the past decade, most visibly as the "Webmaster" columnist for Sunworld Online ( http://www.sun.com/sunworldonline ). In his spare time he enjoys life in Florida with his wife Cindy, daughter Courtney, and son Cole.

Bill Kennedy is currently president and chief technical officer of ActivMedia, Inc., a new media marketing and marketing research company based in beautiful Peterborough, NH, but which conducts business with clients and associates from around the world primarily over the Internet ( http://www.activmedia.com ). When not hacking new HTML pages or writing about them, "Dr. Bill" (Ph.D. in biophysics from Loyola University of Chicago, of all things!) is out promoting a line of mobile, autonomous robots as real-world platforms for artificial intelligence and fuzzy logic research and for education ( http://www.rwii.com ). Or he's out drumming up writing assignments from his former colleagues at IDG's SunWorld/Advanced Systems Magazine (now SunWorld Online; http://www.sun.com ), where he served as a senior editor-features (at-large over the Internet, of course) for nearly five years. Contact Dr. Bill directly at bkennedy@activmedia.com.