HTML Dog: The Book

With best practices (using web standards) at its heart, it outlines how to do things the right way from the outset to produce highly optimized web pages, in a quicker, easier, less painful way than you might think.

The book builds on and complements the HTML Dog website and applies the same concise, easily digestible, straight-talking, engaging style to achieve the same ultimate goal: to help the reader come to grips with XHTML and CSS and successfully use them in the best possible way.

What’s in it

Split into 10 easy-to-follow chapters such as Text, Images, Layout, Lists, and Forms, and coupled with handy quick-reference XHTML tag and CSS property appendixes, HTML Dog is the perfect guide and companion for anyone wanting who wants to learn about:

• In-depth XHTML: Learn about all of the valid tags and attributes.
• Comprehensive CSS: Explore all of the valid selectors, properties, and values.
• Web Standards: Discover how separating content (using HTML) from presentation (using CSS) can lead to lightweight, easily manageable, reliable web pages.
• Cutting-edge techniques: Leap beyond the old-school days of font tags, table layouts, and frames.
• Accessibility: Exploit the mechanisms in HTML designed explicitly to make your pages more user friendly to more people.
• Cross-compatibility: Make your web pages not only cross-browser compatible, but optimized for screen readers, mobile web devices, and print.
• Practical demonstrations: See the lessons in action in 70+ “bare bone” online examples constructed especially for the book.

Who it’s for

This book is for those who want to get to grips with best-practice (X)HTML and CSS, and for those who want a solid, reliable reference book.

For novices it details all of the essential bits and pieces to get started (and progress towards a professional standard). For those who want to sharpen up their existing (possibly rusty) skills, it comprehensively lays bare the latest web standards approaches to HTML and CSS. There’s even value for more experienced developers - we all need a trusty reference!

The Author

Patrick Griffiths has been an HTML specialist since 1999. Not a designer nor a programmer, but a front-end developer, with HTML and CSS his trusty weapons of choice. He has worked in this specific capacity for, among others, Vodafone, Wiley, educational establishments, and on various government projects, and more recently as a developer and instructor for his own company, Vivabit, through which he has provided training for organizations such as Amnesty International, Legal & General, and London’s Natural History Museum.

In addition to writing and maintaining the HTML Dog web site, he has contributed to resources such as A List Apart and the CSS Zen Garden, and is an active, well renowned member of the web design community.