So, you want to learn about web design? You're a beginner and you want to learn it right? Please, don't make the mistake of picking up the first book with the words 'web design' and 'beginner' or 'beginners' in - they teach you bad stuff!
Hi, I'm Ian Lloyd and I want to tell you a bit about my book, Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way Using HTML and CSS. It's a book for the absolute beginner who wants to do things properly, who wants to become truly skilled, rather than throw together a website for the sake of having one. Does that sound like what you're after? Then either read on or watch the YouTube clip below which will tell you all you need to know:
[Transcript in HTML format | Transcript in plain text format]
Why this book is different from the rest
The difference, as it states on the front cover, is that it's done the right way.
"Oh yeah, that's what you would say," I can hear you saying.
The thing is, there really are a lot of books out there that have been in print for many years now and have been peddling some very old-hat techniques, but you as a beginner would not know this. Conversely, there are also a number of excellent books aimed at intermediate to semi-professional people that teach things the right way (but they require that basic grounding to begin with that is hard to find). Unfortunately the pattern for many people new to the game has been something like this:
- Learn web design from a beginners book, get taught the basics along with some nasty old code that should have been ditched a few years ago
- Discover that there are such things as 'web standards' and realise that they've been taught things that go against those standards
- Try to unlearn many things that they spent time and money on learning
- Only then can they understand the error of their ways (not their fault - the books were to blame) and can then move on to the excellent intermediate/semi-pro books I mentioned
In this book, you won't be taught any of that nasty old markup - I cover only the good stuff and promise that if you stick to the advice there, you'll be in great shape to learn the more advanced stuff later at a much quicker pace.
Learn from a proven and trusted source
This book was originally published in March 2006 and has sold over 25,000 copies which, if you had the inclination to stack one on top of the other, would be taller than the Empire State Building. It's been a consistent seller with consistently great feedback and so has been released in a Second Edition.
What's changed in the second edition
Well, you've heard the old saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? It's very true! For this edition, the changes have been mainly around updating screen shots to show current browsers (IE8 instead of IE7, Firefox 3 instead of Firefox 1) and operating systems (Windows Vista rather than XP). The main significant changes are:
- The chapter on form handling (converting form data to email) has been changed to use a different, and better, form-handling service
- The section on adding statistics to your web site now uses the much more fully-featured Google Analytics rather than Stat Counter
- The book no longer has an HTML reference at the end of the book (as this has now been split out into its own book with much more detail and is also available as a free-to-use online reference)
Latest News
I'll be posting any news related to the book right here »
Errata
Any tyopographical errors or problems found in this edition can be found at Sitepoint.
Code Archive
Go directly to SitePoint to get all the code used for each chapter - both project files and general ad-hoc examples. You will be mailed a link to a download for all the code (in ZIP format) which, when unzipped, will create a complete folder structure relating to each chapter. There is a master index for the code examples and each chapter has its own index too (index.html).
