There are all kinds of different ways to learn how to do something. You can watch someone do it and then duplicate the effort. Or you can branch out on your own blindly. One of the best ways to learn how to do something is to read about it and then practice what you've learned. This last idea is the premise behind one of the latest books that I've read. The title of the book is Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing With HTML 4 In 21 Days. It was written by Laura Lamay and published by Sams Publishing. This book is now in it's second edition. The publisher has listed this book as a Professional Reference Edition.
The book is broken down into ten parts. Each part represents three days of learning experience. There are three weeks of core learning and an additional nine days of advanced techniques. The parts range from Getting Started to Going Live On The Web. Each chapter in the book represents one day's worth of learning.
The book starts out by exactly what the World Wide Web is and how you can make an impact by having a great web site. You will learn how to get material organized and have all the pages laid out in a way that provides an even flow through your website. You learn what a storyboard is and how it can be important in the layout of your site. You also get an introduction into what HTML is and how it is used to develop web pages.
The second part of the book has you put together some very basic web pages. You learn some of the more basic tags that are used in writing HTML code. Items like the title and headings are covered, along with things like lists. Chapter 5 tells you all about links and how to create them so that people viewing a page on your site can jump to another page smoothly.
Part Three is all about web graphics. In this part you will learn that using graphics and vivid colors will impact how others react to your web site. The use of background images and color schemes has become a standard format for a lot of web sites. You will learn how to get graphic images and put them on your web pages. Day Eight even goes through the process of creating animated graphics for your site.
The fourth part deals with tables, frames and style sheets. Day eleven takes you through the various elements creating a table and it can have an impact on a web page. Learn how to set up a table and define the cells, columns and rows. This section also works through setting up frames on a web page and putting together style sheets for ease and uniformity for your site.
Other sections and chapters in the book deal with multimedia and Java usage on web sites. Learn how to add a Java applet to your web page and put together a multimedia extravaganza for everyone who visits the site to see. There is a chapter on placing sound and video files on your pages for added impact.
In Part 6 you will learn all about forms and imagemaps. Learn how to set up a form that users can input data into. This can be used for e-commerce or just to gather information. This section will also take you through the process of making an imagemap for a web page. This is a good way for people to navigate your site by way of a visual representation. A graphic of various sports items could be a good imagemap for linking to pages of team scores. Click on a baseball in this graphic and you would be sent to the page that covers the daily major league baseball scores.
Some of the other things that are covered in this book are how to put your site online and the design of an effective site. There is a chapter that deals with what a good site is and how a bad web design could kill an otherwise dynamic site. Learn how to test your site before putting it out for people to view and how to maintain your site once it's out there. There is even a chapter about setting up your own server and being your own boss with regards to the web site.
The book also comes with a CD-ROM disc that has a lot of good material on it. There are coding examples from the book, along with some graphics and multimedia files. There are also trial versions of some HTML editors and other third party programs. The CD also has a Knowledgebase with all sorts of information that was necessarily covered in the book.
The list price for the book is $ 49.99. You can find it at your local bookstore in the computer section.
Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing With HTML 4 In 21 Days is a good book by which to learn how to develop web pages. It teaches all of the basic steps to write HTML code along with some advanced techniques.
To find out what other titles are available from them, visit the Sams Publishing web site. The web site can be found at www.samspublishing.com.
Copyright © 2000 Bruce E. Von Stiers