Review: Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way

★★★★★ Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way Using HTML & CSS by Ian Lloyd (Sitepoint, 2006) is the first book I’ve reviewed here that closely mirrors my own attitude toward HTML and CSS. Naturally, I like the approach.

This is a very basic treatment. Some of the topics don’t get an in depth treatment, for example, CSS layouts. If the beginner basics are what you seek, then I certainly approve of the way Lloyd has gone about putting together his examples of HTML and CSS to get you there.

The book gets you going on building a web page by Chapter 2. Immediately following are two chapters on CSS, then the book explores the basics of images, tables, forms, and getting online. All of these chapters include standards-based examples and, of course, accessibility. Lloyd is, after all, the man behind the wonderful Accessify. There’s a chapter on using Blogger and one on finding free stuff that you can add to a site to make it more useful, for example, searches and blogrolls.

The XHTML Reference that serves as an appendix is interesting because it takes each HTML element, tells you what it does, what it can contain, what it may be contained in, and shows an example of the element in use.

And the most important question: could this book be used as the basis for a semester’s work? The answer is yes, if you are willing to supplement the thinly covered areas with more in-depth work you put together yourself.