Creative HTML Design: A Hands-On HTML - by Karl-Peter Gottschalk
 
Author: Lynda Weinman & William Weinman
Publisher: New Riders, Indianapolis
WWW: http://www.lynda.com
Publication: 1998
Pages: 434
Illustrations: Monochrome, CD-ROM: Mac & Windows
ISBN: 1-56205-704-9
RRP: US $39.99, CAN $56.95, UK £37.50
This is the last omnibus HTML or Web design book I plan on buying or hope to see published. Today's Web has little place for the all-in-one and all-things-to-all-people reference books we learnt from in the early days.
The 'net has advanced too far for them to be of much use any more, and I would not recommend them even to raw beginners now. Far better to get the very best little book on the latest iteration of HTML, and the best on each of the other aspects of the Web design and production process, then update each one as the technology changes.
THAT HAVING BEEN SAID...
There is one reason why I am not applying the aforesaid rule of exclusion to Creative HTML Design and that is its authors. Brother and sister authorial tag team Lynda and Bill Weinman are justly renowned the Web over for their authority as practitioners and teachers of design and programming and by definition any book with the Weinman moniker upon it is worth taking seriously.
Brother William is the author of that rather hard to find classic on CGI programming, The CGI Book: The Complete World Wide Web Programming Reference (please reissue it, New Riders!) and runs his own Web Host firm, WebMonster Networks. Lynda Weinman is the best known, well-loved and much-quoted author of a small legion of Web design tomes most of which you probably have already and whose review you will find in this site.
So I bought Creative HTML Design as soon as I came across it sitting all forlorn and alone in a little store in Perth, amongst all the ugly Windows geeks books. I had not seen it before, an unimaginable occurence given what a design book obsesive I am. Its appearance was timely. I had just moved and my book collection was still on its way from the UK, I needed a fairly complete Web design reference book and I also wanted something that would be good for teaching an assistant with, just in case I had some instant job offers and needed to educate my co-workers as has usually been the case in the past.
IT IS THE BEST OF ITS KIND
Creative HTML Design works admirably in all these aspects. Its other benefit was that there were almost no other books out then on HTML 4 and I wanted to make more use of this version's unique qualities. I already knew HTML 3.2 like the back of my hand. Although a trickle of HTML 4 books have appeared now, and I have reviewed one or two of them, this book is the only one of them I would really recommend.
If an omnibus Web design and coding tutorial and reference book is what you need, then this is the one. Period.
