Complete HTML5

Hello and welcome to the third edition of Learning Web Design! When I first
started writing it, I figured, “It’s just an update… I’ll just make a few tweaks
and it will be done in a jiffy.” I couldn’t have been more wrong. As it turns out,
pretty much everything about web design changed since I wrote the second
edition four years ago. Most significantly, web designers as well as browser
developers are finally abiding by the standards for writing and styling web
pages set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). You’ll learn a lot
more about these standards throughout the book.
What it means is that using HTML markup for visual effects is out—HTML
for describing the meaning and structure of content is in. Table-based layouts
are out—style sheet-driven layouts are in. And the font element, spacer GIFs,
and other clever hacks of the past… forget about it! They’re all history.
This edition has been completely rewritten to be in compliance with the
standards and modern web design practices. The markup chapters emphasize
using HTML to describe your content accurately, not as a tool for formatting
the appearance of text. And now you will find seven chapters on Cascading
Style Sheets (CSS), where the second edition had just one.
But like the first two editions, this book addresses the specific needs and con-
cerns of beginners of all backgrounds, including seasoned graphic designers,
programmers looking for a more creative outlet, office assistants, recent col-
lege graduates, work-at-home moms, and anyone else wanting to learn how
to design web sites. I’ve done my best to put the experience of sitting in my
beginner web design class into a book, with exercises and tests along the way,
so you get hands-on experience and can check your progress.
I start at square one, with answers to common beginner questions and an
explanation of how the Web works. By the end of the book, you’ll have the
skills necessary to create multicolumn CSS layouts with optimized graphic
files, and you’ll know how to get them on the Web. You can start at the very
beginning, or feel free to jump in at any point.