Learning Web Design, Third Edition:  A Beginner's Guide to (X)HTML, StyleSheets, and Web Graphics
by Jennifer Niederst Robbins

The unconfirmed error reports are from readers.  They have not yet been 
approved or disproved by the author or editor and represent solely the
opinion of the reader.

Here's a key to the markup:
        [page-number]: serious technical mistake
        {page-number}: minor technical mistake
        <page-number>: important language/formatting problem
        (page-number): language change or minor formatting problem
        ?page-number?: reader question or request for clarification

This page was updated July 16, 2008.


(24) Box on left ("exercise 2-1");
Step 1 of the exercise says that after entering a particular URL "you should see the HTML source 
from Figure 2-3".

I may be misunderstanding the terminology, but shouldn't that be: "you should see the web page from 
Figure 2-3"?

That is, the HTML source doesn't appear until the next step, when we select "View Source" from the 
broswer menu.

(One other small error: Step 2 of the exercise is numbered as "1." )


(56) Figure 4-5. The homepage content in a browser.;
Figure 4-5, which is supposed to be the web browser example of the html document started on the 
previous page, includes the sentence "The menu changes regularly to highlight the freshest 
ingredients." However, this sentences is NOT part of the word for word example that is started on 
page 55.


(59) Figure 4-8, bottom;
I believe the illustration is incorrect. It shows the title "Black Goose Restaurant" turning up in 
the body text but in fact (as the book text on the next page notes) in either IE7 or Firefox, the 
title turns up in the title bar and NOT on the page itself. 


(64) Figure 4-11;
The figure should have a trailing slash before the closing bracket.


[65] "1.", line 6 -- p. 18 of 23 in PDF;
The link:
"www.learningwebdesign.com/chapter4/bistro"
is broken, giving a "Not Found" error.

The material in question is now at:
http://www.learningwebdesign.com/materials/index.html

I suggest both adding an erratum as well as "fixing" the web site to redirect to the (probably new) 
location of the referenced material.

This report is based on the sample chapter found at:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527525/chapter/ch04.pdf

Unless this problem was caught before the book went to press -- in which case the sample chapter 
PDF needs fixing, I would bet a small amount of money that this isn't the only such broken link in 
the book. 


(73) 3rd paragraph;
missing word "Typefaces" on <h2>Serift</h2> should be <h2>Serift Typefaces</h2>


(75) 2nd paragraph;
Suggestion: I recommend splitting the preformatted text element example and place it under its 
related code the paragraph example and place it under its related code to easier readability.


(79) 1st paragraph;
typo: "The dl element is only allowed to contain dt and dl elements."
Suggested correction:
"The dl element is only allowed to contain dt and dd elements."


[80] exercise 5-1;
If you type the resulting code of the exercise as given in Appendix A page 430, the result is not 
like the example shown in Exercise 5-1.

Specifically if you use the solution to Exercise 5-1 on page 430, the list of ingredients end up 
with bullets in front of each item (because you are just simply using a <ul> and the list in the 
Instructions ends up with the numbers 1, 2 and 3 in front of the list items because you are just 
simply using a <ol>.

The example shown in exercise 5-1 on page 80 does not show the ingredients to have bullets nor the 
instructions to be numbered.

I typed the solution shown on page 430 in exactly as shown and looked at it in the browser. It 
results in the bullets and numbers.


(82) 3rd paragraphs;
I was not able to the the following statement to display properly (with quotes) using Internet 
Explorer 7: <p>Matthew Carter says, <q>Our alphabet hasn't changed in eons.</q></p>


(86) 6th paragraph;
"It also allows me to style to p elements..."
Suggested revision:
"It also allows me to style two p elements..."


(89) Some Special Characters, paragraph 4, line 3-4;
Last sentence should be: All character references begin with an "&" and end with a ";".

Reason: The article "an" goes with ampersand and the article "a" goes with semicolon rather than 
the other way around as originally printed in the text.


(94) list of block level elements;
the element "pre" has been omitted from the list.


(101) bottom of page: box for exercise 6-4;
I think this may be a problem with the materials for this chapter, rather than the text of the 
book.

I couldn't get my link to the linguine recipe to work, even though I was sure I had written the 
element correctly. In the end I noticed what was wrong:

The exercise asks us to link to the file "linguine.html" -- but the file given in the materials for 
Ch. 6 at www.learningwebdesign.com has the extension ".htm"


(102) Exercise 6-5 Link to a Higher Directory;
using ../ to link to a higher directory does not work with Safari - works fine with Firefox though.


(108) Box on left: exercise 6-8;
Step 2 says:

"Make the letter 'A' at the top of the page a link to the named anchor."

But (if I've understood the sidebar on the previous page correctly) a "named anchor" is an "a" 
element that uses the "name" attribute, whereas in this exercise we should be linking to fragments 
that have been identified with the "id" attribute.


(122) excercise 7-1 download;
In the downloaded code for the individual XHTML documents, I think there is something wrong with the DOCTYPE or the <html...line.

The [Back to the hoome page] link doea not work if I leave the DOCTYPE and extra text after <html in the code. However, if I remove the doctype and extra text after <html , I am able to link back to index.html.

Since I am still on Chapter 7 in the book, I do not know about DOCTYPE and the text after <html


(126) bullet 3;
bullet 3 has within the coding the usemap attribute and is written as usemap="veggies" when it should be usemap="#veggies"


{133} Advance table element;
I tested my html source with tidy validator and it gave me errors with scope="column", I search the 
internet and found that the correct argument in scope="col". Test it again and it passed.


[142] bottom of page (the table of elements);
In the section for the "th" element, the values for the "scope" attribute are listed as: row, 
column, rowgroup, colgroup.

But it seems that "column" is not one of the value options available for the "scope" attribute. 
When I used "column", my document failed to validate.

The value "col" seems to be correct value-name here.


[155] final paragraph;

When I submit the form in exercise 9-1, I get the following error message:

"Method Not Allowed
The requested method POST is not allowed for the URL /contest.php.

Apache/1.3.37 Server at learningwebdesign.com Port 80"
------------------------------
The form element looks like this:

<form action="http://www.learningwebdesign.com/contest.php" method="post">


{190} Exercise 11-1;
This is not an error in the textbook, but an error in the "twenties.html" file for the exercise:

In the source, the end tag for the paragraph immediatedly after the "Too Many 20s" headline is 
missing a forward slash. (It's the paragraph that contains the image element.)


[228] Box "The Other Text Properties", right column, 2nd listing;
The "text-direction" property should be changed to "direction".
The CSS 2.1 property definitions list does not contain "text-direction". It seems that the correct 
property would be "direction", see http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/visuren.html#propdef-direction. 


{237} Sidebar: "Hexadecimal Calculators";
Sidebar states that while Windows's standard calculator has a hexadecimal converter, Mac users need 
to download a special program.

But the standard calculator on Mac OS X, too, has a hexadecimal converter -- at least on the 
version I'm using, Mac OS X Tiger. View the calculator in "programmer" mode (keyboard shortcut 
Command-3) to access the function. No need to download an additional program!


{243} 1st paragraph (:first-letter), list of properties;
The "line-height" property is missing from the list (see http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/selector.html#first-
letter).

The "text-transform" property is listed twice (left and right column, 2nd from top). 


[253] Exercise 13-2; the second piece of CSS code;
In the code given for the #titlepage element, the background-position for the image is assigned the 
value "center 75px". But the background-position for the image in the body element was given the 
value "center 85px", and so the two images do not match.

If the background-attachment property did not have the value of "fixed", then the images would have 
(approximately) matched up, because in that case the background-position for an element would have 
been understood as relative to that element. "center 85px" for the body and "center 75px" for the 
#titlepage element would be roughly the same place.

But when the background-attachment has the value of "fixed", then the background-position for the 
image in each element is relative to the browser window, and so the two elements must have the 
exact same value for "background-position" if their images are to match up.

At least, I'm *guessing* this is how it works! The section that precedes this exercise doesn't 
mention a change in how background-position is determined when an image's position is fixed. In any 
case, with the figures that are now given in the exercise, the images don't match up for me.


{264} 4th paragraph of sidebar ("The IE/Windows Box Model");
3rd sentence in paragraph reads:

"The outer edges of the element box would measure 218 pixels, not 262."

I may have misunderstood this section, but by my calculation, the outer edges of the element box 
would measure *240* pixels, so that the sentence should read:

"The outer edges of the element box would measure 240 pixels, not 262."

Here's my arithmetic:

Width of content (178) + width of padding (10 + 10) + width of border (1 + 1) + width of margin (20 
+ 20) = 240


{305} Exercise 15-2 step 2;
After changes to the div content, there is an error on the following line:
<p class="copyright" .../p>
The previous copy was:
<p id="copyright" .../p> There is nowhere on this chapter that the copyright line was changed


(308) First paragraph;
The second sentence refers to two html files named "jenville.html" and "jenville_2.html".

The files in question are in fact named "jenware.html" and "jenware_2.html".


(339) 2nd paragraph, table element style rules;
The 2nd value of the border-spacing style rule should read "5px;" since that is the amount of top/bottom 
space between cells in the top table according to figure 17-1 (p. 338).


(347) More list and tabbed navigation tutorials;
It seems that fame for the "Accessible Image-Tab Rollovers" on www.simplebits.com should correctly go to 
Dan Cederholm instead of David Shea.


{428} Mid-page: the answer to question 4a;
The element that was to be corrected (back on page 69) was also missing an *alt* attribute. (Page 
65 tells us that the *alt* attribute is required in the *img* element.)

So the correct answer should have been:

<img scr="birthday.jpg" alt="description of image">


{431} line 8;
Code should start out: <p>Baker&rsquo;s Corner INSTEAD OF <p>Baker's Corner.

This code is required to insert "right curly quote" special character as indicated on pages 89-90


(436) first answer for question 3;
the first example in the answers on page 436 does not match the example in the test on page 163.

on test:
<input name="country" value="your country here.">

in appendix:
<input name="gender" value="Male">


[441] Answers to question #2;
It appears as though there are several wrong answers: b, d, e, h, i.


(445) Chapter 17: CSS Techniques, answers #4, 5, 6;
The answer #4 does not answer the question #4 of the chapter 17 test (p. 355). The right answer seems to 
be provided under #5 instead and answer #6 appears to correspond to test question #5.
It seems that the current answer #4 should be deleted and answers #5 and #6 be moved one up respectively. 


(445, 446) Exercise 17-1, Design A, 2nd line of code, and Exercise 17-1, Design B, 2nd line of code;
The style rule "body {margin: 100px; } should be deleted from both design solutions.
The rule is neither part of the starting document (imagetable.html) in the exercise files nor a step of the exercise. It is not visually supported by Figure 17-3 on p.341 either.