Beginning HTML, XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript®

Introduction

There are a lot of books about designing and building web pages, so thank you for picking up this one. During the relatively short life of the Web, many technologies have been introduced to help you create web pages, some of which have lasted, others of which have disappeared. Now the dust is beginning to settle, and commonly accepted best practices are emerging; so the aim of this book is to teach you how to create pages for the Web as it is today and will be for the next few years.

This book is different from many books because it teaches you more than just the code you need to learn to write web pages; I wanted to share some of the practical experience I have gained designing and building web sites over the past 12 years. Therefore, alongside the usual technical information, you will see advice on topics that range from how to approach the task of creating a new site to chapters that let you in on the techniques used by designers to make their pages more attractive. You will also find information about important topics such as accessibility and usability that any professional web programmer needs to understand. And, once you have worked through this book, it should continue to serve as a helpful reference text you can keep nearby and dip into as you need to.

As the title of this book suggests, you will be learning a few different languages in order to create effective and attractive web pages:

• HTML and XHTML are needed to explain the structure of any web pages. If you ...