On my way home last night we drove past the big Barnes & Noble at the mall an I made Becky pull off the freeway for a detour... .
Ever since I started the "The-Happy-Panda" I've wanted to get a book that would tell me how to do all the things I couldn't figure out how to do. I looked at several books that were written specifically about blogs; however, most seemed to focus on the simpler tasks that I have already fumbled through, or on something I intend to avoid, like advertising. The next heap of texts I peered into were the jargon filled dusty mega-tomes that litter so many computer engineer's desks and contain hundreds of pages. I'm not quite ready for that yet. Just as Becky was glancing at me with the "are you done yet look," I found Mike McGrath's "HTML in easy steps". The first thing that set this book apart from the others was color. Full, wonderful, illustrated color. This might not sound like much, but when the different portions of code can be color coded with the explanations of that code, things make sense a lot faster. The second thing that made me buy this particular book was that it is relatively short, only 192 pages. So, trusty book in hand we headed home.
I spent half the night going through the first two chapters, a total of 7 lessons that covered things like page titles, favicons, page descriptions and keywords etc. I already understand far more of that pesky "edit HTML" page than I ever have before. And I have lots of lessons yet to come.
I'm not going to sugar coat this for you though, there have already been some downsides to choosing a small simple book. First off, it assumes the reader is using a Windows based PC, which I am not. (That proved troublesome until I explored the TextEdit help page.) The book only touches on css and javascript, which are covered in more detail in his other books.
Nevertheless, I am thus far very pleased with my purchase. Not only did I find a book that suited my needs for only $15, but I am teaching myself a valuable skill that is simultaneously self-gratifying, and valuable on the job market. Between posting here and the Books lessons I'm learning quite fast. For example, I had to learn about character entities just to post that title...
Thank you for your enlightening tips on html. I have enjoyed reading all of your posts thus far. This one is especially nice because it reminds me of that time we went to barnes and noble and you got that book on html... which took FOREVER (I couldn't help myself with a bit of teasing love). Thank you for all of the good eats and portraying me with affection. (Ill be checking in on you often)
ReplyDeleteYay! My first comment!
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