Author: Mike McGrath
Publisher: In Easy Steps
Date: July 2020
Pages: 480
ISBN: 978-1840788785
Print: 184078878X
Kindle: B08FBGXGF1
Audience: would-be web developers
Rating: 5
Reviewer Mike James
The three core web technologies in a single book.

There is no doubt that if you want to create web sites you need to know something about HTML, CSS and JavaScript - but how much? HTML is about marking up the different components of a page - body, titles, lists etc. CSS is about how the text will look and JavaScript is what makes a page active. As a programmer I need to know a lot about JavaScript and try to avoid raw HTML and CSS as much as possible - but I do know about both. My attitude towards them is that life is too short to spend time on the fiddly business of layout and formatting and I'd rather use a document editor, preferably within a content management system to do the same job. The only time I really want to come into contact with either HTML or CSS is when I need to tweak the way some auto-generated code works. In short I still need to know the general principles of both.

This book is three "easy steps" books in one. The first part deals with HTML and does a good job of explaining not only the basics but some of the more advanced areas. None of it is explained at length and you might need to look things up on the web to fill out what you know, but it should do as a brief introduction.

The CSS section introduces the basic ideas of a CSS selector and how to use it. The box model is introduced and then on to text styling, tables lists and effects. It doesn't go into the advanced ways that you can use CSS to introduce active elements that replace the use of Javascript but it does cover rollover effects and some animation. This is probably all you really need to know. The final section deals with the use of CSS to modify a web page to fit different device characteristics.

The Javascript section provides a very fast introduction to the language. It doesn't teach you how to approach the language in a fully object oriented way but it does get you uip to speed on using it as a scripting language which is appropriate for its simple use in web pages. It does cover interacting with the DOM but not any more modern features such as how to create a progressive web app. This again is reasonable given the context.

Conclusion

If you want to know the basics of HTML, CSS and Javascript then this is is a good summary of these three huge topics. Given the size of the topics covered and the size of the book you cannot expect a complete or detailed coverage but it is effective as a brief introduction to the core material. There are no big examples and if this is something you are looking for then this book isn't for you. More important is the fact that learning these three topics isn't necessarily the best way to get to grips with creating a web site, but if you want to know about them at an extensive but introductory level then this is a suitable choice of book.

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