HTML Mastery:
Semantics, Standards, and Styling

By Paul Haine

Why settle for average HTML, when you can become a master of it? Markup is the fabric that holds the web together, but most people only scratch the surface of what can be achieved using (X)HTML.

That's where this unique book comes in—it's aimed at web designers and developers who have already mastered the basics of HTML and web design, but want to take their markup further, making it leaner and more semantically rich, for a more efficient, more usable/accessible web site.

HTML Mastery does all that and more, showing all of the HTML tags available, including less commonly used ones, where and how to use them, and clever styling and scripting techniques that you can employ to take advantage of them on your web site. It is totally standards compliant, up to date with modern web design techniques. Forms and tables are looked in particular detail, as there is so much that can be done with them.

In addition, the book also looks at some of the advanced semantic tools that look to further improve the usability and semantic value of your sites—an entire chapter is devoted to Microformats, and a nod is given to XHTML 2.0 and Web Applications 1.0—web standards of the future.

Summary of Contents:

• Chapter 1: Getting Started
• Chapter 2: Using the Right Tag for the Right Job
• Chapter 3: Table Mastery
• Chapter 4: Form Mastery
• Chapter 5: Purpose-Built Semantics: Microformats and Other Stories
• Chapter 6: Recognizing Semantics
• Chapter 7: Looking Ahead: XHTML 2.0 and Web Applications 1.0
• Appendix A: XHTML As XML
• Appendix B: Frames, and How to Avoid Them

This book is part of friends of ED's 'Solutions' series

The Solutions series continues the pragmatic approach of the Essential Guide, but offers more in-depth answers to common technology problems. Once you're up and running with a technology, a Solutions book is the one you want at hand when you run into a stumbling block. Each chapter focuses on an aspect of the technology and gives the answer to all of the common problems related with it. With every answer, you are provided with a full explanation of the issue, giving you the whys, the wheres, and the workarounds, and an example application or code snippet that you can use to solve the problem in your own application.