Visual Quickstart Guide to HTML 4

My hot book of the moment is non-fiction... to be precise, a computer manual. Yes, I decided (on Sunday) that I wanted to learn HTML. So I picked up Peachpit Press' Visual Quickstart Guide to HTML 4 for the World Wide Web. Now, this isn't my usual light reading, but I would have done this years ago if I'd realized how much fun a girl can have with just any old text editor and an HTML textbook.

Initially I chose this book out of the mega-millions of choices available for two reasons, one worthy and one not so worthy. The worthy reason is that the textbook for the Adobe Pagemaker course I took at BCIT was another book from the Visual Quickstart Guide series, and I had liked using it to study. The less worthy reason (though still appreciated by me) was that I liked the cover. I think what really sold me on it, standing in the computer books section of Chapters on Sunday night, was the hexadecimal colour chart on the back inside cover. Colour charts always get me!

In any case, I made a good choice. In three short days, I have conquered links and tables and been introduced to frames, and I smugly think of bold and italic as "easy". After turning my light out these last few nights, instead of pondering plot and character development, I've spent my moments of semi-wakefulness contemplating the mysteries of web forms and graphics. This could become addictive... I can see it now... one of these days I'll be back for a book on javascript... they'll find me years later, eyes permanently glazed over from staring at the monitor, subsisting on caffeine and cold pizza and wearing a pocket protector.

But, seriously, for anyone who doesn't yet know HTML and wants to learn, this is a very good book.