Put everything you need to know about HTML and XHTML at your fingertips. For nearly a decade, hundreds of thousands of web developers have turned to "HTML and XHTML: The Definitive Guide" to master standards-based web development. Truly a definitive guide, the book combines a unique balance of tutorial material with a comprehensive reference that even the most experienced web professionals keep close at hand. From basic syntax and semantics to guidelines aimed at helping you develop your own distinctive style, this classic is all you need to become fluent in the language of web design. The new sixth edition guides you through every element of HTML and XHTML in detail, explaining how each element works and how it interacts with other elements. You'll also find detailed discussions of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), which is intricately related to web page development. The most all-inclusive, up-to-date book on these languages available, this edition covers HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, and CSS2, with a preview of the upcoming XHTML2 and CSS3. Other topics include the newer initiatives in XHTML (XForms, XFrames, and modularization) and the essentials of XML for advanced readers. You'll learn how to: Use style sheets to control your document's appearance; Work with programmatically generated HTML; Create tables, both simple and complex; Use frames to coordinate sets of documents; Design and build interactive forms and dynamic documents; Insert images, sound files, video, Java applets, and JavaScript programs; and Create documents that look good on a variety of browsers. The authors apply a natural learning approach that uses straightforward language and plenty of examples. Throughout the book, they offer suggestions for style and composition to help you decide how to best use HTML and XHTML to accomplish a variety of tasks. You'll learn what works and what doesn't, and what makes sense to those who view your web pages and what might be confusing. It is written for anyone who wants to learn the language of the Web - from casual users to the full-time design professionals - this is the single most important book on HTML and XHTML you can own.

Table of Contents

Preface 1. HTML, XHTML, and the World Wide Web 1.1 The Internet 1.2 Talking the Internet Talk 1.3 HTML and XHTML: What They Are 1.4 HTML and XHTML: What They Aren't 1.5 Standards and Extensions 1.6 Tools for the Web Designer 2. Quick Start 2.1 Writing Tools 2.2 A First HTML Document 2.3 Embedded Tags 2.4 HTML Skeleton 2.6 Text 2.7 Hyperlinks 2.8 Images Are Special 2.9 Lists, Searchable Documents, and Forms 2.10 Tables 2.11 Frames 2.12 Stylesheets and JavaScript 2.13 Forging Ahead 3. Anatomy of an HTML Document 3.1 Appearances Can Deceive 3.2 Structure of an HTML Document 3.3 Tags and Attributes 3.4 Well-Formed Documents and XHTML 3.5 Document Content 3.6 HTML/XHTML Document Elements 3.7 The Document Header 3.8 The Document Body 3.9 Editorial Markup 3.10 The Tag 4. Text Basics 4.1 Divisions and Paragraphs 4.2 Headings 4.3 Changing Text Appearance and Meaning 4.4 Content-Based Style Tags 4.5 Physical Style Tags 4.6 Precise Spacing and Layout 4.7 Block Quotes 4.8 Addresses 4.9 Special Character Encoding 4.10 HTML's Obsolete Expanded Font Handling 5. Rules, Images, and Multimedia 5.1 Horizontal Rules 5.2 Inserting Images in Your Documents 5.3 Document Colors and Background Images 5.4 Background Audio 5.5 Animated Text 5.6 Other Multimedia Content 6. Links and Webs 6.1 Hypertext Basics 6.2 Referencing Documents: The URL 6.3 Creating Hyperlinks 6.4 Creating Effective Links 6.5 Mouse-Sensitive Images 6.6 Creating Searchable Documents 6.7 Relationships 6.8 Supporting Document Automation 7. Formatted Lists 7.1 Unordered Lists 7.2 Ordered Lists 7.3 The

• Tag 7.4 Nesting Lists 7.5 Definition Lists 7.6 Appropriate List Usage 7.7 Directory Lists 7.8 Menu Lists 8. Cascading Style Sheets 8.1 The Elements of Styles 8.2 Style Syntax 8.3 Style Classes 8.4 Style Properties 8.5 Tagless Styles: The Tag 8.6 Applying Styles to Documents 9. Forms 9.1 Form Fundamentals 9.2 The Tag 9.3 A Simple Form Example 9.4 Using Email to Collect Form Data 9.5 The Tag 9.6 TheTag 9.7 Multiline Text Areas 9.8 Multiple-Choice Elements 9.9 General Form-Control Attributes 9.10 Labeling and Grouping Form Elements 9.11 Creating Effective Forms 9.12 Forms Programming 10. Tables 10.1 The Standard Table Model 10.2 Basic Table Tags 10.3 Advanced Table Tags 10.4 Beyond Ordinary Tables 11. Frames 11.1 An Overview of Frames 11.2 Frame Tags 11.3 Frame Layout 11.4 Frame Contents 11.5 The