Dave's Quick 'n' Easy Web Pages : An Introductory Guide to Creating Web Sites

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Summary: Dave's Quick 'n' Easy Web Pages
Review: Although this is listed as a "kid's" book, it is a clear step by step procedural manual for anyone new to HTML and wanting to set up their own website. Dave takes us from a simple text-filled page through adding numbered lists, bulleted lists, colors for text and background, adding tables, adding images, creating hyperlinks with text or images, and creating an image map (an image that has "hot spots" to be clicked as links). He also has listed many websites for downloading free programs, clip art, backgrounds, etc. He shows how to set up, save, and then upload website pages onto the Internet. The procedures are easy to follow if the reader carefully recreates what Dave has written.

Definitely a good book for anyone new to creating personal webpages.

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Summary: A simple, highly practical guide for web designers
Review: Dave's Quick 'n' Easy Web Pages: An Introductory Guide To Creating Web Sites is a simple, highly practical guide for web designers ranging from beginning to intermediate experience and skill. Individual chapters address hyperlinks, animated images, sound, tables, additional features like counters and message boards, and much more in this superb, "user friendly", compact primer that can teach anyone to get a basic web page up and running in almost no time at all!

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Summary: Mahalo to the Lindsays
Review: I don`t know what the first edition was like, but I sure like this one. Simple and basic-- it does not purport to be anything else, this handbook by Dave Linsay has gone beyond his initial goal of sharing his knowledge and experience with contemporaries eager to know how to become a webmaster/mistress. He helps to bridge the gap between the ability to e-mail and surf the internet, and ignorance and (I`ll admit, irrational,) fear of all the rest of the stuff that appears on the monitor. In the first few pages, I discovered to my chagrin, that "html" is not "hotmail," abbreviated (subliminal misconstruction there) and learned the significance of those greater and less than signs whose sudden appearance had me in a cold sweat last time I inadvertently bumped or clicked something other than the alphabet while word-processing on our ancient MAC.

Clear, economically written (in many aspects,) streamlined: he`s collected a wealth of information and techniques and reorganized it in a digestible form. Even my Japanese husband can utilize Dave`s tutorial on creating a web page. The layout anticipates his intended readers` needs: chapters and headings are written and organized so that one may jump about, related figures face each other when possible, and advice boxes are a useful preventative of common errors. Another helpful and encouraging feature is the use of his own real and accessible homepage as an example. The glossary in back is a plus, as are the appendices which include addresses where one can get free stuff to help with the site. He also includes the address to his site where you can access links and keep up to date. I can`t say what computer geeks (no offense intended-- I was once a geek, myself; then motherhood happened) would make of this book, although they could probably gain some tips on making their instructions more brief AND understandable, but I think this should satisfy the needs of his intended audience and then some. Now, even such as I can create a homepage to make my mother proud ( she, has just learned to e-mail, herself.) And, empowered by the skills and vocabulary, I now have the confidence to learn more about those other inscrutable computer things.

Rating:
Summary: Mahalo to the Lindsays
Review: I don`t know what the first edition was like, but I sure like this one. Simple and basic-- it does not purport to be anything else, this handbook by Dave Linsay has gone beyond his initial goal of sharing his knowledge and experience with contemporaries eager to know how to become a webmaster/mistress. He helps to bridge the gap between the ability to e-mail and surf the internet, and ignorance and (I`ll admit, irrational,) fear of all the rest of the stuff that appears on the monitor. In the first few pages, I discovered to my chagrin, that "html" is not "hotmail," abbreviated (subliminal misconstruction there) and learned the significance of those greater and less than signs whose sudden appearance had me in a cold sweat last time I inadvertently bumped or clicked something other than the alphabet while word-processing on our ancient MAC.

Clear, economically written (in many aspects,) streamlined: he`s collected a wealth of information and techniques and reorganized it in a digestible form. Even my Japanese husband can utilize Dave`s tutorial on creating a web page. The layout anticipates his intended readers` needs: chapters and headings are written and organized so that one may jump about, related figures face each other when possible, and advice boxes are a useful preventative of common errors. Another helpful and encouraging feature is the use of his own real and accessible homepage as an example. The glossary in back is a plus, as are the appendices which include addresses where one can get free stuff to help with the site. He also includes the address to his site where you can access links and keep up to date. I can`t say what computer geeks (no offense intended-- I was once a geek, myself; then motherhood happened) would make of this book, although they could probably gain some tips on making their instructions more brief AND understandable, but I think this should satisfy the needs of his intended audience and then some. Now, even such as I can create a homepage to make my mother proud ( she, has just learned to e-mail, herself.) And, empowered by the skills and vocabulary, I now have the confidence to learn more about those other inscrutable computer things.

Rating:
Summary: Wrong approach. Focuses solely on HTML.
Review: I got this book, and was disappointed. It starts out teaching HTML, the language web pages are used for. HTML programming is the wrong way to start learning web page design. Tools like FrontPage and even MS Word will do ALL the HTML programming for you. After starting to read this book with my 8 year old daughter, we went down to the computer, started Microsoft Word, and made a couple web pages. That was a visual way to program, and it lets the tools handle the details. This book is the wrong way to learn web page development and design.

Rating:
Summary: Wrong approach. Focuses solely on HTML.
Review: I got this book, and was disappointed. It starts out teaching HTML, the language web pages are used for. HTML programming is the wrong way to start learning web page design. Tools like FrontPage and even MS Word will do ALL the HTML programming for you. After starting to read this book with my 8 year old daughter, we went down to the computer, started Microsoft Word, and made a couple web pages. That was a visual way to program, and it lets the tools handle the details. This book is the wrong way to learn web page development and design.

Rating:
Summary: Quick is the Operative Word
Review: Up until recently, web pages held a certain mystique for me. Not any more. One of the reasons for that is this little 116 page book.

Rather than load you up with a bunch of theory and technical jargon, Dave Lindsay gives you just what you need to get started. By the end of the first chapter (which is only nine pages), he has you creating your own basic web page. This all with the most basic of word processors (like Simpletext in MAC or Notepad for your PC)!

With information conveniently contained in the back of the book, he even shows you how to obtain software to upload this basic web page, a server to host your site, and how to upload your page -- all for free.

From there, the author guides you through more advanced techniques like adding sound, message banners and even animated images. This is really a lot more than I expected from a "basic" book, especially one that is just over 100 pages.

For web design "newbies" that just want to get their feet wet, this is a great place to start. It's all written in plain English with the bare minimum of technical codes. As you go through the book and each new technique, they are illustrated to demonstrate how it changes your site.

DAVE'S QUICK 'N' EASY is great for the person intimidated by technology or someone that just wants to dive right in, but doesn't know a lot about HTML (the language used to build web pages). For the complete novice or beginner, this book is like running a 100 meter dash. It gets you designing a web page in no time flat.

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Summary: HTML Simplified
Review: When I agreed(okay, well, volunteered)to recreate a section of my employer's website I was, perhaps, a bit too confident in my skills. I am by no means computer illiterate, but I had very little experience with HTML and all else that is needed to design a webpage.

I was to be working with a well known web development program and tried as best I could to learn through the tutorials and such. Ha. Let's just say that didn't work out so well. And this program is suppose to make things easy. One of those, "even idiots can use this because this and that are already done for you" type things. But I guess I like doing things the hard way.

And that's where *Dave's Quick 'n' Easy Web Pages* came in. It details in very simple terms HTML coding, showing you what the page would look like in code and also what it would look like in a browser. Things like hyperlinks and how to insert become far less daunting with the instructions in this book.

I don't think that it matters that it was written by a very young man or that the publisher has seen fit to classify it as a young adult text. I found it infinitely more useful and usable than a good deal of the other books I picked up for help.