Any suggestions for writing HTML?

[chemistry_geek]

Anyone know where I can find a good detailed book on writing an outstanding webpage? I need a really good source for writing HTML for a little project of mine. It's on my list of things to do before I die, and if completed, will be quite cool and useful. I don't want to use any Adobe programs or other webpage writing software to make the webpage except the built-in composer in Netscape 6.2.1.

[RacerX]

I would suggest getting two books. First: just about any 3-4" thick book on HTML 4 (there are a few out there), second: Visual Quickstart's HTML 4 so you have a smaller visual reference to at least find the type of code you may want to use for any ideas that come to mind. I would say that the larger book is like a dictionary and the Visual Quickstart is like a thesaurus.

For visual layouts that take to long to code, I would suggest either Freeway (there are some free versions floating around out there) or something like CuttingRoom (I don't know if there is a Mac OS X version yet, but it was a nice Rhapsody/Mac OS X Server 1.x app) for cutting up images so you could reconstruct the parts you needed in you page.

I would also take some time at a book store to at least look at some of the books on the graphic design part of writing web pages. You would be surprised at how often you'll come across a subtle idea that was just what you were looking for, or help present your content in just the right way.

[AdmiralAK]

I use the book "web design in a nutshell". It comes in handy when I want to look up special codes for accetned characters, the hex for some color, and if I forget attricbuts of a tag, I can always look em up



Admiral

[Nummi]

Another good book is "HTML Pocket Reference" also an O'Reilly book.