[thelist] Mac HTML for newbie

[Green, Janet]

>>>I'm looking for something that's not terribly expensive for him to start
using to design his pages. It also has to be pretty simple for a novice to
learn to use.<<<

Julia, I realize you are really looking for page-creating software
recommendations, but honestly, there is an excellent book that teaches only
the BASICS of html, and got me moving very quickly! One night about 4 years
ago, I was surfing Geocities and decided to sign up for a free site, even
though I knew nothing about building one. Next day I bought this book, and
by the end of one day I knew the rock-bottom basics and over the next
several nights I built the site at http://www.geocities.com/wellesley/2655
based on that book. (I also had some experience using the little Paint
program that comes with Windows Accessories, and based on that, I began
playing around with Paint Shop Pro, so I was able to build my graphics. Note
that I am not saying this site is GOOD by today's standards... it's pretty
but it's in Navigational Hell and has unoptimized graphics... but it
certainly was at least as good as a lot of the other sites I'd seen on
Geocities up to that point.)

The book is called "Designing for the Web" by Jennifer Niederst with Edie
Freedman, from O'Reilly(ISBN #1-56592-165-8). It's only about 155 pages in a
smaller-size paperback format, so it's not intimidating at all, and it will
quickly establish the BASICS of creating web pages. Yes, it's a few years
old, so it uses some outdated tags like <BLINK>, BUT overall it teaches you
good coding habits and shows you enough to build a basic page. :) 

The problem I have with all the WYSIWIG editors out there is that they don't
teach you anything about code; in fact they create all kinds of "extra" code
that only serves to confuse when you have to go in later and change
something. I firmly believe that it's critical to learn the basics of code
(writing it, reading it, debugging it) before you start playing around with
any page-creation software. This book makes it easy and absolutely painless
to learn those basics, it's not a geeky book at all, and it sells for only
$25, so I think it even fits into the "cheap" category as far as web books
are concerned. :) 

Best,
Janet