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Title: A Ripoff of Dummies
Review: This was my first "Dummies" book, so perhaps I did not know what to expect. I was expecting a "how-to" book with lots of worked examples. This was not it. (BTW: My 12-yr old daughter put this down even faster than I did! She wanted to know how to create webpages. This did not do it for her.)The first 4-5 chapters were boring essays on the history of the web and html. At 90 pages in length, Chapter 6 is apparently the heart of the book. This chapter is basically a HTML manual. It describes all HTML commands using a variant of BNF. Very few examples are given. There is a CD that comes with the book that supposedly contains worked examples. The few that I looked up were not detailed enough for me to infer the patterns.Chapters 7-22 were short overly general sections discussing various issues. I did like chapter 15 on navigation aids. The end material on evaluating the usability of your website was even more vague (and a lot less entertaining) than a Jakob Nielsen lecture.
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