xhtml

HTML, XHTML, and CSS Bible
$39.99
I bought a dutch translation of this book, and was rather disappointed. I wanted to learn more about xhtml, to be able to work on my own website, and not having to ask a friend for every little change I wanted to make.
In my opinion the book clearly lacks good editing work. For instance on parts where certain elements are introduced, the authors start elaborating on styles. This complicates things a lot, because explaining styles should be reserved for the chapters that are devoted to it.
Where it says in the first chapter that layout and content should be separated, they give examples where there is layout mixed with the content. This doesn't make it easy to develop my own writing of html.
The meaning of document type definitions didn't become clear to me, because they use different type definitions throughout the text. So as a beginner I can't follow any more...

I'll do my best to go learning with this book, but if you still have to decide which one to buy...

Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML
$39.99
I'm a C/Java coder who's been getting into web designing as a hobby. I have to say, the approach the Head First folks took with this book seemed a little unconventional at first, but after I'd devoured the first 200 pages and hardly felt like I was breaking a mental sweat I realized: it works! The authors are thorough, accurate, and enjoyable to read, and the material builds a great and easy-to-understand foundation before it takes you right into the realm of building valid XHTML. I'm a little old to relate to all the "hipsters" featured as characters in the book, but they do make the material that much more engaging, and add an element of fun to the projects. Those projects are non-trivial, and result in your learning to code some pretty nice web pages--and the authors do a fine job of presenting alternate methods to achieve similar results and are honest about the shortcomings of each.

I highly recommend this as your first book on programming HTML/CSS! I've ordered the Head First Javascript and PHP volumes for my further learning experiences.

Web Development and Design Foundations with XHTML (4th Edition)
$89.00
This book is very well laid out and clear to understand with logical excercises. It provides website support with additional learning files. Although not inexpensive, it provides an excellent way to learn XHTML and cascading style sheets. It is the text used for my website development college class.

HTML, XHTML, and CSS: Your visual blueprint for designing effective Web pages
$29.99
Nice text, I am using for an introduction to web development class. However, in the next edition, PLEASE make the font size in the notepad screen shots larger !! I'm getting old - and even with glasses the text is difficult to read.

Thanks