Building a Website on the Internet

If you want to make a start in creating a web site - without being overwhelmed by details - this is a good place to begin. Brendan Murphy assumes that you need an overview, enough to get started, and a minimum of technicalities.

He explains how the Internet works, spells out the Web and how it is likely to develop, then gets down to the basics of making Web pages. He deals with the elements of HTML without going into the rocket-science details, then shows you how to format your pages using bulleted lists, tables, and graphics. He even goes as far as frames, animation and video - though most beginners would do well to steer clear of these.



There's also a clear and simple explanation of how to get your pages up onto the Web once you've made them. This can be quite a scary process after the comfort of doing everything on your own hard disk, so this should be reassuring advice.

The latter parts of the book offer guides to web design using four of the most popular web editors - Front Page, Coffee Cup, Hotdog, 1st Page, and Netscape Composer. Everyone knows that these tools can be a mixed blessing - because they often add a lot of their own proprietory coding. But the fact is that they can help beginners past the first hurdles.

All of these features make this a book suitable for beginners. It's well illustrated and reasonable value. You will need further information about the details of HTML - but all that is available free on the Web.