Amazon.com (ISBN 0764573276, Paperback)

Creating Web pages isn't just for nerds anymore--far from it. You can't get far in any hobby without participating in its Web community; even the smallest businesses need good-looking, functional Web sites. Those facts mean you must be able to do your own site-building work, and Creating Web Pages for Dummies exists to share the skills you need to learn. This book goes a long way toward explaining Web publishing to newcomers to the field. It is not, however, much of an introduction to Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or any other site development language, and you'll soon find yourself wishing for more information on the low-level code that makes your pages look and act the way they do.

Instead of focusing on HTML (see Elizabeth Castro's excellent HTML 4 for the World Wide Web for that), this book emphasizes Web services (such as America Online and GeoCities) that will help you publish your pages, as well as page-design software (such as Microsoft FrontPage Express and Netscape Composer). Coverage is generally too basic--the logic is that if you're thinking about publishing your own Web pages you don't need step-by-step instructions on how to enter body text into FrontPage Express. General advice is good, however, and prospective page creators can learn a thing or two about good page design from the authors' advice. --David Wall

Topics covered: The essentials of building a series of Web pages and getting them up for public consumption. Publishing services, page-design software, and the bare essentials of HTML are covered, as are the special considerations of publishing for WebTV and dealing with diverse browser types.