Are you still designing web sites like it’s 1999? If so, you’re in for a surprise. Since the last edition of this book appeared five years ago, there has been a major climate change with regard to web standards. Designers are no longer using (X)HTML as a design tool, but as a means of defining the meaning and structure of content. Cascading Style Sheets are no longer just something interesting to tinker with, but rather a reliable method for handling all matters of presentation, from fonts and colors to the layout of the entire page. In fact, following the standards is now a mandate of professional web design.

Our popular reference, Web Design in a Nutshell, is one of the first books to capture this new web landscape with an edition that’s been completely rewritten and expanded to reflect the state of the art. In addition to being an authoritative reference for (X)HTML and Cascading Style Sheets, this book also provides an overview of the unique requirements of designing for the Web and gets to the nitty-gritty of JavaScript and DOM Scripting, web graphics optimization, and multimedia production. It is an indispensable tool for web designers and developers of all levels.

The third edition covers these contemporary web design topics:

• Structural layer: HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 (9 chapters), including an alphabetical reference of all elements, attributes and character entities
• Presentation layer: Ten all-new chapters on Cascading Style Sheets, Level 2.1, including an alphabetical reference of all properties and values.
• Behavior layer: JavaScript and scripting with the Document Object Model (DOM)
• Web environment: New web standards, browsers, display devices, accessibility, and internationalization
• Web graphics optimization: Producing lean and mean GIF, JPEG, PNG, and animated GIFs
• Multimedia: Web audio, video, Flash, and PDF

Organized so that readers can find answers quickly, Web Design in a Nutshell, Third Edition helps experienced designers come up to speed quickly on standards-based web design, and serves as a quick reference for those already familiar with the new standards and technology.

There are many books for web designers, but none that address such a wide variety of topics. Find out why nearly half a million buyers have made this the most popular web design book available.

What is XML? XML, or eXtensible Markup Language, is a specification for storing information. It is also a specification for describing the structure of that information. And while XML is a markup language (just like HTML), XML has no tags of its own. It allows the person writing the XML to create whatever tags they need. The only condition is that these newly created tags adhere to the rules of the XML specification.

In the seven years since the first edition of “XML: Visual QuickStart Guide was published, XML has taken its place next to HTML as a foundational language on the Internet. XML has become a very popular method for storing data and the most popular method for transmitting data between all sorts of systems and applications. The reason being, where HTML was designed to display information, XML was designed to manage it.

This book begins by showing you the basics of the XML language. Then, by building on that knowledge, additional and supporting languages and systems will be discussed. To get the most out of this book, you should be somewhat familiar with HTML, although you don’t need to be an expert coder by any stretch. No other previous knowledge is required.

“XML: Visual QuickStart Guide, 2nd Edition is divided into seven parts. Each part contains one or more chapters with step-by-step instructions that explain how to perform XML-related tasks. Wherever possible, examples of the concepts being discussed are displayed, and the parts of the examples on which to focus are highlighted.

The order of the book is intentionally designed to be an introduction to the fundamentals of XML, followed by discussions of related XML technologies.

In Part 1 of the book, you will learn how to create an XML document. It’s relatively straightforward, and even more so if you know a little HTML.

Part 2 focuses on XSL, which is a set of languages designed to transform an XML document into something else: an HTML file, a PDF document, or another XML document. Remember, XML is designed to store and transport data, not display it.

Parts 3 and 4 of the book discuss DTD and XML Schema, languages designed to define the structure of an XML document. In conjunction with XML Namespaces (Part 5), you can guarantee that XML documents conform to a pre-defined structure, whether created by you or by someone else.

Part 6, Developments and Trends, details some of the up-and-coming XML-related languages, as well as a few new versions of existing languages.

Finally, Part 7 identifies some well-known uses of XML in the world today; some of which you may be surprised to learn.

This beginner’s guide to XML is broken down as follows:
Introduction
Chapter 1: Writing XML

Part 2: XSL
Chapter 2: XSLT
Chapter 3: XPath Patterns and Expressions
Chapter 4: XPath Functions
Chapter 5: XSL-FO

Part 3: DTD
Chapter 6: Creating a DTD
Chapter 7: Entities and Notations in DTDs
Chapter 8: Validation and Using DTDs

Part 4: XML Schema
Chapter 9: XML Schema Basics
Chapter 10: Defining Simple Types
Chapter 11: Defining Complex Types

Part 5: Namespaces
Chapter 12: XML Namespaces
Chapter 13: Using XML Namespaces

Part 6: Recent W3C Recommendations
Chapter 14: XSLT 2.0
Chapter 15: XPath 2.0
Chapter 16: XQuery 1.0

Part 7: XML in Practice
Chapter 17: Ajax, RSS, SOAP and More

Are you looking to take advantage of social media for your business or organization? With easy-to-understand introductions to blogging, forums, opinion and review sites, and social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, this book will help you choose the best — and avoid the worst — of the social web’s unique marketing opportunities.

The Social Media Marketing Book guides you through the maze of communities, platforms, and social media tools so you can decide which ones to use, and how to use them most effectively. With an objective approach and clear, straightforward language, Dan Zarrella, aka “The Social Media & Marketing Scientist,” shows you how to plan and implement campaigns intelligently, and then measure results and track return on investment. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or new to the social web, this book will take you beyond the jargon to social media marketing mastery.

• Make sense of this complicated environment with the help of screenshots, graphs, and visual explanations
• Understand the history and culture of each social media type, including features, functionality, and protocols
• Get clear-cut explanations of the methods you need to trigger viral marketing successes
• Choose the technologies and marketing tactics most relevant to your campaign goals
• Learn how to set specific goals for your campaigns and evaluate them according to key performance indicators

Praise for The Social Media Marketing Book:

“Let Zarrella take you to social-media marketing school. You’ll learn more from reading this book than a month of research on the Internet.” –Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of Alltop.com

“If I could be any other person for a day, it would be Dan Zarella. Either him or Brad Pitt. But Dan’s smarter. This book is why I say that.” –Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs

“This book demonstrates a beginning to the endless possibilities of the Social Web.” — Brian Solis, publisher of leading marketing blog PR 2.0