Hi. I hope my question about HTML isn't too unrelated to programming. From the looks of it, this forum is apparently the most appropriate one for my question. By the way, I've asked some other questions about books here too. And people have been rather helpful. So perhaps I can get some sound advice on this matter as well. I have a book called "HTML 4 for Dummies" If I am not mistaken, there exists an "HTML 4 for Dummies, Second Edition". My copy however, is not a second edition. It was published in 1998 I believe. Anyway, do you think the material covered in this book would be obsolete, or too out of date to read? I imagine that some things could be different, but the underlying principles of HTML would've remained intact. Anyway, is this book still good, or is it worhtless now?(though its quite possible it never was a good book. I'm not an expert on these things. I tend to like dummies books though)

Hi Graig, No, your book is not out of date and can be used very well. I am not familiar with the "for Dummies" book (at least not the HTML-thing) but HTML 4.01 is the standard now, and that's the same as HTML 4.0, as far as the HTML is concerned. There may be some references missing to XML or PHP etc, but that's beyond HTML.

Personally I'd recomend trying http://www.htmlgoodies.com. I learned the basics of HTML in 3 days from there. After you get the basics down, get yourself a reference book like Ian S. Graham's, "HTML 4.0 Sourcebook," and just play around with it.

I'll probably stick with my dummimes book for now. I'm glad to hear that its not obsolete. And I did go to that htmlgoodies.com site, and it looked like it had a lot of info on it. I may read some more stuff off of that site. My dummies book should keep my busy for the time being though. Thanks for the replies.

HTML 4.0 or 4.1 is probably as far as HTML will go - learn it well, but prepare for XML and DHTML also... will be very useful. Download free samples from web pages and study them... great helps...