Did you know that all the tools you need to create great web pages are free, and they are built right into Windows XP or are available online? Sams Teach Yourself to Create Web Pages All in One will show you how to use these different tools to create a variety of web pages. Preston Gralla, best-selling author of more than two dozen books about computers and the Internet, and Matt Brown, editor of more than 20 Dreamweaver and Photoshop books, will walk you through how to quickly and inexpensively create certain types of popular web pages, such as:

• A personal or family home page
• eBay listings and shops to buy and sell merchandise
• Web logs to impart news, information and observations

If you are not looking to make a huge investment in software, technology or time, but you want to quickly and easily get up-to-speed on how to create basic types of web pages, Sams Teach Yourself to Create Web Pages All in One is just the book you've been waiting for!

Good for a beginner on a PC
Creating Web Pages by Preston Gralla and Matt Brown (ISBN 0-672-32690-6) does start out well. It gives one a great overview of what the internet is and how it works. The book then proceeds to explain the basics of HTML and how to plan out a website in very comprehensive and understandable language. After the first three chapters, you have to skip ahead to find out how to effectively prepare and add graphics to your pages. In between, there are chapters dealing with building websites on Geocities or using Yahoo PageBuilder or Netscape Composer to actually build your site. The problem I had is that everything is really geared to PC - Window based users. I have a MAC and there is really nothing in the author’s approach to show that things change and that there are differences between the MAC and PC platforms and how pages may appear.

The last third of the book deals with eBay listings and Blogs. The section about eBay is pretty extensive, giving the reader all sorts of helpful information about everything from finding items to sell to preparing effective graphics to post to pricing and effective ad copy writing. If interested in opening an eBay store, this is a great resource to turn to. Again, the authors explain things thoroughly and in an easy to read manner.

Finally, there is a section about Blogs, which was interesting, since I have never really had a clear understanding of what a Blog was. So while helpful, not something I am interested in creating.

Overall, the book is good for a beginner with a PC. It is excellent if you want to sell on eBay. If you are a MAC user, I’d recommend finding another book.

iconic usages
As the web has grown, several modalities of usage have become iconic. In response, Gralla and Brown explain 4 of these. To be sure, entire books are devoted to eBay alone, for instance. But this AllInOne text steps back and offers a consistent thematic understanding. Based on being able to make a web page.

The early part of the book goes over HTML basics. You need mastery of this to proceed. The book then gives the 4 modalities as case studies. You may well not want to learn all of them. But if you are reading this, you’re probably interested in at least one. The utility of the exposition is to show how learning the chapters for that can give you skills transferable to the other topics.

Now of these topics, blogging has the skimpiest coverage. This might reflect its realities. Most blogs afford you some graphics that you can alter, as a blogger. Like uploading images. But blogging is primarily textual.

The eBay section is far more extensive. For some of you, it may also be the most compelling. Since unlike the other modalities, this is about directly making money. To this ends, if you are interested in this section, read the descriptions about using images in your auctions. Of all the actions you can do as a seller, providing a good image of your item has been shown, on average, to yield higher bids. This also nicely ties into an earlier section of the book, that discusses using Photoshop to improve your digital photos.