Posted by Andy Dingley on 10/10/05 12:58

Tony Cooper wrote:

> You say the book wasn't worth whatever I paid for it. Yet, after
> about an hour's reading I'm doing what I want to do. That makes it
> worth the money as far as I'm concerned.

If the page is "seen by half a dozen people and only up for a month",
then couldn't you just phone them up and _tell_ them what's on the
page?

The fallacy is to assume that pages really are "just up for a short
while" - they tend to stick around longer than you expect, the revised
"real" version never happens when it ought to, or Google finds it and
they're in the cache for ages afterwards, even after you've taken the
page down. It's a big web out there - stuff gets seen by more people
than you'd expect.

You should always write good, modern well-structured HTML 4.01 (at
least). It's _easier_ than the nasty old cruft of yesteryear and far
quicker. However this assumes that you know how to do that and the sad
fact is that most books and training are still very poor (Castro, Lie
& Bos, Raggett or Meyer are some of the very few worth reading). If
you've picked up a turkey of a book, then you have my sympathies - you
probably spent longer than was necessary on getting what you needed
done.

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