This book was not my idea. Nor are most of its contents. I'm just the guy who did the grunt work.
The original idea for a web standards-based tutorial came from a member who goes by the name of MstrBob on the WebDeveloper Forums. Actually, it wasn't a book he imagined but rather an online resource, but that went fizzle
. Twice. I had written an article for that which I tried to turn into an online tutorial of my own, but was overwhelmed by the amount of research I had to do (HTML looks so simple—right up until you try to explain it). Knowing there were others who wanted to learn HTML, I decided to write it as a tutorial on CD; that way I could justify the amount of research I did by making some money off it. So thanks to MstrBob for planting the idea.
There's another gentleman that I'd like to thank, by the name of Phil Sykes. If it weren't for him, I'd never be interested in standards-based coding.
I would also like to thank my teacher Joe Cygman, who is walking proof that almost any programming language can become understandable with the proper instructor. I can only hope to write like he taught.
I'd like to thank my own dear mother for being my proofreader, Ben Kaye-Skinner for giving my book a test run, and Tara Manini and Brian Gelfand for looking at the book for themselves.
More importantly, I would like to thank Sir Tim Berners-Lee for coming up with HTML in the first place, Håkon Wium Lie for giving us CSS, and Brendan Eich for JavaScript.
I would also like to thank the W3C for being my main source of HTML and CSS, and W3Schools for most of what I've learned in JavaScript.
I'd also like to thank everyone on the WebDeveloper Forums for all their help in teaching me these technologies until I could stand on my own.
Lastly, I'd like to thank God for keeping me sane while writing this book.
Oh, and MstrBob? The (Complete?) Web Development Guide is here.