Plenty of books can teach you HTML quickly, getting you up to speed and hacking out Web pages in no time. HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide offers a more comprehensive and pragmatic look at the de facto markup language of today, as well as the emerging next step.
This title systematically presents HTML markup, beginning with the basics--such as the anatomy of an HTML document, text, and links--and proceeding to cascading style sheets, javascript, and XML. Along the way, it discusses related issues, such as problems with displaying background images, and browser-specific behavior with tables and other elements. Each element is covered in as much depth as is necessary to frame the key implementation issues.
Most of the book is entirely relevant to basic HTML coding without any concern for XHTML. The latter, more cutting-edge flavor of markup is covered in depth near the end of the book. The entire specifications for the HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 Document Type Definitions (DTDs) are included among the appendices.
While HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide is an excellent tutorial for learning markup the right way, it is also a superb desktop reference guide to keep nearby for daily use. Perhaps, there is no greater compliment for a Web development book.