In twelve-plus years of working with HTML I’ve noticed that many web developers take a crash course in it, learn a few basics, then “move on” to the “real stuff.” While HTML is admittedly easy to learn and not super difficult to master there are still many concepts relating to it which seem to be ignored or are maybe completely unheard of in the web development world. When these concepts are grasped they significantly increase productivity, clarity of code, ease-of-maintenance, etc. But so many people seem content to live without these benefits. In my own development experience I’ve come to be aware of many of these concepts but thought they were too idiosyncratic to bring up to other people. But the book I’m currently reading, HTML & CSS: The Good Parts by Ben Henick and published by O’Reilly Press, crystallizes my thought process on these matters and shows that they really are important to sites of any size. This is not a book to learn HTML or CSS from. It exists at an intermediate or perhaps advanced level but any serious web developer wanting to perfect their coding practices will benefit from reading this book. As I write this I am on page 68 in the book so I may add more to this entry later.