How to Use This Book

I hope that this book is easy enough to read that you don't need instructions. That said, there are a few elements that bear explaining.

First, there are several special elements in this book, presented in what we in the publishing business call "margin notes." There are different types of margin notes for different types of information, as you see here.

Note

This is a note that presents information of interest, even if it isn't wholly relevant to the discussion in the main text.

Tip

This is a tip that might prove useful for whatever it is you're in the process of doing.

Caution

This is a caution that something you might accidentally do might have undesirable results.

In most chapters you'll also find some personal commentary, presented in the form of a sidebar. These sections are meant to be read separately, as they exist "outside" the main text. And rememberthese sidebars are my opinions only, so feel free to agree or disagree as you like.

Obviously, there are lots of web page addresses in the book, like this one: www.google.com. When you see one of these addresses (also known as a URL), you can go to that web page by entering the URL into the address box in your web browser. I've made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the Web addresses presented here, but given the ever-changing nature of the web, don't be surprised if you run across an address or two that's changed. I apologize in advance.

The other thing you'll find in various places throughout this book is HTML code. A snippet of code might look like this:

<p> This is a line of text. </p> <img src="URL"> 

When part of the code is italics (such as the URL in the previous example), this means that you need to replace the italicized code with your own individual information. In the previous example, you would replace URL with the full URL and filename of an image file you want to include in your auction template.

If you're a web page developer, you'll know what to do with this code. If you're not, you might want to skip over those sections. (You don't have to be a developer to use Google, of course.)