Rating: 
Summary: Nice try, but not a well-written book
Review: This book's problem... the publishing house didn't assign an industry expert as content editor but published it 'as received from author' (though maybe they DID spellcheck it). I say that based on the fact that over the past 35 years, I've earned a tidy little sideline sum as a content editor for various publishing houses. (I am also an sgml expert and have built about 6000 webpages in the past decade, most by hand, some using Cold Fusion, so I am also an HTML/CSS/JavaScript/XML, etc. 'expert'.)
This book has too much author me me me me-ing (kinda like my review, heh heh) and not enough clear, concise explanations as to how CSS works and what problems might be encountered in which browsers if you use css to replace tables for page layout.
I recommend a css beginner go to w3schools site. They have a beginner's css course that is quite good, for the basics. Plus they allow you to try out the css in a browser. It's not a full-on course, but it IS a good beginning and it's free. You should know HTML before you take the css course. Also, you can go to lissaexplains for tidbits of css info such as how 'div' works, etc. Then just start building a site for the practice. If you can't think of a website idea (if you are a beginner, that can be a difficult thing... the design of a website), and you have access to 2002 or newer Microsoft applications, just use one of the office programs (Word or Publisher) to generate a couple of basic webpages, then view the template in a browser, and printout the pages. Don't look at the 'view source' of the generated Microsoft webpage as all that baloney microsoft code will freak you out. Then try to duplicate the webpage layout by writing your own html/css code... after you have learned css at w3schools, etc. You will discover you'll need at least TWO stylesheets for your webpages as css works differently in various browser. Don't worry about it, w3schools will explain the basics. Generally speaking, you'll need one stylesheet for Firefox/Mozilla, the other for MSIE and Opera. But don't waste your money on this book. It's not a beginner's book though it purports to be, and the author, well, he really needs to teach a couple of nightschool courses on css, using his book as the courseware. The questions that the night school (aka 'highly motivated') students will ask over and over and over will quickly enlighten him as to what's wrong with his book and give him a little needed humility. (Teaching nightschool CompSci sure worked for me, heh heh.)
HOWEVER, if you want a book then I recommend anything by Danny Goodman. He's a good 'explainer'. His book (ISBN: 0-596-00316-1) Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference, 2nd Edition is a good book to have by your side as you are learning web building.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing, poorly organized
Review: I'm sorry to say that after getting halfway through this book, I got disgusted with it and am now shopping for another. What bothered me is that the author manages to make CSS look horribly complicated, when the fact is, the authors of CSS never intended it to be so. A book of this sort should start by trying to show how to use CSS in a practical, simple way, to gain the reader's trust that this technology is not off the deep end. Instead, Eric seems to spend most of his effort and time explaining "what can go wrong", which demonstrates his own knowledge of CSS but does little to transfer that knowledge to us.
Rating:
Summary: Not very practical...reads like a dictionary
Review: I just spent the day reading this book and it's about 10 hours I wish I had back. The book may indeed be a good reference, but it isn't much of a teaching model. With the vast majority of the world using IE, all too often you'll spend time reading a section and trying to understand it only to find at the end of the section a blurb "This feature is not supported in any version of IE". The first time it was aggravating, by the fourth or fifth time I began to wonder why the book wasn't structured so that readers could be made aware in advance of theoretical features not yet supported. For the most part I'd have skipped past and saved time.
There are simply not enough examples in the book and many of the ones that exist are confusing. I can't quite explain it, I just found the book aggravating. I'm sure I'll use it as a reference, but my impression of it is the author created a reference first, and then wrote a book around it.
Rating: 
Summary: Easy to understand
Review: I really enjoyed readig this book! It's written in a simple and undestandable language that even CSS beginer can unterstand everythig, well almost everything, the sky is the only limit... But i really recomend this book for those who is seeking something to start from with CSS. Its NOT a waste of your money, believe me!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Way to Improve CSS Skills
Review: Prior to owning this book, I was involved in web design of different types for about five years. I had picked up various aspects of CSS from visual editors like GoLive and Dreamweaver, just by visually creating elements and tweaking the code. However, if you really want to understand the way CSS is structured and what the best methods for achieving certain types of looks are, this is a great place to start.
This book is neither pure code reference (you can get that at w3c.org), nor just a means of learning "tricks A, B and C". Rather it will teach you how to create your own "tricks", while also providing code and syntax references, so that you can build more efficient, better looking pages that work across a variety of browsers.
The only qualm I have is that the first book I received had a really poor glue-binding (pages were falling out, and the backing was detached from the binding). The replacement book (Amazon was very quick about it) also had a detached backing, but the binding itself was OK so I kept it.
Rating: 
Summary: It's definitive
Review: I have the supposedly "out of date" first edition of this book, which is now on its second edition (which is the edition that Amazon is selling right now, even though it's not that clear from the title--dont' worry, Amazon won't sell you an outdated book).
This book has been sitting on my bookshelf for nearly a year and I finally got around to reading it carefully, and I must say that it's extremely worthwhile reading.
First of all, let me point out that even the first edition of the book is not outdated. It was ahead of its time when it was written. Back then, not all of the browsers supported CSS1. At the moment, not much of CSS2 is supported, so learning CSS2 is a waste.
If you've tried to design web pages usings DIVs, you will probably get extremely frustrated with your DIVs not positioning the way you think they should. This book has the most thorough description I've ever read about how DIVs and other block elements are positioned. Confused about padding vs margin, or floating and clearing? This book explains it all in detail.
The only out of date part of the 1st edition is when the text contains specific mention of obsolete browers. No one cares that IE3 or Netscape4 doesn't support a particular feature, so hopefully the new second edition takes that stuff out of there.
What this books lacks is examples and advice on how to DESIGN web pages. What it does contain is a detailed tutorial on HOW CSS works. But while there are plenty of books about designing web pages, complete with lots of pretty color pictures, the world also needs a book about the HOW.
Rating:
Summary: Great resource
Review: The subtitle claims this volume is the definitive guide, I believe it. This book provides comprehensive coverage of the current cascading style sheets specification and how it is being of being implemented (or not). The focus is on the CSS2 and CSS2.1 specs. My first impression of the book was that it would be a valuable reference manual, but as I began to read it, I soon realized it would serve as a great instructional source also. The writing style is as if a good friend sat down to explain style sheets. I found the pacing of the material to appropriate and the detail of the explanations to be exhaustive.The chapter on selectors (chapter 2) was extremely valuable for me. It helped me to understand why some things did not work as I thought they should. Throughout the book, differences between the specification and the implementation in certain products are explained. Additionally, the differences between various levels of CSS are highlighted. The book has numerous examples for the CSS elements and variations. This is a great book on CSS, but I wish that electronic versions of the examples were available. This is the only shortcoming of the book that I see. This book is a great tutorial and a valuable reference. Regular practice of the techniques contained within this volume can assist the reader in voiding the abuse of the table and fonts tags.
|
