Cascading Style Sheets: A Beginner's Guide

Rating:
Summary: A "Must Have" for CSS Beginners!
Review: As a beginner at webpage authoring I found that James H. Pence books on HTML and CSS set my mind at ease during the learning process.

I had never attempted to write my own code prior to owning his books nor did I have any interest in it because it just looked too complicated for me. That is until I flipped through the pages of his books. I had looked at other books prior to looking at his but was always left with a feeling of incompetence. The code just simply looked tough to grasp!

The books written by James H. Pence changed all that for me and within minutes of thumbing through the pages at a local bookstore -and also for the first time- I became excited about wanting to learn HTML and CSS. This authors books were different in that they were written for "beginners", and thankfully they were, or I might never have ventured into the amazing world of webpage code.

This is exactly what amateurs need, books for beginners that are easy to understand and won't leave you feeling lost during the learning process.

James H. Pences books eliminate the "scare factor" for first time webpage authors and turns intimidating webpage code into easy to understand text. No beginners webpage authoring library is complete without either of his books, "How to Do Everything with HTML", and "Cascading Style Sheets - A Beginners Guide"!

Thank you Mr. Pence for somehow finding the time to help ease the learning process for beginners such as myself. Because of all your hard work, I don't have any! You've already done it for us!

I definitely recommend this book to every beginner who is as scared to begin learning HTML and CSS as I was. If you haven't already bought this book then what are you waiting for? It doesn't get any easier than this!

Rating:
Summary: Frustrating!
Review: I swear the author of this book goes out of his way to make its readers feel incompetent. While full of useful information, this book is also just as full of typos and inconsistancies.

Do you want to know how frustrating it is to try and re-create a page using the code given to you in a book, have the page come out looking nothing like the example in said book, then finding out the reason for the discrepency is because the author actually coded their example differently? Well there's plenty of opportunities in this book!

I now have to learn inline CSS which I believe might have been covered to some extent in this book. I can't remember. That's how badly I want to forget this book! I'm sticking with CSS for Dummies!

Rating:
Summary: great textbook but needs to professional editing
Review: It is a great hands on textbook. The author did a great job conveying concepts. Easy to understand especially talking about codes. However a lot of typing error and project data or instructional errors. Misspelled in a lot of places. Information inconsistency. Requires professional editing services. I think the author should continue to write these book. Pence is a good writer but need to make sure information, data or examples are consistent. It hinders the student when trying to do the projects.

Rating:
Summary: Short shelf life once you've worked through it...
Review: One of the best ways of learning CSS is to actually get in there and work with the code. Cascading Style Sheets: A Beginner's Guide gives you ample opportunity to play around with code samples that are available online, detailing cases when the code is browser specific (thus saving unnecessary head-banging or hair-pulling!).

While the content of the book is certainly very readable, the layout and positioning of some of the tables and examples is likely to cause some initial confusion. The problem arises because the headings for related content such as figures and tables are placed at the bottom, making it very easy to read on into the additional content, particularly when section summary tables do not immediately follow on from the section they relate to. Thankfully the actual code samples are much easier to identify. Despite this issue with usability, the tables contain relevant information that is designed for the first time user. There are also plenty of examples to work from, as well as screen shots, which help to explain concepts that might be difficult to grasp.

While Cascading Style Sheets: A Beginner's Guide is a great introduction to the use and application of style sheets, it will serve little use as a quick reference despite having an appendix entitled "CSS 1 Quick Reference". The information needed to make it double up as a reference book is sadly lacking, in particular specifics about browser support for the individual selectors and properties. Infact, the only place browser compatibility is even hinted at is when the properties are first introduced during the course of the book. Describing support as strong, inconsistent or weak is of little use if you want to know exactly what browsers are likely to have problems with your code, but you don't have the facilities to test it out yourself.

Overall, this book does what it sets out to do, provide those new to CSS an insight into CSS. Having said that, there isn't all that much here that is new to anyone who has worked with style sheets before, so it's perhaps best left to the beginners.

Rating:
Summary: Earnest & Thoughtful, but Repitious and Full of Typos
Review: This book covers basic CSS. It succeeds in offering a very gentle and fairly comprehensive overview of CSS1 features, with some CSS2. However, his constant warning about the lack of robust support for CSS in browsers is somewhat dated and tiring. The book is also full of annoying typos that at times prevent examples from working--a missing period here, a misplaced semi-colon there. Perhaps to make the chapters (called "Modules" here) independent, there is quite a bit of repetition of the same ideas in many chapters. The gradual introduction of CSS syntax and techniques also seems to incourage the author to use examples that mix CSS and traditional html in ways that are not good CSS practice, just apparantely oversimplified examples to make simple points about transitioning from HTML to specific CSS features. That distinction could be lost on a lot beginners who don't get a more solid understanding of how to use CSS to build more complete and consistent pages and websites. I therefore wish the author would have included more comprehensive examples, rather than lots of smaller out-of-context and disconnected ones. This book is not terrible. I just think you could probably do better now. I would give it 2 1/2 stars if I could.

Rating:
Summary: Very good book for CSS Beginners
Review: This book teaches what it claims to teach. It teaches CSS 1 for everyday tasks you would perform. It also teaches you how to create entire layouts using CSS. I strongly recommend this book to those who have just learned HTML and want to go ahead. This book also gives overview of very basics of CSS 2.

The book is well structured and includes hints, tips and other similar helpful stuff along the way.

Of course reading a book does not really make you a master unless you think and work hard yourself as well. So if you know HTML then this shud be your next step.

Rating:
Summary: Great once you know the basics
Review: Use this book once you have Pence's basic HTML book down. It will provide many new tools to spruce up your exist web programming.