Rating: 
Summary: Very well done
Review: Dan Cederholm's book explains complex ideas in an easy to understand format with included examples. He contrasts the old way of designing web pages with new while showing the reader the advantages of using web standards.
I found several ideas that are of immediate value and helped to clear up my understanding of how to make fast loading and easy to change web pages with a minimal amount effort that separate content from style/markup.
Rating:
Summary: Intermediate Level
Review: Dan Cederholm's book Web Standards Solutions is definitely not for beginners. He hits the ground running, right from the first chapter, jumping into full CSS syntax with tips and tricks for styling lists and headers; there's not much in the way of "getting started" or "style basics," though there are supplemental sidenotes and some XHTML/CSS elucidation later on.For advanced users, it's an excellent reference to extend existing markup knowledge in different creative and technical directions. This book recommends standards-based markup practices to achieve various results within different contexts, from simple padding and floating to Fahrner Image Replacement. Much of the content is rehashed and rearranged from the Simplequiz feature of his website, which is a great way to contrast current presentational "tag soup" conventions with proper structural markup. So far it's all been stuff that I already know and use in my day-to-day design, but I'm seeing a few things in later chapters which should pose both unique solutions to as-yet-unmet CSS design challenges. Don't start with this if you want a starter's XHTML/CSS manual or a comprehensive syntax guide. If CSS isn't like a second language to you yet, you'll probably want to read Web Standards Solutions with a couple of cheat sheets close by. And of course, the easiest way to learn is to do: fire up a text editor and a [real] browser and hammer out that code as you read about it. The sooner you're out of the tag soup, the better.
Rating:
Summary: If you want to be a 5 star web developer-- Get this book!
Review: Finally!!! I have been looking for this book for years. I'm a professional web application developer with years of experience on the technical side ( java/cold fusion/cgi/sql ). But I never *really* understood how to use CSS effectively, and I've spent WAY too much time dinking around with tables and goofy HTML tricks. This book was just what I needed. A logical explanation of the different approaches and how they really work. No wasted paper in this book. Its worth three times the price.
Rating: 
Summary: Booster for those who've passed their XHTML & CSS exams
Review: First off, this book is definitely not a reference book, if you want to code up in XHTML and CSS, then you need to do the groundwork which is covered in other books. What this book does do, is show you how to practically apply these technologies in everyday situations of web design, and show patterns of commonly accepted, useful tricks and techniques.
Invaluable to the freshly converted - yes - but make sure you know your stuff or this book will leave you floating nowhere. There are no explanations, or details on XHTML or CSS, you must have a reasonably good grasp of both.
The book assumes we are here to learn the simple applications without being confusing. Thats cool, but the book also assumes you have a good working knowledge of CSS, so its simple, but not so simple. I was disappointed that there was not much depth to the examples shown, and some of the potential pitfalls were not indicated. For example, on the chapter on CSS positioning, were given a float method, but its not explained why this is not ideal or where to find more information about the related issues. That stuff would seem relevant to the readers of this book.
Anyway, i enjoyed it, it was really useful - all the applications are excellent, but be careful as you will probably get stuck without a grounding in XHTML and CSS.
Rating:
Summary: Worth the price!
Review: I am very pleased with this book. For a while now I've been learning CSS by looking at the code of webpages I liked, and I picked up a lot of bad habits. This book helped me understand how useful coding to the standards can be. I have gone back and completely redesigned my site with the help of this book; now, in the future, I am confident that site-wide changes will be easy and painless.
The converstational tone of the book was a welcome change from the more technical tone of other books on programming subjects. One of my favorite little moments was under the subheading "A cite for curious eyes" (about the cite tag) and he writes: "Getting tired of the corny headings yet? Oh, good. Neither am I." That's a good example of the light tone that helps make the more technical information easy to digest.
I really enjoyed reading this book, and I know my webpages now and in the future will benefit greatly from the knowledge I got from reading it. I highly recommend it to those who know a bit about CSS, but want to know more. Keep Google handy any time you want to find out more about a certain tag or something that he assumes you know if you aren't sure about it; there were just a few I had trouble with, but a quick search on google cleared it up for me quickly.
Rating:
Summary: I just got one step higher
Review: I got my hands on this book but wasn't too sure if it was a right choice. Another web standards book? Yay or something. But then I got through the first chapter, it was about Lists. LISTS!? At first I thought to myself this was an insult to my intelligence as a web designer, what bull****! I know how to use lists, both OL and UL lists! Big deal!
By the end of the chapter my thoughts completely changed, I was blown away how the author used lists to create a navigation bar and why he did so, the concept behind using lists because afterall, a navigation bar is really a list that youi can select to go through to different sections of a page. Wow, I started the next chapter, and again I went nuts! It got to the point that when I go on forums now I dont just type web addresses but use the forums' own Internet URL button so that its more consistent and stuff, I dont just bold text now I have a reason to emphasize them rather than just make them more obvious with bold. I never knew how much an art web design could be until this book which taught me that the Internet is a masterpiece as long as all its contributors do quality work on it.... Amazing I tell you, any web designer who's reached intermediate to near advanced level and wants to be able to feel like he/she wants to feel like a true artist and web guru should get this book, definitely worth your time. It's easy reading, I sit on the train on my way to university and burn through 2 chapters at a time and it's just satisfying because each chapter is short yet you feel like you've learnt another useful thing...yummy!
Rating:
Summary: Making my markup sleeker than Lisa Kudrow rolled in yoghurt
Review: I have to say it's excellent. A colleague read a chapter and pronounced it "the best and most lucid explanation I've ever seen of when to use and when to use " and I agree; in the next few weeks I shall be putting into practice loads of his tips. I've already fancy-Dandified my header styles, removed presentational
tags, and made them sleeker than Lisa Kudrow rolled in yoghurt. I will be marking up more semantically from now on. I understand the benefits and need; I always wanted to - just didn't know how to do all that CSS wizardry.His tip on using the same css and specifying whether it's a 2 or 3 column page via an id on the body tag is likely to lead to a 40 foot statue of him being erected in the centre of several metropolises. I have to carry the book in a briefcase to protect myself from attractive women trying to seduce me because of it. Hyperbole aside; my boss has already ordered a few copies for the team, as the book is written with a simple, sensible style. is lucid and doesn't assume that you are a CSS guru, yet doesn't talk down. (from brucelawson.co.uk/accessiblity)
Rating:
Summary: Relevant, Consistent, Lucid & Enormously Important
Review: Just finished reading Dan's book. It was a breath of fresh air to read a book that is clear, consistent and to the point. No BS, ever! It was impressive how Dan takes the reader logically through CSS hurdles, step by step, and with economy of words. If you know XHTML markup and basic CSS, then you can expect to learn the following:
1. The right choice of tag for a particular situation
2. Different ways of styling the tags
= Standards compliance and Accessibility being the central theme 3. CSS Layout Techniques (ex: 3-col to 2-col switching using a single stylesheet)
= Box Model problem with IE/Win fully explained
4. Why using tables DOES make sense in some cases
5. Text to Image Replacement techniques
=Some advances CSS techniques
6. A List of extremely useful websites to watch for
While this is not a book for a begineer starting out on CSS/XHTML, this is a MUST READ for every web-designer with a desire to get CSS right from get go. This is a book well worth every cent. Thanks to Dan for writing such a useful book and I am already looking forward to his next one. Dan's website is at www.simplebits.com
Rating:
Summary: Excellent cookbook for tableless CSS-driven web design
Review: This is a cookbook (it's not a reference book), and it'll show you day-to-day tricks to create professional web sites separating structure and information from presentation using XHTML & CSS.
What I liked too is that markups should be as much descriptive as possible (using tables only for tabular data, using h1 tags, em instead of i, strong instead of b, lists for lists of items, whatever it is, even for navigation menus that are just a list of links. This is very clever.
Dan will prove you that tableless layout is the best and that it's possible to create state-of the art web sites with CSS.
Download the CSS handbook in PDF from the W3C web site and buy this book. You're done.
Errata: there's only one error that I noticed: p.104 under "Dotted borders", 1st snippet, it's written "text-decoration: green;", but it should read "text-decoration: none;", but from the context, it's obvious for the reader ;)
Rating:
Summary: All you need to learn CSS
Review: This is an indispensable book for folks who are familiar with HTML, but who want to take it to the next level and learn CSS and XHTML. The lessons are very practical and the methods are explained very clearly. While this book can be a reference, I read it through. It prepared me to implement a simple, clean CSS-based redesign of my website without having to refer to any other sources. Additionally, the way Cederholm explains things (by comparing different methods to achieve the same end), he makes you realize why standards-based design is superior. After you read this book, you won't be able to believe how inelegant and inefficient your traditional HTML design has been.
|
