The Bottom Line
Pros
- A lot of great content about CSS
- Very in-depth overview of CSS
- Good for people who've never designed CSS pages
Cons
- Only 3 chapters on CSS layout
- No color pictures
Description
- This book is for people who aren't familiar with CSS. It is not primarily a table-less design book.
- Chapter 1 introduces CSS and the primary goals of style sheets.
- Chapter 2 covers standard CSS properties (colors/fonts) and why you should use CSS.
- Chapter 3 goes into more detail about CSS selectors and how and when to use them.
- Chapter 4 covers validating your style sheets and how to handle browser quirks.
- Chapter 5 reviews color in CSS and how to change the colors on your pages.
- Chapters 6 and 7 go into more depth about fonts and text.
- Chapters 8, 9, and 10 are where the book covers layouts using CSS.
- There are also 3 appendices (nearly half the book) of reference materials on CSS.
Guide Review - HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS by Rachel Andrew and Dan Shafer
This is a very good CSS manual. Nearly 40% of the book is a CSS reference with details on CSS 1 and 2 properties. Plus the entire first 60% of the book explains how to write a CSS styled Web page without using any old tags or tables for layout. It has great pictures (although, color pictures in the color section would be nice). And the code samples include both the HTML and the CSS to get what you're aiming for.
The Problem is the Title
If you buy this book based on the title alone, you may be disappointed. I was expecting a book that was going to go into detail on how to create CSS styled layouts without using tables. Yes, the authors do cover why to avoid using tables, and there are 3 full chapters on different layouts and how to achieve them, but it amounts to only a small portion of the entire book.
This is a Good CSS Book
In the introduction, the authors indicate that this book is for people "who are curious about how CSS can help them become more effective designers." And this is really true. If you've never used CSS before or only used it a little, but would like to start writing sites that use CSS rather than less standard-compliant code, then this is a good book to start with. You'll learn a lot of both beginning and advanced CSS concepts, and you won't be sorry for your purchase. Plus, you'll have a great reference for later.
