Clearly writen but not much depth.
I really like the way that the author puts all of the information together. She covers all of the basics very fast with really simple examples. The fact that she uses the same basic example though out the entire CSS set of chapters makes it possible to introduce a lot more concepts without having to show all of the html for every single page. I think that the writing style is perfect for a beginner.
I have already used many of the things that I have learned in this book. She covers html forms but the book does not cover how to use the forms. I understand the reason that she could not cover how to use forms becuase this is a huge subject that is worthy of a book of its own.
The book is filled with websites that have more information on various subjects. The web pages could be used to help increase your understanding on a subject.
This book is an excellent starting point for learning html and CSS. It is not a win all book. If you are going to get this book I would also advise getting the book published by O'Reilly Dynamic HTML. I have not read the book Dynamic HTML but I have used it as a reference book and it fills in where the Spring into book leaves off.
A few complaints. In one of the early chapters the author talks about HTML Character entities and says that there is a list of many of the common entities in the appendix of the book. I have searched the appendices of the book and was unable to find the list. I had to turn to the Dynamic HTML book to find it.
I don't think this is a learn all, win all book but I think for me it was a huge help. The sections are short and well written. I will pick this book up if I want to remember how to do something really fast.
I don't know if I would say it is a must read for aspiring web developers but I don't think it is a bad read. I give this a great recommendation on ease of reading and being really clear on the subjects that it does tackle. I don't think the book has very much depth. I don't think it should be discounted because of that. I just think the reader should be aware of this fact.
A good reference on some things
I am a first year student at Oklahoma State University and had been struggling with some of the CSS and web-design code. I found this book in my school;s bookstore and tried it. I immediately understood about 98% of it. the other 2%, I haven't leanred from my professor yet. The very helpful thing, was that they would show you a picture of a finished web page and instead of saying "try to make this" without much info like my other books, this one show's you the code. Every letter. My Site is developing phenominally because of a large part to this reference. The only reason it's not 5, is because I haven't learned some of the stuff in the back chapters yet.
Confusing, not enough info
I know HTML pretty well but CSS not at all. I figured I'd get this book to teach myself CSS and since it had HTML in the title I thought it would teach the integration of both to create websites.
I still don't know much about CSS after reading this book. I know some new terms but I've no idea how to implement them, never mind create a website using CSS.
The book does give you a general outline of what CSS can do but other than that it didn't suit my needs at all.
Besides all that, I found the book poorly laid out and rather boring to read.
Just what I needed - not too much, not too little
This book is perfect for my needs. I have a background in graphic design, and have created some web sites in Adobe GoLive. GoLive writes the code for you, so you don't need to know how to do it "by hand." But now the newest version of GoLive is based on CSS, so although I had been dabbling in it, I need to learn a lot more. Plus, sometimes you need to look into the code to get something to work or to understand what is happening.
GoLive itself does not include a manual, and the online help files are extremely lame. Many other books and online articles are either too basic (especially since GoLive writes the code it for you) or so technical that I can't grasp what they are talking about.
This book falls right in the middle. It covers the basics of HTML, so I can understand what I am looking at in GoLive code, but does not go into a lot more detail than I have time for. Then it moves on to CSS, and how it is applied to the web page. Having worked my way through about 2/3 of the book, I finally feel like I am beginning to really grasp the basics of how it works, and this knowledge has greatly increased my ability to work with the new GoLive version.
So who is this book for? Maybe not a total newbie, but for someone who knows enough to get by, but wants to learn more and really begin to get a solid grasp of the fundamentals. There must be many other graphic designers out there making the transition to the web. They probably understand the idea of styles, since that is how page layout software works, but are new to the coding part. While this book is not specifically addressed to that audience, I recommend it as a place for those people to start.
Helped me out, but could have gone further
This booked helped me with a lot of my codes that I have been trying to find, but after that it seemed to be a dead end. It doesn't describe things as well as it could, but it's still understandable. There are some points, though, that I became completely lost in what I was supposed to do to alter the code to my liking, which makes it severely frustrating at times. I am currently looking through other books (mostly CSS, which I agree that this book needs more of) to better fit my needs, but I'll definitely keep this on hand because it seems to be a great reference for times that you need a code that you can't find anywhere else. ^-^
(12 reviews)
