Great book
A great handbook showcasing common CSS uses. Will definitely keep this by my side when developing.
A useful read for the web novice
This book was not exactly what I expected when I purchased it. I've been working with XHTML for 2 years professionally, but I still hadn't bothered to read up on web standards.
The book is well organized and goes over the basics of HTML elements (ol, ul, em, strong, p, etc...) and does a nice job explaining the benefits of using the most recent standards when selecting an appropriate tag.
Being that I have had experience coding, I'd recommend this book to those will little on hands practice or knowledge of markup. It's an excellent tutorial on the functionality of common HTML tags as well as some of the more obscure ones (code, samp, var, abbr, dl, etc...)
The most beneficial lessons learned in this book, however, is something the novice and experienced coder will appreciate: accessibility. W3C has been pushing the development of accessibility development for awhile. Screen readers and browsers are finally coming of age where such code considerations will set your website above others. Additionally, in professional arenas, accessibility can be a money-maker.
The author does an excellent job of explaining how screen readers and those with disabilities can benefit from more advanced and considerate markup. After all, how it looks matters little when your user cannot see the screen.
Solid if not exhaustive or succinct
Web Standards Solutions is reasonably solid title that discusses the benefits and approaches of using web standards in the design of (X)HTML markup. CSS is also covered as a means to remove presentational elements from web page markup. Lists, tables, headings, hyperlinks, forms, quotations and layouts are all covered to a foundational level.
The information covered in the book is especially suited to new web site designers who are yet to understand these concepts. Web application developers - who might not focus their craft on the quality of their markup, would also benefit greatly. For others already possessing an basic understanding of semantic markup and presentation through CSS, the book might contain a few useful tips only.
Throughout each chapter the book doggedly follows a pattern that can become tedious. For each chapter, non-standards approaches are considered before the 'correct' standards based approach is shown. After this the 'extra credit' portion of the chapter provides practical applications of the given solution. Whereas the correct solution and extra credit sections are useful, the repetition of the defective non-standard approaches for in every chapter is sometimes repetitive and slightly contrived, and could be discussed more casually as required without dominating the format of every chapter.
Having said that, the book is easily read, has examples and practical applications, covers the breadth of the topic well and could certainly be used to bring anyone up to speed on the basics of standards-based approaches to the web page markup development.
Excellent book!
This is an excellent book that all web designers should own. When I look at people's sites, I often validate them just out of curiosity, and it is so rare that I ever find a valid site. I always pay attention to validation, and this book just validates (for lack of a better term) my opinions on the importance of following web standards. This book is good for helping with workarounds for certain browsers (cough, IE) that don't support standards that most others do.
XHTML & CSS - Start with this book!
With only a casual tinker in Dreamweaver split view under my belt starting out, I learned how to hand code XHTML and CSS with this book alone (well, and some web research here and there and CSS Mastery is an excellent follow up). It's written clearly and gives multiple solutions for each case, while explaining the advantages and disadvantages of each. I cannot recommend this book enough, as even after I finished it, it remains close by as an invaluable desk reference that I refer to here and there.
