Customer Reviews

Beginning CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design (Programmer to Programmer)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've read several books about CSS over the last three or four years, but this book has to be the most complete I've seen. Not only does Mr. York obviously know this material quite extensively, he does it in a way that makes total sense. And this book is not just for beginning web developers either, there's quite a bit of information that more experienced developers can learn about. I also liked the various code examples in color. It helps to make the specific code stand out much more when it's in a different color than the code around it. This of course helps the reader to understand and remember it more effectively.

The author also takes time to talk about the differences in browsers and how each one presents the code. There are few things more aggravating to a web developer than having to deal with the various quirks of each browser. What looks great in IE may not look so hot in Firefox or Safari. And vice versa. The author cites various examples of this throughout the book, as well as "workarounds" for each "issue."

Another thing that makes this book so enjoyable is how the author goes through step by step instructions on how to achieve a particular style. This is one way to show how styles affect presentation.

It's amazing how powerful CSS has become over the last few years. There's a lot you can do with styles and Mr York has shown all web developers ways we can take advantage of this power.

When searching for a technical manual, I usually am able to narrow the field down to just 2 or 3 that together will cover my needs.

I sat down with a stack of about 15 books on CSS, including the most popular listed on Amazon, and started thumbing through them to evaluate their content, organization, reference material, indexing, etc. I eliminated several books, and had a tall stack of possible books to one side when I opened this book. I was first struck by the simple beauty of the book layout. The material in this book is presented in an exceptionally pleasing manner, easy to read, and well punctuated with examples and graphics. Code is colorcoded so the reader can easily pick out the portions being described in the text, and followed by color photos of the actual screens resulting from the code.

The book is logically organized and includes the best and most comprehensive reference section of all the books I considered.

The topics are easy to read and clearly presented. There are exercises to do which allow the reader to actually test-drive the techniques described and accompanying code files are available on the website to go along with the book.

I was surprised to find one book that contained everything that I look for in a technical manual. Hurray! I didn't have to buy 2 or 3 books to cover all the bases.

Thank you Richard York.

This book is what it's intend to be: an excellent book for CSS beginners. Good sequence of chapters, good examples, and the wellcome surprise of color sintax and screen pictures.
Congratulations to Wrox, and I expect that other books could be printed with same quality presentation.

The book does cover from the easier parts of CSS as well as parts that only relate to Internet Explorer. I don't think that this book is a beginner's book and it does provide good coverage of the CSS as it relates to the browsers that work and Internet Explorer -- which we call Mr. Alzheimer for many reasons.

I use the book to develop some of the newer sites that I am working on because I don't have the time to search the Internet for an answer. There is a lot of trial and error involved when it comes to web development and books like this one help reduce this trial and horror.

This book is a great CSS reference. I'm sure it's a little outdated, but most of it is still applicable today. I actually bought two copies. One for me and another for an elderly lady designing a Church website. Here's an example of how good of a book this is. Using only this book, she made a killer, standards compliant website. To give you an idea of how good her technical skills are, well, she called me and we spent an hour over the phone teaching her how to use an FTP client to upload the site!

This is one of the best CSS books I've come across. The author is very understandable and the majority of the examples in the book are very useful and informative, although a handful of them could have been left out without detriment to the reader or content-flow of the book. However, after reading through the book only once and actually working through the examples for myself I have become rather confident in using CSS and have designed a number of rather professional websites. I would recommend the book with full faith that any reader interested in honestly learning CSS could do so with a little time and careful attention to the presentations in the book.

Even though this book is outdated, it contains lots of valuable information and useful examples for those teaching themselves web page design. The information in this book is basic, however, and if you already have experience with CSS I recommend the book "Professional CSS" by the same publisher.

I've been going through this book (on chapter 3 right now) and have noticed a couple of idiosyncrasies in the first two chapters. However, when I got to Chapter 3, I really started scratching my head.

Illustrations in a reference book help clarify the information being presented. For example, in a dictionary, a picture of a rabbit, next to the description of a rabbit, enforces the idea of a rabbit. However this book has the following line: "This will produce Figure 3-2 when run, although that figure is not actually shown here." (p. 72)

Source code is another item, in addition to iullustrations mentioned above, that help clarify the concept an author is teaching. Here, the author didn't take the time to make these connections between code, concepts, and illustrations consistent. Two pages after the last page mentioned, I read the following parenthetical statement: "(Note that the figure references in the book's source code don't always match up with the figure numbers in the book itself.)" (p. 74)

It seems as if the author rushed to complete this project and simply added excuses to cover his missing efforts. I am only on page 74 right now, but with all the weirdness in this book, I'm wondering if I wasted $45.00.

this is a good book for the beginner who likes a lot of repetition and hand holding. there is A LOT of overviews, introductions, transitions, summations, and examples to reinforce the concepts being taught. as you might guess, there is A LOT of overlap when the writer and/or editor chooses this type of writing style.

i did learn a lot from reading it, and i did retain the information. however, i might bravely suggest that i could have done this anyway, even if the book contained prodigiously less reiteration.

i would have unreservedly given the book at least 4 stars if it had been more condensed. but that's how bad the repetition was in this book. it got pretty exhausting at times, for the reader.

for a future edition, i would recommend to the writer and/or editor to cut out all of the needless verbosity.

I am rating this book as 1 star because of the verbose and repetitive nature of the material presented. The author could have been much less wordy. I find this winding and wending makes it difficult to get the most out of the material. Hopefully his editor will come to his/her senses and perform a much needed revision of the book!