Customer Reviews

Essential CSS and DHTML for Web Professionals

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I was seduced by the description of this book. Yet all it does is waste your time. I depended upon this book to help me learn the skills needed to build a piece of functionality that was due in two days. To no avail. The book only served to confuse further. The companion website is a mere mirror of the error-ridden code provided by the book.

I don't know what browsers the authors actually tested their code against, but the first three chapters' examples do not work. I am using IE 4.72 and Netscape 4.61. No cigar. Unlike some of the other readers, I do not have the expertise to correct the authors' mistakes on my own. Worse, there is no contact information for the authors. The book is organized well, but the authors really goofed on the cross-browser issues. I've read perhaps the first four chapters so far, and the most glaring error is with regard to the visibility attribute. The 'hidden' and 'visible' settings do not work in Netscape Navigator (it's 'show' and 'hide', guys). This is disturbing as the authors suggest that one of the most common uses for DHTML is making layers appear and disappear!

This is a follow-up to the review I posted before the publisher posted the files required for the exercises in the book.

It doesn't get any better once the files are there. I went through two chapters, and as other reviewers have noted, they were full of typos and errors, so that few of the examples work. I knew enough about CSS to fix those errors on my own, but I did not know enough about DHTML to get those examples to work (and I shouldn't have to). And why didn't the author's supply the code for the complete web pages? At least then, readers could work from that and see what the code should look like. There was clearly no quality review or code verification done on this book: it's a disgrace.

This book is a slight dissapiontment in contrast to the other essential series that have been very helpfull. I bought this book because I was looking for a CSS reference and I figured the DHTML throw-in was a bonus. The CSS part of this book is very informative and good for the beginner. CSS is a powerful control tool for consistancy in web pages. The DHTML part is good but I have found problems with the code examples. However, this is not the fault of the book all of the time. DHTML varies from browser to browser. Its a neet technology but we need to establish a standard on it. The book does not notify the reader of these problems and it should warn about some typical differences between IE and Netscape. Over all a good resource but I don't think I would try to teach myself with this book, I would recomend another companion for it.

I've muddled through the first chapter, and started on the second. The images on the website are available if you dig for them. The button for the graphics has title text that tells you "click here, you fool," which was harsh treatment after giving them my cash. After getting all the images and digging through, re-naming the images to match the code demonstrated in the first chapter, then putting out the effort to make it all work, I came out with a good idea of how Cascading Style Sheets work, but was really upset at the level of effort I had to put out to correct the publisher's mistakes. Progressing on to the next chapter, I gave the first peice of code a shot, but threw my hands up in frustration after 20 minutes of double-checking the code to see why it wasn't working.

On the positive side, Dan Livingston did reply to my e-mail to let me know he was disappointed with the website, the publishers, etc. and was working on it. Small consolation for my $29.99.

Well I wish I'd spent a few minutes browsing this before buying. As I realise others have noted, this is a poor effort. The HTML examples at times appear to be in the wrong place with respect to the discussion or duplicated where other examples should be, and with those examples thus missing, and the JavaScript examples are poorly written and in some cases plainly incorrect. The authors do impart some sensible advice, and with some major re-editing could turn this into a better book, but as it stands you should look elsewhere for an introduction to CSS, DHTML, and also web design.

This has got to be the biggest waste of time and money I have ever spent. First of all the code does not work, and despite what these great authors say, their explanations are horrible as well. If you want to learn dhtml or css I suggest you go somewhere else.

Out of three scripts I have tried so far, I could only make one work, and that was only after I discovered that a crucial word was left out. Also, there was supposed to be a companion web site, but it is "under construction," so I can't get the necessary graphics to follow along with the examples in the book. I've spent an entire weekend on this book, and have to report that it is a complete waste of time.

It's hard to tell how useful this book may or may not be. It contains lots of exercises, and says that you can find the HTML and images needed to follow these exercises on the publisher's Web site, but the Web page it sends you to is "Under Construction" and contains nothing. So you can't complete the exercises, rendering the book pretty useless. I've contacted the publisher and they haven't responded. There is no point in buying this book as long as the current state of affairs holds.

Well, I have most of the Web Professional series and this DID NOT match up to the others in terms of quality. It was ok, but there were errors aplenty in the code and at times it was incoherent. If you're looking to get a good book on DHTML get Rouyer's Dynamic HTML Web Magic. Sure, its a bit old but the code works and the examples are really cool, so you'relearning and havin' fun at the same time. For more of a reference get O'Reilly's book on DHTML as well.