Customer Reviews

Everything You Know about CSS Is Wrong!

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

 

 

First off, the title is problematic and basically untrue. Then the authors go so far as to say their previous CSS books are obsolete - also untrue.

What this book really provides is an introduction to CSS-table based layout. It does a good job with that. Later in the book, it describes ways to mitigate the lack of support in other browsers - it does a fair job of that.

Despite what the authors might leave some to believe, IE6 is far from dead, and neither is IE7. If you use this layout technique, you either don't support the browsers currently used by over 60% of web users, or you keep a separate style sheet. Understand that by keeping separate style sheets, the trade is an increase in maintenance.

IE6 will be around for years. Many companies with tens of thousands of employees only support locked-down versions of IE6 on their corporate desktops.

The actual content of the book is extremely light, and a bit disappointing. It is 116 pages, including the table of contents, and you don't get to CSS tables until page 29. The numerous illustrations (pictures of web pages) are all approximately 1/2 page in size, then they stuck in comments from 4 CSS "superstars". There is a chapter on CSS3 grid selectors, which is pretty useless. I figure that there is maybe 20 pages worth of useful content here seriously padded with fluff.

The sample code is extremely simple. The book would have been better for me demonstrating more complete layouts.

CSS Tables. They'll work in IE8, as they have in Opera, Safari, Firefox, Chrome, etc. etc. for a while now. There. I just summed up the entire point of this book. Will you use them? No. Not if you want to keep your site accessible to people using IE6-7 while they're still a majority. In a few years, when older versions of IE have faded, then you might pick up something like this book. But this book could have been titled "Everything on the cover of this book is wrong!" and it would have been more accurate. Don't waste your time or money.

This is a very strange title for a book and I was extremely intrigued by it. I've been laying out web pages for years now with CSS and for a book to come along and suggest that everything I had been doing was wrong was a bit of a bold statement.

This is quite a short book weighing in at just over 110 pages and really only deals with one topic, however it does that in-depth. The style of writing is good and flowing and it feels like you're just reading a magazine article.

This book deals with CSS layout for the latest browsers and talks a lot about the upcoming version of IE8 and how it fixes things so that now you can use CSS 2 styles on your site and they will work across all major browsers (as long as you're running the latest ones, Firefox 3, Opera 9 etc.) and now that Internet Explorer is finally supporting web standards it will work on Microsoft's browser platform as well.

In that respect, all the tricks and work-arounds that you've had to learn in the past to get layouts looking correct are indeed wrong as you will no longer need to use them, for example using floats to get multiple columns.

The main thrust of this book is positioning using CSS tables. The book explains what these are, how they are different from HTML tables but create the same results, some of the pitfalls you may come across (there is no equivalent to colspan or rowspan for example) and how to code for these instances. The introduction of web standards across all major browser platforms and the adherence to CSS 2 specifications will make web designers and programmers immensely easier and this book explains how.

There is also a chapter dedicated to backwards compatibility and what you should be doing with layouts and yet still make things look on older browsers like Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7.

The final chapter of the book deals with some things to look forward that are currently part of the CSS 3 working draft and how they will make your job even easier yet.

This is one of those books that I actually have a hard time reviewing, not for the content, the style and layout etc. but for giving it a rating. I think this is a must read book for anybody who designs or layouts web pages, whether you a graphic designer or programmer or in-between however the book is very short and really only deals with a single topic, even though it does it in-depth. The book is in full color which makes it a beautiful book however it's also a book that you would perhaps only read or twice and wouldn't be used a reference book so the longevity takes a hit. I wish the book had more to it and covered a few more topics. That said, I still stick by what I say in that everyone who designs or codes web pages should read this as it will make their jobs a lot easier.

I received notification from SitePoint about this book. They wanted almost $30 for it. I found it at amazon for substantially less, and ordered it.

There isn't much to the book, mostly a discussion of the new table handling in CSS. Informative, but not worth $30. And the title is definitely misleading, if not downright false. You need not "unlearn" everything you know about CSS, only learn new techniques for page layout using CSS tables instead of HTML tables.

I really didn't know what to expect from this slim volume (111 pages). I read it in one sitting, and filed it on my bookshelf with the other "need not revisit" tomes.

This book is short and to the point which I like. It's a good primer for where the world of HTML and CSS layout is headed. I would consider their excitement about ie8 and universal support for CSS tables very premature since a huge number of browsers out there are still ie6.
One of the books writers, Cameron Adams, makes a comment about using tables for layout saying "The only problem is, they're evil." What a weenie. They work. They're very browser compatible. Dang, what do you want. There is no magic wand in CSS tables.
It's fun to dink around with them but you'll still end up with ie6 (true evil) fixes all over the place. ;-)

This is really an outstanding book, though the title doesn't really reveal the content. The book could really be called "An Instruction Manual to Start Using CSS For What It Was Intended For Instead of Using Those Old HTML Tables Which Are Really For Structured Content and Not Really For Layout", but I suppose that would take up most of the cover.

Seriously, this is a book whose time is long due...mostly because it tells us how to use CSS in browsers whose time is long due. It's great to see the new browsers catching up to the formatting instructions that have been in place for them for years.

I've been writing CSS by hand for 12 years, and I've done my share of learning the hard way and tearing my hair out when my positioning doesn't work right, degrades non-gracefully or has to be rewritten and retooled to work in different browsers. It would have been great to have a book like this years ago when we were working with something called CSS-P and trying to do the right thing by not using tables. This book would be a great text to use in an HTML class today so that positioning is taught correctly.

I have a dream that someday educators will stop teaching layout in HTML tables and will teach layout as shown in this book. HTML tables will be used simply to markup table content. This book is a huge step in that direction.

When I first started using CSS for some minimal styling of basic HTML a couple of years ago, I discovered that the geeks were on a crusade to use CSS to replicate what can easily be done with tables. They had it in for tables back then for some strange reason, and that hasn't changed a bit.

They have and they will go to any length with unbelievably complicated hacks and workarounds just to mimic a simple table with CSS. Why? Because they can, because it's a challenge...and because tables are, and I quote, "evil", according to this book.

The basic information in this "book" should have been published as a web page instead -- it's basically a very brief diatribe against using tables and an argument for using CSS instead. 119 pages to show me something that I could do in literally 2 minutes with a table? No thanks...

I thought I was going to learn something new and revolutionary about CSS, but the book is a very brief and basic look at how tables might be implemented with CSS when IE8 comes out and fully supports CSS the way the other browsers do. But who knows when IE8 will be released, and since it will be years until the tens of millions of existing IE7 and IE6 users convert, this is purely an academic exercise.

This book is NOT an in-depth look at CSS, but only a discussion about how one example of a simple 3-column table might be rendered in CSS -- using about 10 times as much code.

Now don't get me wrong -- I use CSS all the time for minor formatting tweaks on my web pages. And Sitepoint's email newsletter is one of the few that I always read.

But I definitely feel ripped off after paying the list price for this book and then discovering that it's only a somewhat theoretical look at how tables might be rendered with CSS in the future. Why they didn't simply post this information on their website instead is beyond me.

I'm usually a reasonable person, but I definitely feel burned here, so hopefully others will learn from my mistake.

This book provides an excellent tutorial on how to use the css table class, part of the CSS 2.1 specification, to create page layouts. And the book makes it look easy, showing you how to use CSS tables with colspan and rowspan. To veteran web developers, it brings back memories of HTML table layouts, which are still used by less experienced designers.

However before you get too excited, you need to be aware that the css table class demonstrated throughout this book is not supported by Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 and 7 browsers. Depending which survey you read, as of October 2008, IE 6 and IE 7 browsers are used by at least 80 percent of all Internet users. At this time, the css tables class is only supported by the Firefox, Opera, and Safari browsers.

The authors talk about using css tables with the beta version of IE 8, but do not mention that IE 6 and 7 browsers do not support css tables until after several chapters. To their credit, they provide several suggestions for working with the Microsoft browsers, like setting up two different style sheets with one specifically with the older CSS specification to handle Microsoft browsers.

Most professional web developers cannot use the css table class right now. Imagine telling a client that their new site can only be seen by 20 percent of their potential customers.

Looking back on the history of browsers with poor CSS support, like Netscape 4.7 and IE 6, it takes years for old browsers to go away.

This book was published well before its time. I'll still give it four stars because it is well researched and written. You can buy it now and read about the future of web page layout or you can wait a few years, when IE 8 becomes popular, and put it to use.

This whole book is just an argument for using CSS table layout now that IE 8 is here.
It covers so ridiculously little of anything. Considering that the entire book is based on CSS tables, you would at least think that it goes in depth on the subject. It does not. It has little to no technical explanation as to the hows and whys. Most of the book is just repeating itself about why you should use tables, AND create a separate css sheet for older versions of IE. It's only 135 pages that could basically just be 50. Where is the rest of the book? Maybe you want to know about tab menus? Forget it. Horrible, and a proof that Sitepoint will sell anything that they can slap a cover on.

I read this book in 1/2 an hour in the book store. I thought, well, that's interesting, when IE8 comes out maybe I'll start doing web pages because they won't be such a pain in the neck anymore. Then I looked at the list price: I think it was $35. Yoicks! The reviewer that compared the book to a magazine article was on the mark. This is one, interesting, rather expensive trade journal article, presented in a book.