Customer Reviews

HTML Dog: The Best-Practice Guide to XHTML and CSS

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is not a comprehensive encyclopedia of every CSS nuance, but it presents all the main areas in a very clear, but not dumbed-down manner. Basically it answered my three questions:
1. I wanted to re-write an older web site using CSS and modern HTML web stds, so where do I start?
2. What is my best approach?
3. Why would I want to do it that way?
So along the way it clarified for me how I should use divs for page structure, improve my navigation lists, specify font size in the best manner, and most of all how to use css in a structured way with minimal rewriting of styles etc for subtle changes in page requirements.
The book is probably most useful if you want to follow his emphasis and use XHTML Strict with CSS.
Very nicely written, very cleanly laid out. The associated website is useful, but the book stands alone as a very useful reference or starter for someone wanting to design their pages in an effective standards-based way.

Clear, concise, accurate. If I could only keep one CSS/XHTML book on my desk, this would be the one.

The author also provides an excellent website that builds on the topics covered in the book[...]

I spent some time really digging into other books in this category (library) with the intention of getting up to speed with modern web coding and best practices. I found this text to be the most useful, both as a learning resource and future reference guide and so, HTML Dog is now on my shelf. Note: The book is meant as a companion to an extensive online archive, and works well in this regard, as the more gimmicky (read: "fad") techniques are best excluded from the printed text.

By far the best CSS manual I've ever read and I've read many of them. The writing, style, examples.. everything is lucid, easy to read, easy to understand. Perfect. Thank you Mr. Griffiths.

If you already know programming in other languages, this book will help you quickly go into HTML/CSS. It describes the terms of the HTML/CSS world by concise words. This book is of the same explanation style as "jQuery in Action".

HTML Dog: The Best Practice Guide to XHTML and CSS is clearly a quality book, but...
- The fact is that for someone like me who last looked at HTML over a decade ago it was often confusing. The author is clearly on a campaign for purity and for using solely the latest standards, so he commonly spends time advising the reader that some older mode of coding is bad and should not be done. As a result when trying to integrate the lessons with existing code problems arise. The book appears to be quite what it claims to be, a "best practice guide" rather than a tutorial for those of us who need to start from zero.

Not the best html book, you better know html and CSS already or you will quickly get lost. Reference section in back is confusing as heck.
Coverage on multi-media is very poor. All around confusing text with too much inference to existing html knowledge already.
You can get better free online html references that are more comprehensive then this book

To be honest, I didn't appreciate this book when I first took the class because I was so new to HTML/CSS, but after a couple classes I decided to go back over it and am REALLY appreciating it's value. I like it better than the book my last instructor said every web designer has.

This is a great book for beginning HTML and CSS quick and easy to read also with an accompanying website. I find myself referring to it all the time. I've read it in full 3 times now just for heck of it. I really would also recommend the "Head First" titles. I swear by those to start learning in a particular subject.

A well thought out book, easy to read and understand without knowing HTML or CSS. This is one of those book you cannot trash but only keep in your packet.