HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS (Build Your Own) [Paperback]

Dan Shafer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0957921829 | ISBN-13: 978-0957921825 | Publication Date: May 1, 2003 | Edition: 1

This book is for Web Developers who want to develop or migrate existing websites from using table-based layouts to using Cascading Style Sheets, which allows for faster page downloads, easier maintainence, faster Website re-designs and better search engine optimization.

HTML Utopia covers all aspects of using Cascading Style Sheets in Web Development, and is a must-read for Web Developers designing new sites or upgrading existing ones to use CSS layouts.

This book includes one of the most comprehensive CSS2 references on the market. Jeffrey Zeldman, web design guru and co-founder of the Web Standards Project says about this book "After reading this book, you will not only understand how to use CSS to emulate old-school, table driven web layouts, you will be creating Web sites that would be impossible to design using traditional methods".

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Finally, a book that explains CSS in a way that I can understand it. Explanations are clear and concise." -- Denis Forcier, May 2003

"This is the easiest to understand, most practical book on CSS design I have found yet." -- Rachel Maxim, May 2003

From the Publisher

The Benefits of Using CSS For Layout:

- Write faster loading, dramatically smaller pages
- Speed up site maintenance by separating the content from the layout
- Write Device-independent pages that will work on everything from a PC to an Internet-enabled refrigerator
- Write search-engine friendly pages that can actually be understood by search-engine spiders
- Write accessible code, which is now a legal requirement in some countries

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: SitePoint Pty Ltd; 1 edition (May 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0957921829
• ISBN-13: 978-0957921825
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,543,351 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't believe the title, September 10, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS (Build Your Own) (Paperback)

This is an okay book as an introduction to CSS and what would be possible in CSS-2. Unfortunately, support for CSS-2 is extremely limited, so you'll often read about some cool trick you could do if browsers supported it. While some people may like that, this doesn't help people who are looking to create practical web sites today, not in 2 years.

The book also barely scratches the surface of layout using CSS instead of tables. The author barely tells us how he did the sample site, and shows no other examples of this technique and variations on it, or ways around common problems. The book spends much more time on introducing all the specifics of using CSS for font properties instead of layout. The CSS-2 reference in the back may come in handy in 2 or 3 years when designers can actually use it.

The author's style is also not fun to read. He spends more time telling us what he's about to talk about than on the content itself. The book is honestly just a collection of lots of CSS stuff you could learn from plenty of free web sites, ...There's no originality here at all. Actually, if you read articles online long enough, you can learn much better stuff quicker than you could from this book.

Finally, the book costs [dollar amount] and is printed on regular stock paper in black and white. For ... more [money] you can get Eric Meyer's incredible book "Eric Meyer on CSS," printed in full color on glossy paper, showing examples much more clearly and step by step, and with lots of very practical and original advice. I got better information on CSS from one chapter in my beginning web design textbook than from this book.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Extrememly deceptive title..., August 9, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS (Build Your Own) (Paperback)

This book should have been titled something like "CSS and CSS 2 Introduction". It has almost NOTHING to do with using CSS instead of tables. In fact, it's only covered in one portion of the book, and just barely touched on. Further, it gives little to no practical methods of using CSS instead of tables. In a book such as this you'd expect to see examples of layouts that would normally use tables and then step by step guides on how to make it CSS. Not so.

This book is a good overview of CSS, a TERRIBLE book on using CSS instead of tables.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Thin on practical CSS layout, July 8, 2004

By 

bergstyle (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS (Build Your Own) (Paperback)

I got this book hoping it would provide me with an overview of CSS and how to practically use it to design a site using only CSS. While it did provide a good overview of CSS in general and the syntaxt I was disapointed because the book did not provide a hands on guide to practically using CSS to design a site. There is an example site mentioned throughout the book and one chapter is devoted to all the CSS used on that site. However instead of providing a detailed explanation on how to think about design and layout using CSS and the example site like I was hoping the author simply showed the CSS code for each major component of the example site and then simply introduced the new syntax. No explanation of why that code was used and how it fit into the overall CSS design/layout strategy. After reading this book and then many websites to get up and running I finally rebuilt one page of my site. As it turns out it is actually a tiny bit larger (file size) than my all tables site. I'm now looking for another book that teaches how to use CSS in a practical web design environment.