Customer Reviews

HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Being a web software engineer, I have probably more experience with net and database related books than any others that I review. With this solid background, I can quickly tell if a web-related book is a good one or not and sitepoint puts out a lot of SOLID books. 'HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS 2nd Edition' by Rachel Andrew is a wonderful CSS reference that is a great guide for any and all web developers that use CSS in their daily jobs.

With over 450 pages of material, the book is broken down into the following parts:

01. Basics
02. CSS 101
03. CSS Code
04. Validation & Backward Compatibility
05. Color
06. Fonts
07. Text Effects
08. Simple CSS Layouts
09. Three-Column Layouts
10. Fixed-Width Layouts
A. CSS Miscellaneous
B. CSS Color Reference
C. CSS Property Reference

If you want to determine how to produce a professional looking web site that doesn't rely on tables throughout to get the design working as you would like, you really owe it to yourself to pick up this guide. The writing is easy to follow and the layout within is easy on the eyes and a pleasure to open up.

My only complaint with this book is the complete lack of color contained within. You would figure that a book that talks about design would have color pages to drive home points. Appendix B is an oxymoron in itself, titling itself COLOR but then only using the NAMES of colors to explain what they are. When comparing this text to the Pogue Press Missing Manual series, it's incredible that a book which is MORE expensive than those books has no color within while those books are absolutely drenched with pigments.

All in all, a nice effort but the field goal is way way wide right as it concerns the decision (no doubt to save a few bucks on production) to include no color pages.

**** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

In a sea of books on CSS, this one stands out because of its title, which promises to reveal CSS's great layout powers. Unfortunately, that's as much marketing as truth.

The first third of the book is a very elementary primer on CSS which can be found in all other books and all over the web. The last third of the book is comprised entirely of appendixes, primarily dedicated to describing every CSS property available, and again is widely-available information.

The middle 150 pages does focus on layout, but again its information is fairly elementary and widely available. An experienced developer looking for the secrets of making very complex cross-browser layouts in CSS won't find a lot here. And like too many books, all of the information provided is bound up in a single end-to-end layout project, the creation of a fairly simple three-column layout. If looking for information on a certain feature or technique, the reader can't easily just read a few pages for the information. S/he must stumble around trying to understand the current state of development of this single project before s/he can glean much on the topic.

So, why am I giving it a 4-star rating? I've read at least a half-dozen books on CSS and this one is by a long shot the best introductory text I've seen. The writing is very clear and focused, the examples are well written and illustrated, the appendixes provide a thorough reference, and the book occasionally nods towards the complexities that cross-browser application of CSS can bring.

It just isn't the advanced Holy Grail of complex layouts that I was hoping it would be.

CSS has completely changed the way that websites are designed. That is, if anything, an understatement: CSS has revolutionized Web design. Designers can do things with CSS that would have taken a LOT more time and effort to do using straight HTML 3.2 - if they could have been done at all.

But for old-school designers who haven't kept up with things, or the self-taught HTML coders who cut their teeth on 3.2, CSS can seem a bit daunting. The temptation is always there to use the old methods, like tables. And that's where HTML Utopia comes in handy.

HTML Utopia isn't a beginner's tutorial; Andrew and Shafer make it clear at the beginning that you should have "at least a little experience building sites" to get the most out of the book. It builds on the experience that you already have to show you how to do things better with CSS.

I appreciated the fact that the book doesn't start out with the nuts and bolts of CSS - what an attribute is, what a property is, etc. It starts with how CSS can help you. I think that's important, because if you overwhelm someone right away with a totally different way of coding a page, they're going to run away, no matter how much better it is than what they're currently using. Andrew and Shafer start off with showing how CSS benefits the designer, and from there gradually introduce the nuts and bolts.

Another benefit to this book is the website. You get all the code from the examples in the book, as well as updates and errata. With any tech book, a good website is crucial - things change too quickly, and a book that is static is pretty worthless. With ready updates, and the Sitepoint discussion forums, there is a steady source of new information and support.

So many web design books end up being a step-by-step guide to creating a website (and never show you how to design anything that is different from their example), or go the other direction and end up being a reference book that doesn't show you how to use any of the tools it contains. HTML Utopia does both. It is a great resource for anyone who has been wanting to use CSS to spice up their existing sites, or who wants to create something from scratch but doesn't know how to do it.

While it's not designed for advanced CSS users, it's perfect for the beginner who is trying to bring their Web design skills up to date. This second edition adds content concerning Internet Explorer 7, and gives a lot of great information about cross-browser design techniques.

In my opinion the book was lame. It was apparently written by an author with limited web experience particularly for large scale web sites. The theory of the book is okay, but the details of how to pull this off in a large web site are not discussed. The book is called Designing Without Tables, however nearly 1/3 of the book is dedicated to designing with tables. Might be good for a college student, but not in the real world of Google, Amazon, Yahoo etc.

Be careful - there are two editions of this book available on Amazon, but they are (it seems) quite different. I've not read the first edition, but the second edition has a second author who has condensed some sections, updated others, and added what seemed to be missing in the first - a practical, multi-chapter tutorial walking you through using all that you've learned. Make sure you are ordering the second edition; it has "Rachel Andrew" listed as the author. As an absolute beginner in CSS, I've found this to be a *very* helpful book.

I can't believe I've been so mired in the -stone ages- of Table-based web site design for so long. Rachel made me realize just how easy it can be, with a little care and forethought, to put together an excellent foundation for a site's layout.

The information on styling tables (which DO still have a purpose) was also good to see. Finally, I have to say that if this book is any indication, I'd say that Rachel Andrew does, indeed, take a "common sense, real world approach".

Are you a web designer who is curious about how CSS can help you become a more effective designer? If you are, then this book is for you. Authors Rachel Andrew and Daniel Shafer, have done an outstanding job of writing a cool book that focuses on the question of how to use CSS to accomplish some of the successes that web designers have spent a significant amounts of time and energy to create using nested tables.

Andrew and Shafer, begin with a brief introduction to CSS and the main concepts. Then, the authors show you how to use CSS in practical ways. Next, the authors show you how CSS works. They also show you how to validate your documents and stylesheets to ensure that they comply with the published specifications. The authors continue by looking closely at the ways in which colors can be applied to text and other objects; as well as, to page backgrounds. Then, they examine the question of how fonts can be used properly in CSS-based web design. Next, the authors show you how to create a simple two-column layout. They then show you how to add a third column to the layout you created. Finally, the authors show you how to create a fixed-width layout that's centered in the user's browser window.

This most excellent book begins by looking at how CSS should influence the overall design of a site. Perhaps more importantly, the book shows you how to put the CSS framework in place before you begin to deal with individual HTML elements and their styling!

I found this book useful and recommend it. I did find some of the training approach a bit perculiar, though. Chapters 1 thru 7 focus on some of the fundamental elements of CSS (syntax, text effects). Starting with Chapter 8, what one has learned is used as the books goes thru a project of laying out an elegant two column layout. As the project gets progressively more complicated, concepts such as the box model and the types of positioning are covered. I would of course had preferred to have some of the illustrations in color, but having only black and white was ok and I don't recall any typos in the code as is too often the case for these types of books. As I was working thru the project, I was discovering that some things didn't work but then discovered this was just part of the project and the author(s) had a solution a couple of pages further in. So, I was happy with the level of completeness that the author(s) brought to this book.

I would recommend downloading the sample from the website to get a good idea of if the book's style works for you. Overall, the book provides a top notch introduction to CSS as well as good design and application tips. The emphasis on seperation of style and content is truly appreciated. I would strongly recommend this book to learn to properly build basic sites, and to build a foundation to build more advanced development skills on top of.

I'm not going to launch into a rhapsody like some reviewers do, pointlessly going beyond the pail dissecting a web design book like this. For me I just want to see if a book has what I need to get me where I need to go! Here's the facts - jack.

- The title is misleading, you will learn to design without tables, however that's not where the book is focused, if you expect myriad examples of how to layout pages with CSS you will be disappointed (as I was).

- Almost half of the book is reference!

- It is well written and a good book for those with some (x)html experience looking to power up with CSS.

- Is it worth the money? For me it wasn't since I want a book that's chock full of layout examples - however it's a good deal for those looking to learn CSS.
Of course you can learn all of the stuff in this book online for free, there's many great CSS sites out there.

So there you have it! A sucker free review with no superfluous wordage.