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

Dan Shafer (Author)

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

Product Description

Dan Shafer’s book is the definitive guide to learning and applying the principles of CSS to your Website.

This book will teach you how to…

- Appreciate why maintaining tables is a nightmare and how CSS can help
- Understand when to use CSS and when not to use CSS
- Design using CSS Positioning and multi-column page layouts
- Use the different types of CSS rules
- Reap the benefits of inheritance in CSS
- Style text and other content using CSS
- Make the most of other non-obvious uses of CSS
- Use CSS to achieve maximum Web Accessibility
- Design sites that are standards compliant
- Accommodate older Browsers

And much more...

Plus, it also comes with a practical three-column sample Website that utilizes CSS and a FREE download of the site and all of its code.

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 (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,030,104 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.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Better Books on the Market, November 24, 2003

By A Customer

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

If you want to learn to do CSS tabless designs, then dont buy this book. This book is a waste of the paper it is printed on. If you want the CSS2 Reference, they buy another book or print it out from the web.

The author has a lofty goal, but unfortunately did not have a good plan. Again if you want a tabless site, go to google and type in tabless css. Spend a few hours doing those tutorials and you will know more than if you spent any time reading 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.