The Essential Guide to CSS and HTML Web Design is a special book-it will tell you all you need to know to design great web sites that are standards compliant, usable, and look great, but not overwhelm you with waffle, theory, and obscure details.

It is designed to be invaluable to you, whatever stage you are at in your career, with a mixture of practical tutorials and reference material-beginners will quickly pick up the basics, while more experienced web designers and developers will keep returning to the book again and again to recap on techniques they maybe haven't used for a while, or look up properties, attributes and other details. It is destined to become a close friend, adopting a permanent place on your desk.

It starts off by giving a brief introduction to the internet, and the broad area of web design, before diving straight in to HTML and CSS basics, reusing code, other best practices. It then focuses on all the most important areas of a successful web site-typography, images, navigation, tables, layouts, forms and feedback (including ready made PHP scripts for you to use,) and browser quirks, hacks and bugs. The book is completely up-to-date, covering support of the newest standards in all the latest browsers, including IE 7 and Firefox 2.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 10 Ratings

Definately worth purchasing. - 2008-05-18
Reviewer Rating:
The short review: I downloaded this off a torrent; I was so impressed with it, that I'm buying it hard copy. It's definately one of those books that works well for a quick reference.

The long review: This book probably isn't for absolute gurus, simply because there's too much explanation. I'd probably recommend "The Ultimate CSS Reference" if you've already got a firm foundation and just need a quick reference that you can flip through faster than you can load a pdf from your flash drive.

In fairness, though, this book covers more than CSS; it takes the absolute beginner from the basics to a point where they presumably can google for what they need. I picked this up to get up to date on doing web design, after taking over a decade long haitus from it. I was sold by page 6, where the author explained why he wasn't going to go into using WYSIWYG tools. I was further sold by the _lack_ of an IE centric approach, which I've seen other books use. (One of which went so far as to say that Firefox and Opera weren't worth wasting time designing for, because they comprise such a small percentage of user's browsers.) Craig takes the opposite approach and stresses compatibility heavily.

If you're an absolute beginner, I'm not sure this book will be a good fit for you: it tends to present tags only once, and then flesh out actual usage, without covering every possible attribute of them.

However, if you're somewhat familiar with doing web sites, and especially if you did it in the bad old days, this book is an absolute godsend. The writing style is pleasing, and the book is organized such that it's easy to read it cover to cover and not get bored. The examples tend to be well illustrated, and the graphics save having to actually load the code to see the end result.

Frankly, I was impressed enough with this book to make it the first technical book I've actually _bought_ in years. While it's readable in digital form (which tends to be my preferred method), it almost demands being had in hardcopy. Or, to put it another way, it allowed me to close the 20+ tabs I had open to [...]CSS pages, as well as the multiple Google searches. :-)

The only people who might not benefit from this book are the true experts; if you're so familiar with CSS that you can calculate margin offsets in under 2 seconds, for a four column page with 20+ divs, then it's likely you need something like The Ultimate CSS Reference. Even so, the real world site examples at the end might still give you some food for thought.

I can't think of any gripe about this book, so, I'll just nitpick: the sheep images used for the img tag demonstrations were too Euro-centric. I'd of much rather preferred llamas.

web designing with css - 2008-06-22
Reviewer Rating:
Excellent book, after reading and experimenting with css I have been able to convert a site to use css. Did not know anything about css until this book. Gives great insite to web design using css. Worth every penny.

A Highly Recommended Book on Web Design with CSS/HTML - 2008-11-19
Reviewer Rating:
One good book, straight to the point and yet easy to understand. The author certainly exhibits some strong pedagogical skills and he does a fantastic job at integrating various technologies under one roof. Each of the ten chapters and six appendices focus on one aspect and is illustrated by lots of practical examples that could be reused almost as is in your own projects. The author's decision to avoid any reference to web design applications is a smart one. Not only does it allow him to focus on the very foundations of web design but also to be relevant to a wider audience, both in terms of platform and level. With lots of tips, plenty of warnings, and an emphasis on standards and industry best practices, this book is like having a private web design instructor. Highly recommended.

Review - 2008-09-29
Reviewer Rating:
Great book suported by some On-line examples, specially good for begginers.
Little more examples or exercises will give this book the 5th star but as it is now it is also great.
My recomendation..

BR

CSS and HTML Web Design - 2008-06-01
Reviewer Rating:
A bit complicated for a newbe to web design but I am getting there. Its well laid out and seems up todate.

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