Customer comments on this selection.
 A good reference on some things
I am a first year student at Oklahoma State University and had been struggling with some of the CSS and web-design code. I found this book in my school;s bookstore and tried it. I immediately understood about 98% of it. the other 2%, I haven't leanred from my professor yet. The very helpful thing, was that they would show you a picture of a finished web page and instead of saying "try to make this" without much info like my other books, this one show's you the code. Every letter. My Site is developing phenominally because of a large part to this reference. The only reason it's not 5, is because I haven't learned some of the stuff in the back chapters yet.
 Confusing, not enough info
I know HTML pretty well but CSS not at all. I figured I'd get this book to teach myself CSS and since it had HTML in the title I thought it would teach the integration of both to create websites.
I still don't know much about CSS after reading this book. I know some new terms but I've no idea how to implement them, never mind create a website using CSS.
The book does give you a general outline of what CSS can do but other than that it didn't suit my needs at all.
Besides all that, I found the book poorly laid out and rather boring to read.
 Just what I needed - not too much, not too little
This book is perfect for my needs. I have a background in graphic design, and have created some web sites in Adobe GoLive. GoLive writes the code for you, so you don't need to know how to do it "by hand." But now the newest version of GoLive is based on CSS, so although I had been dabbling in it, I need to learn a lot more. Plus, sometimes you need to look into the code to get something to work or to understand what is happening.
GoLive itself does not include a manual, and the online help files are extremely lame. Many other books and online articles are either too basic (especially since GoLive writes the code it for you) or so technical that I can't grasp what they are talking about.
This book falls right in the middle. It covers the basics of HTML, so I can understand what I am looking at in GoLive code, but does not go into a lot more detail than I have time for. Then it moves on to CSS, and how it is applied to the web page. Having worked my way through about 2/3 of the book, I finally feel like I am beginning to really grasp the basics of how it works, and this knowledge has greatly increased my ability to work with the new GoLive version.
So who is this book for? Maybe not a total newbie, but for someone who knows enough to get by, but wants to learn more and really begin to get a solid grasp of the fundamentals. There must be many other graphic designers out there making the transition to the web. They probably understand the idea of styles, since that is how page layout software works, but are new to the coding part. While this book is not specifically addressed to that audience, I recommend it as a place for those people to start.
 Helped me out, but could have gone further
This booked helped me with a lot of my codes that I have been trying to find, but after that it seemed to be a dead end. It doesn't describe things as well as it could, but it's still understandable. There are some points, though, that I became completely lost in what I was supposed to do to alter the code to my liking, which makes it severely frustrating at times. I am currently looking through other books (mostly CSS, which I agree that this book needs more of) to better fit my needs, but I'll definitely keep this on hand because it seems to be a great reference for times that you need a code that you can't find anywhere else. ^-^
Not for everyone
Wether or not you find this book useful really depends on who you are. If you are absolutely new to HTML, and maybe even to computers, you are better off elsewhere. This is not so much because the authors assume you have mastered a lot of things already, but rather because they assume you have a certain number of reflexes and thinking habits which make things intuitive for people used to working with computers, but take a little explaining to newcomers.
If you know a bit about HTML already though, not much, mind you, just what a body and head are, for instance, then you will appreciate the lean, no-nonsense approach of this book. It goes straight to the point, in a clear, and convincing manner without preaching or beating around the bush.
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