Slashdot Mirror
Spring into HTML and CSS
Who's it for?
This seems a very clearly targeted book. It's directed towards professionals that need to work with websites, but do not necessarily have a software development background.
The Good StuffThe approach of the book reflects the targeted audience very well. The book starts by introducing a basic HTML page and then building upon it by showing how to add text and graphic content. The next couple of chapters then show a few more advanced subjects like forms and tables. The second half of the book then moves into explaining CSS, starting with some of the basic ground rules and then moving into applying colours, styles and borders to the HTML document. The last chapter is a cookbook of classic layouts, explained clearly and with code.
Even though I'm not a typical member of the intended audience, I found the organisation of the book very well thought-out and with a good sense of flow. Each chapter builds on the preceding one, with a small set of examples that are built up through the course of the book. Each chapter is broken into one or two page "chunks," as the book itself describes them. These chunks are small discrete explanations of aspects that the chapter covers. For example, in the chapter on images, the chunks cover topics like adding alternative text to an image, specifying its height and width and using an image in a hyperlink.
For me, the combination of the chunk organisation and Molly's writing makes the book. The chunked approach fits the needs of both learning a new subject without being overwhelmed and those that want more of a reference capability. This book is not written to be a reference work, but with everything being so well partitioned, it comes close enough to meet my need for a good reference work as well. Some authors tell you about their subject, but Molly really does seem to explain it to you. A subtle difference, but one that gives this book the edge.
As a book that aims to be practical, the examples were very well chosen. There are plenty of pieces of example markup and images of the resulting rendering. The markup is nicely laid out and the images are large enough to show the effect, but not so large as to interrupt the flow of the explanation. The other nice thing about the examples, especially in the CSS section of the book, is that the examples are consistent. The same portion of text, from The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe, is used throughout. I found that this helped clearly show the difference between the effects being taught. The text stayed the same, only the layout changed with the new style being shown. Very effective.
Groan!
My first inclination when I saw that the book was part of a new series called "Spring into ..." was to groan and wonder when they were planning to fire the marketing non-genius that dreamt up such a bad title! Thankfully the contents more than make up for the corny name. The only other thing that bugged me was the inclusion of two appendixes with HTML and CSS reference information in them. The references are annotated very well with practical considerations, so I'm only going to knock off half a point from what would otherwise have been a perfect ten.
You can purchase Spring into HTML and CSS from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Maybe the Slashdot editors should take some advice here.
I own itburns.net. What should I put there?
I reccommend http://www.zeldman.com/ for all your web-standards reading. He's even re-worked Slashdot using current web standards.
Thank goodness someone wrote a book about HTML and CSS development. There aren't enough free sites on the internet to teach you this stuff already.
/. too. Most of the readers here are probably novice developers with only basic knowledge of HTML if any at all.
The best place to advertise this is probably
/. ++
Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman. By far the most useful and informative book on the subject that I've seen. A good web designer needs to know the "why", not just the "how".
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The only other thing that bugged me was the inclusion of two appendixes with HTML and CSS reference information in them. The references are annotated very well with practical considerations, so I'm only going to knock off half a point from what would otherwise have been a perfect ten.
Wait, why is including reference material a negative? Isn't that an advantage to the user, all relevant information collected in one place?
Based on the review, it sounds like this covers topics so basic; one would be better served by a resource such as w3schools, or something along those lines. I recommend the Zen of CSS Design, which I found to be a great read for those who have gotten the basics down.
(begin sarcasm)
Wow, it's about time someone wrote a book about HTML and CSS. I went to the Barnes and Noble and couldn't find a single one on the subject. Are they trying to keep this stuff a secret?
(end sarcasm)
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
Just knowing HTML and CSS does not result in web pages that are easy to use and accessible.
Of course not, it takes a professional to know all that stuff. This book is not for a professional, in fact the reviewer mentions that right off the top.
Anyways, does this book cover XHTML at all? And what about CSS 2.0?
Seeing as how Molly Holzschlag is a member of the Web Standards Project, I'd assume she's presenting up-to-date information.
That said, I remember Molly's articles in Web Design Techniques back in the day, and found them to be very fluffy and a bit self-important. Hopefully she doesn't come off that way in a how-to book such as this.
According to the Amazon description, this book covers HTML 4, XHTML 1, and CSS 2.1...
http://quirksmode.org/
Amazing site, this guy has done some painstaking cross-browser testing for JavaScript, CSS and HTML and come back with compatibility tables and recommendations for everything from the basic box model (how browsers managed to fuck this up i don't know) to robust JavaScript that doesn't use crappy "if browser equals X" statements. Working with HTML/CSS and JS is highly painful if your project specifies that it must look _good_ in all browsers, so any tricks you can learn will save your life.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.