Reviews for Stylin' with CSS: A Designer's Guide (Voices That Matter)

1. A clear guide to CSS - warts and all

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, October 12th, 2007

   I have read quite a few books on CSS and "web standards" (Meyer, Veen, Zeldman, etc) with increasing depression - how could something so important to all web sites be such a dog's dinner AND be explained boringly or without real clarity, and the many hacks required sometimes treated almost like witchcraft?
   
   This book by Charlie Wyke-Smith does have clarity and also manages to explain the IE hacks sensibly without getting bogged down. This is a complex subject (more complex than it should be, because of the browser wars) but if you have been holding off from making the move from tables to CSS this book might well get you going.
   
   Yes, there are typos and coding errors - as all these books have. The difference between a good book and a bad book is that no-one tries using the code in the bad books. The second edition should deal with them, or check the website, which lists them.
   
   Dreamweaver now makes it easy to create CSS layouts, but when you want to change the default layout or dimensions, or style the many other parts of your web pages, you need to really understand what you are doing - and this book will help you to do that.

2. I am in love with this book!

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, October 12th, 2007

   This book is fantastic!
   
   I am a website designer with limited development skills, For years I have been writing my HTML and CSS code using tables which can look a mess in PHP sites and just ruin a good asp.net structure.
   
   I picked up this book hoping for a chapter on div tags so I could get out of this habit but I got so much more!
   
   This book is fantastic for any website designer looking to make a start in markup the right way, instead of just using dreamweaver 24/7!
   
   I am now confident enough to write all my websites in notepad. I highly recommended this book to any n00b or experienced starter.
   
   My now tattered and torn copy sits pride of place on my bookshelf.
   
   

3. Great book for beginners / Intermidiates

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, June 12th, 2006

   i purchased this book after reading so many help forums and CSS 'ebooks' and really this book has tied up loads of loose ends for me.
   
   Its so much easier referring to a book rather than trying to read a web site / PDF file.
   
   I foundmy self skipping lots of the book and then going back to take a quick look at sections.
   
   The book is in full colour and is high quality, Wyke-smitth manages to desribe things pretty well and i had no problems grasping the chapters (most of the time)
   
   All in all if your looking to learn CSS you cant go far wrong buying this first and at the price Amazon do it for its a true bargain.
   
   FYI - i purchased the 'Eric meyer on CSS' book before this one and was totally blown away, far to complex to soon. This is a good starting point.

4. Might have been a contender.

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, May 12th, 2006

   This book is so full of typos and downright careless writing as to be virtually unreadable. Wait until an update appears before considering it. Even so, you would be better off with Dan Cederholm's "Bulletproof Web Design".

5. Essential for Beginners

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, May 12th, 2006

   I have just produced my first website. I have relatively good IT skills but had never done any website mark-up and CSS was a just a collection of letters I had seen occassionally on websites. I learnt some XHTML from online tutorials and kept coming across the usefulness of CSS and decided I needed to know more. Consequently I bought this book - one of the best decisions I could have made.
   The explanations are clear and the layout and use of colour mean that the whole thing is easy to follow. The book starts very simply and gradually gets more complex at a rate that I found easy to cope with. There is a gentle sense of humour throughout that also helps and an understanding on the author's part of which ideas need the most explanation. The last chapter takes the reader through the creation of a fairly complex webpage from start to finish using the ideas from the previous chapters and was a really useful way to round off the book. There is also online help in the form of many of the files you need to follow and try out for yourself what is being done.
   Overall, if you have a working knowledge of XHTML and want to start on CSS then I would definitely recommend this to you. Now I'm off to gaze at my website in awe - maybe I should get out more....