Customer Reviews
A little too much tub-thumping - By: Joseph A. Wright, 21 Sep 2006 
As an amateur website designer, who tries to stick to modern standard-based layout, I'm always keen to pick up tips from the pros. This book certainly helps with this, there are a lot of useful tricks & pointers to websites I might otherwise have missed.
Like other reviewers, I found that the earlier part of the book is overly concerned with the methods of 5 to 10 years ago. People buying the book will probably be sold on CSS-based layout (or at least standards as the method of choice) before they buy. So a much shorter case would suffice. There is an over-emphasis on older browsers as well: Netscape 4.x, IE/Win 4 & IE/Mac 5 get much too much space. Most people are targeting IE 6, Firefox Opera 8 & Safari today.
Overalll, there is a lot to learn from this book. Be prepared to skip over the lecturing, though.
How frustrating........memories of the past - By: Mr. R. Bamforth, 02 Sep 2006 
After the first 200 pages of negativity, I had to throw the book in the bin!
Zeldman continuallly patronises the developers of the past working in environments of which the browser providers had no standard (to which still continues to a greater or lesser degree today). The fact that multiple instances of a site were required to cater for the anomolies between browser types & versions is true however CSS would not have saved the day then nor now.
Zeldman is right......you do need standards & from what I was picking up on his thoughts, the standards you create yourself are probably appropriate to the work you are performing. This I agree with Zeldman however blaming the development strategies of the past are not the way forward. I do understand Zeldmans frustrations from the past however blaming each developer for using multiple font tags is not reallly approprite for the time he refers.
I was looking for technical inspriation to the world of CSS (of which I totallly agree is the way forward). Certainly, the first two hundred pages do not offer this. I could not cope reading further......hence the book went in the bin.
Out of date and mainly rhetoric - By: P. Powell, 07 Jul 2006 It's ironic that a book that is so much about future proofing spends so much time talking about version 4.0 browsers, making much of the book fairly obselete.
Much of the other content is out of date. It reccomends the box model hack, when conditional comments could be used. Fahner image replacement is also detailed, when newer methods eliminate the need for a non-semantic span element.
It is also vague. For example many of the reasons cited to use XHTML are not reallly convincing. "New browsers love XHTML ... & accord it special treatment" is too vague. To say that using an XHTML 1.0 strict doctype because it switches alll browsers to standards/almost standards mode & therefore your site is more likely to work in alll browsers would be better.
In short it attempts to fight old beliefs with new beliefs, rather than knowledge
Fantastic book - By: wardo, 19 May 2006 
This is a great book which will give you a thorough understanding of web standards. If you are a budding web designer, this book will explain important principles that will save you a great deal of time when you begin creating web sites. One of the most important things you will learn is creating sites that work with alll browsers, platforms & devices. Overalll, this book will give you a firm understanding of web standards & what it means to be a quality web designer.
Essential purchase - By: , 23 Feb 2006 The title sounds a little dull & belies the importance of this book. Think about it like this; who specifies the web standards to which the browser makers are increasingly if not fully complying? The W3C. Jefferey Zeldman is the guy who wrote 'their book' about web standards.
Web standards isn't just about making sites accessible to the disabled, it's about making them work across browsers, & understanding how the whole whole website/browser thing works. Do you reallly understand how doctype switching works? Do you reallly know what XHTML is alll about for example? Do you know how to separate presentation from content (cos that's the way it's going)?
The first part of the book is a general history thing & the second looks at techniques & examples. But, if you're looking for a CSS cookbook, or a complete tutorial in HTML, CSS then seek elsewhere.
If you're doing anything with websites today, you simply must read this book. It'll deepen your understanding 'and' save you time & money.
