Customer Reviews
Top CSS book - By: Ms. Se Evans, 19 Jul 2008 
I have been a student web designer for a few years never touching the coding side of it because well... it scared me. I ended up realising that if I wanted a job as a web designer I needed to learn at least the basics of XHTML & CSS. I started by taking out 'The visual quickstart guide to HTML, XHTML & CSS' from the library. This was a good basic book that got me to grips with it very quickly. As I had to return it after a week I bought CSS The missing manual based on the reviews here.
I prefer it to the quickstart guide as the author explanations are more in-depth, he explains why certain rules get inherited & others don't. However I am glad I had the quickstart book first as it explained more about HTML than this book does. I think if you are completely new to HTML as well as CSS maybe another book is more suited. If you know the basics( & it can be the very basics) of HTML then this book is perfect for teaching you how to use CSS along side HTML for best results.
The books chapters are spit into theory & practical. You will have to read a few pages of explanation & then put that in practise using downloaded html files from the website. This reallly suited my style of learning. Having a written explanation before the practical also alllows it to became a reference book once you have finished the book.
There is also a chapter near the end for people with Dreamweaver showing you how to add CSS in the design view.
Big thumbs up from me. I am currently turning image based websites into fully functioning CSS sites. The only downside is that I'm more of a geek than I was before.
A "Must Have" - By: FatBloke, 09 May 2008 I wouldn't recommend it to a raw beginner as it does jump in pretty quickly, but I've got a (very) basic grounding on CSS & found it excellent.
The chapters are sensibly organised, the text is easy to read (for font, style & grammar), there's a humour through it to keep it light, & it even suggests that you might want to skip some bits because they're not essential. The tutorials add to the same 'tutorial site' throughout the whole book, so as you work through the chapters there's continuity in the tutorials & you can reallly see the effects of what you've learned at the end of each chapter.
This book has got the info I need, & has the feel of being written by a programmer who's read many a manual in his time & has now written the book we've alll been looking for, in the format we want.
I've since purchased 3 other books from the missing manual series & would recommend alll of them.
Excellent "learning" book - By: paxo, 24 Apr 2008 This book reallly is very well laid out.
The tutorials take you through the concepts step by step so you can see the effect of each of the rules you enter, & show you why certain rules work in certain ways thus doing a great job of de-mistifying CSS.
The book is also chock-full of URLs for resources & further details on the techniques.
All in alll, one of the best coding books I've ever purchased.
Excellent Introduction - By: Darren Grant, 07 Apr 2008 A very good introduction to CSS, particularly well illustrated explaining the order of HTML & CSS. Would recommend this one to anyone interested in learning the basics of CSS.
Brilliant beginners manual - By: Curly Girly, 18 Jan 2008 I'd already designed a couple of simple websites using tables, but knew this was not the way forward & CSS would have to be my next step. I wanted a book that would 'teach' me the basics from start to finish, & I'm pleased to say that this is that book.
I found it a reallly easy book to read & the tutorials were easy to follow. I was able to apply things I'd learnt in each chapter to the site I was developing at the time, & see it start to take shape, which is extremely satisfying.
