HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS
Despite the name, what this book really is about is Cascading Stylesheets (or CSS). If you haven't used CSS before and want a book that you can learn it from then this is the book for you.
My Rating: 
Pros
- Introduces CSS in a logical order.
- Contains an indepth CSS reference in the back.
- Later chapters show how to use CSS to perform reasonable popular page layouts.
Cons
- If you go by the name of the book in what to expect you will be disappointed
- Information on priorities between author and user stylesheets does not match what actually happens with different browsers
Description
- Second Edition: April 2006, updated June 2006
- 497 page paperback
- Published by Sitepoint
- ISBN: 0-9752402-7-7
- The Ultimate Beginners Guide to CSS
- Author Rachel Andrew and Dan Shafer
Review
This is one book where the tag line across the bottom of the cover is a lot more accurate than the actual book title for this book comes really close to being the ultimate beginners guide to CSS whereas only a couple of chapters in the book cover web design without tables. The book also assumes that you already know HTML and doesn't contribute anything in that area beyond how to use it with CSS. The only small area where the book fails to provide accurate information is with regard to user stylesheets where many browsers still don't behave the way that the standards specify. Internet Explorer 6 in particular allows user stylesheet entries to always override corresponding author entries which is not what the book claims will happen.
If you don't already have a decent knowledge of HTML then another Sitepoint book "Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way using HTML & CSS" would be the better choice but if you already know HTML and are ready to move on to learning how to handle web page presentation and layout using CSS then this book is what you are looking for.
More Information from the Publisher
