Product Description

HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS, 2nd Edition
is for web developers looking to create websites using
Cascading Style Sheets for layout, which allow for faster
page downloads, easier maintenance, faster website
redesigns, and better search engine optimization.

HTML Utopia covers all aspects of using Cascading Style
Sheets in Web Development, and is a must-read for Web
Developers designing new sites or upgrading existing ones to
use CSS layouts.

This book includes one of the most comprehensive CSS2
references on the market. Jeffrey Zeldman, web design guru
and co-founder of the Web Standards Project, says "After
reading this book, you will not only understand how to use
CSS to emulate old-school, table-driven web layouts, you
will be creating websites that would be impossible to design
using traditional methods".
The second edition of this popular book includes brand new
coverage of Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 1.1, new CSS
Solutions, and greatly expanded coverage of popular,
cross-browser, CSS layout techniques.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #296790 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 520 pages

From the Publisher
HTML Utopia is for anyone who wants to use Cascading Style Sheets for web design and layout.

Using the advice given in this book, designers can hone their sites to support faster web page downloads, easier site maintenance, and quicker re-designs. The second edition of this popular book includes brand new coverage of Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 1.5, new CSS Solutions, and greatly expanded coverage of popular, cross-browser, CSS layout techniques.

Customer Reviews

Critical information is lost in overly complex examples
It's telling that you have to wait until chapter 8 (entitled "Simple CSS Layout") until you reach the key part most web designers will be after; i.e. how to create multi-column, web standard, layouts without tables. The first part of the book is given over to semantic explanations of what various CSS controls can do -- none of which have anything to do with "designing without tables". It covers fonts, colours, inheritance, and the like; basically nothing very interesting or useful. Most designers, I'm sure, are using these controls already. The worst thing, however, is that the book's two killer bits of info (how to create a 2 and 3 column box-model layout) are embedded inside massively complex examples with pointless and fussy design flourishes. After pain-painstakingly following the chapters through I realised that 98% of the code they were giving you was nothing to do with the box model at all. I've since downloaded the code for this book and reverse-engineered their box model, but I am still ruing the hours of my time this book has wasted. Never has a book failed so spectacularly to live up to its title.

Must-have reference book
Well written, easy to follow with a wealth of CSS information in the Appendices. It has changed my approach to coding web pages, and I have found it very easy to use to solve coding problems. Very practical advice. But this is not a book for beginners, you need to have a thorough grasp of HTML and a little experience of using CSS, if you are to benefit from this book. A book for geeks ? No, but a book for someone who is dedicated to creating good, modern Web Pages and is prepared to take a lot of trouble in achieving that goal.
Not that I agree whole-heartedly with all the contents (I avoid fixed width layouts like the plague). But a sensible mix of some of the coding techniques shown, with tabular layouts where this is by far the easiest solution, will result in web pages that are easy to maintain, quick to load, and fast to render.