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Message from Dean - May 8th 2007
I am currently testing out a new version of the APF Bridge Component - If you notice any errors within this demo store please drop me a line.
Rating:  -
This book is well written, easy to read, and does a great job of walking you through their case studies.
Rating:  -
Although there are some interesting ideas in this book you should be warned about the very, very, very poor printing quality. After reading through the first 40 pages the book began to fall apart. The pages started to fly out one by one like a hair from your head when starting to develop boldness. After 50 pages it was just a pile of junk so I couldn't finish it.
Rating:  -
Out of three CSS/XHTML books that I bought, this one was the most disappointing of all. Disappointing because it's designed not so much for practical use, it's really for placing on the coffee table to show off your web guru status.
I simply wasn't inspired by the ad hoc generic ideas, presented as edgy "grunge" a la mode. If you're a web designer needing creativity ideas of this type (page 30 is a kicker), you really need to hit art school again. What's explained, you'll pick up in high school Drawing 101; hanging out at coding forums; or just googling for help.
Worse upon worse, reading the book will give you a headache. I simply couldn't read it through without vertigo. The book design staff believed in high contrast color schemes, that if you're color blind, you wouldn't have to worry about reading code, you simply won't see it (or wished to ban Opt-Art)! Lime green backgrounds with pale orange type (pages 71 and 75, for example), just doesn't cut it.
If you need a CSS/XHTML coffee table book, this will suffice. But if you need real inspiration and design ideas, save your money and eyesight, and find some other book (or search online for examples -- heck, the snippet code isn't much more than what's in the book, even).
What a waste of money.
Rating:  -
Let's start with a warning - this is not a book for beginners. To appreciate it (apart from the "coffee table" usage someone else mentioned), you have to know a lot about CSS, HTML and have decent knowledge of JavaScript and DOM. But once you're there and have a few web design projects behind you, you'll really appreciate all the nuggets in this book. The ideas presented in it, as well as the explanations (in a juicy voice that was obviously not bowdlerized by editorial policies that so many other publishers have) are simply priceless. I also highly appreciated the approach of not going into meaningless details; the text is full of URLs containing background information, additional articles, design guidelines, CSS tricks etc.
To all the authors & the publisher: Congratulations !!! This is one of the Web design books I've seen ... why can't I give you 6 start?
Rating:  -
This book arrived the day after I returned home to NJ after the "An Event Apart" conference in Boston.
Compared to the large volume of texts that have come out before it, this was a little bit of a disappointment.
If you're new to using CSS, then maybe it will be more helpful to you, but if you already own/read CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions, Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS, DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model, and the like... I wouldn't bother with this one.
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