Web Development Solutions: Ajax, APIs, Libraries, and Hosted Services Made Easy by Christian Heilmann and Mark Norman Francis left me with mixed feelings. The title lead me to believe there would be some more in-depth information related to the topics, but in reality the end of the title should have been Using Wordpress. The majority of this book focuses on Wordpress and how each of the topics relate to the blogging platform.

The reason I had mixed emotions is because on one hand, the authors made it seem as though web development is so easy your Grandma could do it, while on the other hand sliding in some disclaimers about needing more knowledge on different topics. I think that this book would give someone just enough material to be dangerous, but not enough to really understand web development as a whole. This book is geared to the beginner in web development, so I was hoping for some more solid material.

With that out of the way, lets take a closer look at the book and its contents:

The first chapter simply discusses the reason for starting up a website in the first place. There are many different reasons for many different people as to why they start a site. Some start for financial reasons (make money and advertising), while others start to share photos with family and friends. This chapter discussed several of these reasons for starting a website.

Chapter two was where the book really started to take off. This chapter discusses the Dilemma of “Rolling your Own” Solutions. We also get a brief crash course in several aspects related to web development.

The author gets you started by installing a local server on your machine with PHP and MySQL. After this is completed, the authors walk through an installation of Wordpress as we begin our journey. Basically every chapter after this will use Wordpress in one way or another.

This is where things get somewhat fuzzy. The chapters related to Ajax, APIs, and Libraries all revolve around Wordpress. The topics are not discussed in depth, but merely show you how to install an array of different plugins available to the Wordpress platform. Flickr, Youtube, Odeo, and Google Maps—all of which are presented as plugins for Wordpress.

The last few chapters involved some good discussions on promoting your content, navigation and layout, and finally—how to get help when you hit a roadblock. The last chapter really made this book worth the read, as it discussed the different ways to get help, the places to go, and how to ask for help in the different communities. There are some very helpful and important tips in this chapter as you seek help from your peers and colleagues.

Overall, the book was not a bad read—it just left me with mixed emotions due to the title of the book. The authors are very knowledgeable and that shows in each of the chapters. Though I felt the book made things look so easy, the authors were sure to point out that the solutions there were not in-depth, but enough to get you started. If you are just beginning your trek into web development, then this book would be a good read to get you up and running in no time flat. However—for long term involvement in the web, or a more in-depth discussion of the topics listed in the title, you may want to grab a few more books.

Beginning CSS Web Development by Simon Collison is the perfect beginners guide to CSS. As the subtitle says, ‘the book is about taking you from novice to professional’ by the time you are finished. This book is laid out very well, and moves at a perfect pace. Now, for those who are advanced CSS developers — this book is still a great book to have as reference to different aspects or topics. I agree with Simon, in that I wish I would have had a book like this when I started using CSS a few years ago. It would have saved many headaches and late nights of figuring things out the hard way. Here are some of my thoughts after reading the book:

The book’s pace was perfect.Simon did a great job of breaking this book into two major sections. The first section is comprised of understanding CSS. It starts with a very brief discussion of CSS and some core concepts. He doesn’t dwell on this, though, and dives right into the meat of the book. Some of the different aspects discussed were styling text, backgrounds, colors, images, lists, links, and tabular data. Each having its own chapter to discuss the basics.

The second section gets into more advanced CSS. It discusses positioning, floating, layouts, templating, usability, accessibility, and some tips and tricks. Each of these given a good amount of time with some great examples. The end chapter brings it all together with a case study, a very interesting case study to say the least (you’ll just have to read the book to check it out).

Styling of headers left me thinking about a few things. I agree with his approach, in using an actual image in the markup (since it is content). The flip side would be using image replacement — but then losing any textual representation or alt attribute if images are disabled and CSS is still active (unless you implement Richard Rutter’s method with some JavaScript). With his style of setting up templates and reusable CSS — it would be tough to update h2 images over an entire site when updating a template, design scheme, or even typeface (depending on the size of the site). This discussion has been had many different times, and I am not sure I am completely settled on one specific solution for image replacement. So, he gives the best solution for a beginner — I was just left wondering if there was a better option.

Styling of forms is something that is super tricky, even for the advanced CSS developer. He does a great job of covering three different approaches (table, using a combination of p and br and finally using a definition list). The tricky part is: What is the best solution? He gave the answer I would have given, in that it depends on the job and the needs. Lately I have been very prone to using a definition list to style some of my basic forms (contact, newsletter, etc). I believe this does a great job and gives great flexibility. Some would say that it is not a proper use of the definition list, but I would beg to differ. I think there are many uses for the definition list. Simon walks through each, giving you a base form template, and then using the cascade to style via the other methods.

Frustrations in CSS often lie in the confusions of browsers, hacks, and filters. Dealing with the different quirks in the different browsers makes things complicated (at times). I believe the best thing to do is to understand how each browser renders different elements with it’s default stylesheet. Simon discusses some of these differences, and then shows how to override with the cascade to get the desired results (IE: zero out margins and padding). I have always felt that using hacks was simply not the best option. Simon agrees with this, but at the same time shows how to manage hacks and filters — with descriptions of each and their workings (how they manipulate the browser bugs, etc). This discussion, coupled with his beginning chapter of managing your style sheets will ultimately help you to keep your CSS clean, organized, and protected against future browser fixes. Simon makes this process easier by explaining best practices and showing solutions.

This book is full of much more information, and I even learned a few things myself (I was not aware of the content: property and how to use it with a:after). If I were just starting out CSS — I truly believe this book would have been the perfect starter. Not only did Simon cover the basics of CSS styling, managing your CSS, and using CSS for advanced layouts — he also encouraged me to drink more tea. My evenings consisted of banana bread, some peach tea, and Beginning CSS Web Development. I think the tea helps you understand the chapters better, therefore making it a necessity.

For those beginning CSS and looking for the perfect book, this is it. Having read CSS Mastery by Andy Budd and Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm, I can say that all three of these books work very well together. If I could recommend a sequence, it would be to read this book first, followed by Bulletproof Web Design, and finally CSS Mastery. All three books are great, and all three serving a different purpose and audience.

Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance was one of the more hefty books I have read in the past few months, weighing in at approximately 648 pages. The book spanned many different topics including accessible Javascript, CSS, accessible PDF, and accessible Flash.. This book was not a CSS Mastery, DOM Scripting, or The Flash Bible — but it covered each topic in relation to accessibility. Each chapter did a great job of covering all of the basics as well as giving extra resources if you wanted to find out more.

The book was split up into three parts:

Part 1: The Impact of Web Accessibility was initially a tough section to get through. This is a very important section, and sets the foundation for the rest of the book, but I was initially overwhelmed by all of the terms presented (some of which I was unfamiliar with related to standards). This section was full of great information, as well as links to discover even more information.

Part 2: Implementing Accessible Websites covers a broad range of topics (listed above). This was the lengthiest part of the book, but well worth the read. Much of what was discussed in these chapters has been discussed in other books I have read lately. Each chapter goes in-depth on creating accessible websites and using the technology at hand. The chapter related to assistive devices confirmed what Nathan Smith said: “I mean, I always thought browser differences were bad, but compared to the many screen reader quirks, wow.” Overall, it discusses best practices for web development.

Part 3: Accessibility Law and Policy wraps up the entire book. This section covers the legal information in an array of different countries as they relate to websites. Again, I was worried that this section might be dry — but I found it easy to read and learned much.

Most of this book could be summed up by Cynthia Waddell at the end of Chapter 16 where she states:

“The economic, political, and ethical benefits far outweigh the cost of this effort. The cost of being inaccessible — missing the boat on the coming age of thin clients, failing to serve our most needful citizens and employees, and legal liability — can be incalculable.

This millennium offers unprecedented opportunities for efficient, effective governance. The Internet should be accessible to all. It is the right thing to do.”

This book is a must have for any serious web developer. Don’t be intimated by the size, it is well worth the read.

Ambient Findability by Peter Morville took me back to my days of college. I initially purchased this book due to it’s high reference from other respected designers and developers. My first inclination was that the book would be about SEO or something along those lines. Though the book was small, it packed a big punch of information! I was pleasantly surprised at what this book had to offer.

This book went much deeper than I expected. As a disclaimer, I had many of my coworkers laugh when I told them the title of the book I was reading. However, I had a quick response as to what the book contained as the author quickly defines both ambient and findability. The author starts by giving background to how we come to find things. Not just as humans, he takes it to an even smaller scale discussing how ants find their way during their long journeys. Though this may seem odd, it helps to really put things into perspective. How do we find things? Do we all find things the same way? In relation to the web — what words or phrases do we use to find things? Do we use broad terms or more specific (long tail) terms?

This book is very tough to review, as I felt it was packed with so much information. The only way for me to really elaborate would be to put it into context, and by that time you could have read the book. The information packed in this book has really opened me up to an array of new questions related to searching. Outside of the context of the web, how do people find things? Inside of the web, how do people find things? I constantly monitor our analytics at Barbour Publishing, Inc. and watch how people find us, and where they go from there. Did they get the answer they were seeking? Was their search relevant? What terms did they use? What order were the terms? What punctuation is used? What did some of the other similar searches look like? What did their other searches look like? What did the spellings look like? So many aspects to look into — and then refine to make sure people can find the information they are seeking. Sometimes simple ‘like’ queries aren’t enough. Sometimes the index needs to be refined to incorporate stopwords, mis-spellings, aliases, and other pertinent information. Understanding the core principles, findings, and research will help you build a strong foundation and core.

I have found this to be extremely valuable and applicable to web development and answering the deeper questions. As stated earlier, this book is rather small in size but packs a big punch content wise. The author avoids ‘fluff’ or trying to tell stories, and simply dives into the core (which is sometimes even scary) — which is often times backed by a significant amount of research and supplemental resources.

Though this book is not directly related to web development — the lessons learned here can be applied to that medium. If you are a web developer, SEO expert, or simply want to know how people find things (and their decision process) — then this a book for you.

The book is very well written, very easy to read, and follows a logical progression.

Transcending CSS by Andy Clarke literally ‘transcends’ other CSS books that I have read. Now, to bring that into context — the other books I have read were incredible books, this one just takes CSS from a different perspective than the others (so you should still read the other books too). The writing style of this book was different from other CSS books which were very instructional. Along with a different writing style came a different design. This book is designed beautifully from front cover to back. The full color photos, original artwork, sidebars, quotes, and even the way he slips in photos from other developers into newspaper articles makes this book visually pleasing.

Mr. Clarke goes down a different path and calls for true progressive enhancement. Ideally this book would not be one for beginners (and he makes this claim), but I do believe it has some great inspiration throughout. He makes a good point when he questions how progressive enhancement could be progressive if we haven’t really moved anywhere in the past few years? As web developers we have many hurdles to jump when creating sites that function well across all platforms and browsers. There are certain browsers that are worse than others. However, do we simply let them hold us back or do we move forward with the browsers that are proactive and support standards. This is not to say forget the older browsers, but it does call for a higher standard of quality available to use in standards compliant browsers.

The book is divided into 4 sections:

Discovery. This chapter instantly jumps into the ‘transcendent CSS’ approach and discusses some of the different selectors and options. Most sections are brief, but get right to the point. This chapter is devoted to seeing markup in everything that you do. He advocated a ‘content-out’ approach to your designs, where you start with a solid foundation and structure with your content and build from there. This chapter was fun as there were little ‘quizzes’ of how you would markup different sections in a given photograph. It stretches you to really see the markup and structure first and foremost.

Process. Just like the first chapter, each section was touched on briefly — but was right to the point. This chapter discusses the many processes available to building your website. Starting with content and moving to things like wireframes, The Grey Box Method, and Interactive Prototyping. He discusses best practices as you work through these processes. This chapter came to a close with a little practice session (just to get your feet wet).

Inspiration. This was probably my favorite chapter of the entire book. I found that this chapter was very rich with artwork, photographs, and screenshots — oh, and some text, too. He challenges you to look beyond the web for your inspirations and designs. He brings examples to the table, as well as in-depth discussion of using a Grid in your designs. This chapter really encompassed The Fine Art of Web Design.

Transcendence. This was a perfect way to bring this book to a close. This chapter looks to CSS3 and all of its possibilities. CSS3 may seem like a long stretch away, but it is very important to be aware of what will be available and to begin thinking creatively — prepared for what is to come. This chapter was rich with examples and screenshots of the possibilities.

As I stated earlier, this may not be a book for beginners — but it sure is full of inspiration. There are some books that you read and think ‘Wow, this book is going to transform the way we think about CSS’ — and this book is just that. CSS Zen Garden had the same feel to it, but this is more updated. Not that you don’t need other CSS books — but this book is a must read as we move forward into 2007 and years to come.

Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook is a 2004 release by Dan Cederholm. I was inclined to read this book after reading his more recent publication, Bulletproof Web Design. I really enjoy his writing style and the content presented. Though this book was published a few years ago, the principles still apply to many of the modern techniques used to solve problems.

What I liked most about this book was how Dan keeps his opinions to himself and brings facts and solutions to the table. The book was not watered down with ‘selling’ web standards. Each chapter concluded with several routes to achieving different tasks. Dan walks through each of the methods and explains how each works (and its upsides and downsides). Many of the chapters also concluded with ‘bonus’ or ‘extra credit’ pieces that stretched the reader a step further.

The structure of this book reminded me of Simon Collison’s recent book, Beginning CSS Web Development. Both books are excellent in their own respects, and I would recommend having both as a quick reference.

Part One walked through the markup. He took short chapters and devoted them to things such as lists, headings, tables, quotations, and forms. Each chapter discussed old methods for handling tasks, the markup and meaning associated with the tasks, and how to best organize your markup. These chapters give a very thorough understanding of the everyday tags used in web development.

Part Two got down and dirty with CSS and applying it to your markup. Not only did it discuss CSS, but it also discussed organizing your CSS, applying Print styles to your pages, and how to manage things such as text and image replacement (always a tough subject). He gives a very thorough walkthrough of applying CSS — and then looks to the future and stirs up the creative juices.

There are several times where I have referred back to Bulletproof Web Design to help me get creative with different tasks. Dan’s writing style is great in that he gets out of the way and opens up the door for you to get creative and get your hands dirty. It’s not weighted down with personal opinion or selling — but is loaded with practical techniques and methods. If you are new to CSS and would like to learn best practices, I suggest buying this book along with Simon’s book, Beginning CSS Web Development — these two books will give you a solid foundation moving forward. For the advanced CSS developer, this book is still nice to have as a reference.

Rails Solutions by Justin Williams was an excellent primer to the popular framework, Ruby on Rails. I recently had a chance to learn some basics of the RoR framework from a friend of mine, Stephen Rainey. He got me up and running and pointed me to some great resources and books. This book is a recent release from Friends of Ed and it is highly recommended if you are just getting your feet wet with Rails. The book walks you through each step to get up and running and developing the ‘Railslist’ application. The author takes the time to walk through the installation process for both OS X and Windows. The flow of the book was very easy to read and each chapter built more from the previous chapters. The goal of the book was to create a working rails application, while showing you the possible routes and benefits. The overall flow looked a bit like this:

The first chapters were very elementary. This is a good thing for those looking to learn the right way to get started. The author walks you through Ruby, the language behind Rails, and shows you some of the constructs and nuances of the language. This is a good primer for those coming from another language (such as PHP) that looks very different. After the introduction to the language, he moved forward into the setup.

Installing Rails was painless. The author walks through the necessary steps to setup a development environment on the Mac and Windows platform. For those who are interested in some additional resources on setting up your environment, check out the updated Building Ruby, Rails, Subversion, Mongrel, and MySQL on Mac OS X by Dan Benjamin. Personally, I have found using Mac Ports a very easy way to manage your development environment and it is worth a good look.

We are now ready to build our application! Through the next few chapters, the author walks you through creating a ‘railslist’ application. With each chapter you learn new aspects of rails. You learn how to setup your project, how to use scaffolding, how to generate your models, views, and controllers, and how to get your database connected and working. He goes in depth on each aspect. Setting up relationships and validations in your model (ActiveRecord), setting up your Controllers and using custom routing, and then how to get your views in place and use partials and .rjs files. Towards the end, we even get to add a dash of AJAX to the application for some simple tasks.

The last chapters and appendixes discuss deployment of your application to a production server and all the pieces that need to be in place to go live to the public and handle the traffic. Though this book covered the steps, I have heard that there is more to be said on deploying your application — so you may want to look at some more resources.

This book is for a beginner to Rails. If you are an advanced programmer or have been in Rails for a while now — then this book is not for you (and the author states this in the first paragraph of the book). I felt that there were some pieces that could have been discussed related to progressive enhancement and accessibility (AJAX and CSS), especially when building the AJAX into the application. However, that is no reason to not give this book a chance.

Pro Javascript Techniques by John Resig was a very in-depth look at Javascript and its capabilities. I loved this book for the simple fact that the first chapter started by introducing you to objects in Javascript. No time was wasted on the basics, you were diving in deep right from the beginning. Also, even though John is the creator and lead developer of the jQuery Javascript library, this book was not about pushing his framework. He did a great job of introducing many of the different frameworks and listing their strengths and purposes.

The entire book had you building a library of usable scripts that allow for great portability while using Javascript in your applications (or even your personal website). Each chapter discussed the scripts, their functionality, their support, and giving great details to how they worked. Most chapters also gave you examples of the scripts in a working environment. A quick breakdown looks like this:

The first part of the book discussed Object Oriented Javascript. This included information related to creating your own objects and extending the core javascript objects. He then moved on to discussing testing of your code and how to package it for distribution. This is especially helpful for those working in an environment with multiple developers and programmers. Thankfully, he discussed unobtrusive DOM scripting, which still may be new to some developers. The first part closed with discussions related to AJAX and browser support, both of which we would see more of later. All of part one was a brief introduction to what we would read through the rest of the book.

Part two discussed Object Orient Javascript in more detail. This included things such as basics of objects, object creation, references, overloading, scope, and closures. I found this chapter to provide a solid foundation for the rest of the chapters to come, as well as very descriptive related to objects. The next few chapters discussed creating reusable code and shined some light on several of the libraries available. Also, we got a glimpse into the wonderful world of debugging Javascript and were introduced to some great tools to help you as you build.

Part three dives into unobtrusive Javascript and intricate details related to the DOM and how to manipulate the DOM. Once we learn how to properly manipulate and traverse the DOM, we move on to attaching events to elements. All of this was discussed in light of progressive enhancement and making sure content is always available. The last three chapters of this section discussed Javascript and CSS, how to improve forms (which is also a topic for another discussion), and a practical example of building an image gallery.

Part four pushes ahead to AJAX. The first chapters discussed the history of AJAX and some of its common uses. With a foundation of understanding what AJAX is, the next chapters were spent with practical examples of enhancing your blog (quick access to all posts dynamically on scroll), building an auto-complete search field, and creating an AJAX Wiki. I found that the blog and auto-complete were a little more valuable than the Wiki.

The final part looks to the future of Javascript. This section was very educational as we move forward. This is very important to be aware of what will be available in the near (hopefully) future.

The appendixes were extremely valuable, and I will use it as a quick reference as I begin developing more Javascript. A full listing of the DOM reference, Events reference, and the Browsers.

Overall, this book was an incredible read and is highly recommended for those who want to take their Javascript skills to the next level.

HTML Mastery by Paul Haine was definitely not your average HTML for Dummies type book. Paul did a great job of covering HTML thoroughly and ended on a note that inspired you to think beyond the basics. Some might be turned off by another HTML book, but this book is far from that — this book is packed full of information related to all aspects of HTML, including (but not limited to), XHTML, CSS, full discussion of possible tags, and how to appropriately markup things like tables and forms. Even an advanced developer would benefit from reading this book in it’s entirety (about 215 pages).

There is much to be said about the content that is packed into those 215 pages, so I will give a brief rundown:

The beginning of the book starts out with your basic terminology and background of HTML and XHTML. The author even covers the debated topic of which to use, and how to properly use each type. He discusses XHTML and some of the myths associated with it that seem to make it a better technology than HTML. I am glad this was presented in the first few chapters as I think many people have a wrong perception of XHTML. The chapter ended by discussing the anatomy of an XHTML document, including a breakdown of the doctype declaration and its parts.

Now that he got the basics (and some history) out of the way, he dives into the tags available to us — and ‘using the right tag for the right job.’ This chapter is an excellent breakdown of the available tags, their support, and their function and meaning in the context of semantic markup.

The next two chapters discussed marking up tables and forms. Many would think this is an easy task, but for anyone who has built an accessible table — you know how hard it is to make sure you have all of your bases covered. This has also been covered in some other recent books as well, but it is a good thing to hammer home to those who are accustomed to their WYSIWYG and building tables and forms in that environment.

Chapter 5 was definitely my favorite chapter of the entire book. This chapter was devoted to semantics and microformats. I have been using microformats in several recent projects, and am a little obsessed with giving more meaning to my content. The author broke down all aspects of microformats and discussed their structure and the markup used to create them. Everything from hCard, hCalendar, hReview, XFN, rel-, VoteLinks, and XOXO. Reading through each of these chapters challenges you to use these in an array of different ways. He then goes on to discuss the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative and structured blogging (This is a topic for another day all together). Overall, this chapter challenges you to really look deep into your markup and give it structure and meaning — for both your users and the machines reading it.

The book closes out the chapters discussing more detail related to semantics and how to avoid things like span-mania and classitis. This is a final reminder from the author to really give meaning to your content — to create clean, flexible, meaningful, and scalable code without the clutter. The last chapter takes us a step ahead to get a view of what we can expect with the future and XHTML2.0 and Web Applications 1.0.

Overall, this book was a quick read — but well worth every page (even the appendixes). If you are a developer that prides yourself on clean markup, this book is still a valuable addition to your library. If you are a developer trying to ween yourself away from a WYSIWYG editor, then this book is a must have. The author does a great job of covering HTML in an exhaustive manner, way beyond what you will find in a basic HTML book.

Pro CSS Techniques by Jeff Croft, Dan Rubin, and Ian Lloyd is a very thorough book on practical CSS. Having just read Simon Collison’s Beginning CSS Web Development I found this to be a great continuation of the learning process. This book picks up where Simon’s book ended, and even briefly covers some of the same topics. This book is full of great information and each author had a fun personality (and sense of humor) with their chapters.

The book jumps right in and walks you through specificity and the cascade and how this will help you keep your markup neat and tidy (without any superfluous markup). This topic can cause confusion for many beginning CSS and even those who are advanced. Having a strong understanding of the cascade and specificity will greatly help you write cleaner code and solve any debugging issues that may arise. This chapter was full of examples, charts, and interactive walkthroughs to help you understand the process.

The next few chapters were spent discussing the browsers, managing your CSS files, and many of the hacks used to fix problems. These were similar to some of what was seen in Beginning CSS Web Development — but they require special emphasis. I didn’t feel that any of the authors ever advocated using hacks to solve problems. They challenged you as a developer to dig deeper and find workarounds that didn’t require hacks. However, when it is necessary — they explain the process of using conditional comments versus mixing any hacks into their own sheet or section of your other files.

Chapter 7 was by far my favorite chapter of the entire book. I have read many other CSS books that show you advanced layouts and techniques, even full of the code and images, but don’t fully prepare you for the frustration that may arise. This chapter walked you through creating different layouts. Absolute positioning, floats, liquid layouts, fixed with layouts, and elastic layouts were all discussed. The best part about the chapter is that the author walks you through your failures. In seeing these failures and being aware of them, it will ultimately help you avoid them in the future (or at least be prepared when something goes awry). Failure is a part of learning CSS, and the author comforts (and humors) the reader as he shows the failures, explains why and what failed, and how to fix and continue with the layout. In the end you are working towards a very simple, yet flexible, layout.

Another topic that is not often discussed is that of typography. This chapter was an exhaustive covering of typography and the web. It included information about upcoming typefaces available in vista, as well as some current typefaces that you might not know about. It also covered things like leading (line height), kerning (letter spacing), and how to make sure your liquid layouts (or high contrast layouts) don’t ruin the legibility.

The last few chapters walk you through styling everyday elements like tables, forms, and lists. The last two chapters were focused on stylesheets for other media (print, screen, projection, etc). I found this chapter very interesting as we are moving toward supporting mobile devices. I think initially it would be easy to think you can serve up the ‘handheld’ stylesheet and all is well — however we are finding that this is not true (Which is why I can’t wait for Cameron Moll’s book on Mobile Web Design). With so many different devices and services out there, what will be the best way to target them? I used to think the handheld stylesheet would solve many problems — but I am re-thinking that as a solution.

Finally, the book wraps up with an exhaustive list of CSS References including: allowed values, element type, and initial/inherited values. Also covered is the CSS specificity chart and the browser grading chart. The appendix of this book makes a nice desk reference to help solve an issue.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. If you are still dipping your feet into CSS, then this book will help you understand the inner workings of CSS and help you avoid many frustrating hours of debugging. Yes, there were some advanced topics that weren't discussed that could have been (hasLayout), but overall the book covered everything exhaustively. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of this book.