HTML and CSS: Visual QuickStart Guide

Beautifully written by someone who surely knows his subject on the tips of his fingers. You will learn HTML, CSS and many other things!

I am (or was) a big fan of Peach Pit Press's Visual Quick Start series on website development books and have several on my bookshelf. I've used these books as textbooks in various classes that I have taught. I was looking forward very much to the newest release of this title, so as to be up to date on HTML 5 and CSS 3. This book is NOT up to the standards set by Elizabeth Castro, who wrote the original. It covers only VERY elementary topics and no depth on anything at all. This book is so light-duty that I doubt that even a beginner would get enough out of it to build any kind of webpage beyond a one-page site. Boo and Hiss to Peach Pit Press for putting this "pamphlet" on the market. I have since returned the book.

I used the 8th edition of this textbook when I took a graduate course on web content development and loved it. It offered step by step instructions and was so helpful. When I saw there was a new edition (this book) I decided to buy it because I figured it would have some updated information. While I appreciate the new information such as getting your webpage online, webpage testing, and accessibility (super important!) it is NOT helpful at all for someone just starting out with HTML & CSS. There aren't really any explanations of topics or examples. There isn't even a chapter of how to build an HTML page, which was literally Chapter 1 of the 8th edition and vital to beginning to understand how to use HTML & CSS. If you're looking for a brief overview of topics, this is the book for you. If you want to start from scratch with HTML & CSS, stick to the 8th edition.

I was so excited to pre-order this to assist me in building a cool web-design. I am somewhat familiar with HTML and CSS, and I was probably expecting too much from this book.There is a lot of good basic stuff in this book. However, layout designs, scripts, and advanced details are not covered in detail. I mainly bought this for CSS layout design, but it didn’t help me learn anything new.If you’ve heard of W3Schools CSS and Web Design, check out their website. They have examples for EVERYTHING. Best of all, you don’t have to retype it all, you can copy and paste - then change it for your needs.If you have no experience with HTML/CSS at all, this book is for you. If you have ever made a simple HTML webpage and played around with it, this isn’t for you.

Totally agree with the other one-star reviewer. As a Visual Quickstart Guide this book is awful. The eighth edition was superb and had 576 pages. This edition is poor and has only 334 pages. I have bought two copies to use in training. They are going back! This book is nothing like the previous editions. Even the basics such as how to start a webpage are not covered clearly. The old version was a model of clarity and covered HTML and CSS in depth. This version seems a confused overview and certainly not suitable for learning from. The whole concept of these Visual Quickstart Guides has got lost. I have many of these guides covering a variety of software. This book is nothing like any of those and should not have been included in the series. It is a different type of book with a different aim. Visual Quickstart Guides were a model of clarity with a clear layout. This book is not and the easy to understand original layout has been completely lost. It is now a confused mess. To call it a new edition is marketing folly. It is a completely different book. I am quite cross that my time has been wasted ordering this travesty. The book IS up-to-date but there are better sources out there. This title is lacking much significant and important detail. Look up the element in the index and it's not there, although mentioned briefly in some random place in the text. A great opportunity for updating one of the best books ever published for learning HTML5/CSS3 has been lost.In the interests of fairness I would point out that you do have access to an electronic edition upon registration and from that you can access video tutorials. OTOH I found paging through the electronic book to find these was rather a hassle and the videos were nothing special anyway. If you like a video presentation there are plenty of better ones on Youtube. My copies are going back for a refund and I will get another copy (s/h) of the 8th edition instead.