Review: DHTML and CSS For the World Wide Web
Iain Laskey looks at two closely related books for web developers.
| Product | DHTML and CSS For the World Wide Web |
|---|---|
| Company | Peachpit Press |
| Web | www.peachpit.com |
| Price | From £16.99 |
| We like | Clear, concise coverage. Price |
| We don't like | Slightly bland example screenshots |
| Rating | 8/10 |
| Requirements |
DHTML and CSS For the World Wide Web
Web pages can be created easily or they can be created properly. The latter involves some pain to begin with but the rewards longer term are well worth it. More importantly, you have a much greater chance that your sites will be accessible on everything from PCs and Macs through to PDAs and mobile phones. Moreover, they are far more likely to look the same on different browsers such as Internet Explorer or Firefox.
DHTML and CSS for the World Wide Web by Jason Cranford Teague aims to be both a highly visual tutorial as well as a reference guide. In the main, it meets these aims admirably.
It begins with a CSS overview including some very useful notes on different strategies when using multiple CSS files across a site. It also touches upon XHTML and Document Type Definitions (DTD) so very early on, you'll have the big picture on how you should be constructing your pages.
From there on it gets down to specifics with sections on fonts, layouts, positioning and much more. The style is very good with short punchy paragraphs that give you just what you need to know without overloading on too much detail. Each example is illustrated with highlighted code examples and screen shots of the results. The screen shots tend to be rather plain and unexciting but they do serve to show the effect of the code.
The second part covers DHTML and introduces the Document Object Model (DOM) and how important it is to fully realising the power of DHTML. Part two shows how to interact with different elements on the page and the page itself before moving on to part three which combines CSS and DHTML for the really clever stuff.
Part three starts well enough, covering layout and navigation. Strangely, it then goes on to primers for Adobe GoLive and Macromedia Dreamweaver along with debugging strategies. We'd have thought these would be better in their own sections.
The Appendices include some very usable DHTML/CSS references plus browser support notes and a good selection of additional resources to take the enquiring mind further.
Overall we thought this was a great book that achieves its goals admirably and is a very good guide for anyone involved in web development either at home or professionally. Whilst it doesn't include absolutely everything you could know on each area, it does manage to include all the important bits. We would certainly be hard pushed to think of a non-esoteric task or requirement that wasn't covered by this title. Recommended.
HTML and CSS Advanced
The Second book by Jason Cranford Teague picks up where the previous one finished and takes CSS and DHTML to the next level. It starts with a particularly good chapter on the structure and basic design principles behind a well constructed web site. This potted summary is almost worth the price of the book in its own right. Two more chapters on essential web design skills finish off this section.
The rest of the book is made up of chapters covering layout, navigation, controls, forms, special effects and databases amongst others. The strength of the book is that you don't need to read it cover to cover. Instead, these sections are divided up in to a series of tasks which you can jump straight in to and still be able to make use of the solution provided.
The format is the same as the previous book and provides clear code examples with the important or new sections highlighted. The text is again punchy and to the point with useful information on the whys as well as the hows which helps everything make far more sense.
Being an advanced book, the code examples do tend to get rather longer and more than a bit more involved but that's to be expected. We also felt a little more coverage of interfacing with XML would have been nice. That apart, this makes a fine companion guide to the first title and even at the slightly higher price should still be on the shopping list of any serious web developer.
