After learning HTML a few years ago I decided to write my new website using CSS. This book was to be my introduction to CSS, and I am sorry I spent my money on it. Learning should be fun, and this book is not. It has good information, but such poor layout and so many errors in it I hardly know where to begin. When I'm learning something new and an exercise doesn't turn out right, it's natural for me to assume I've made a mistake. After literally hours of fighting with the code, I find out it's because of a typo in the book!
For example, in chapter 7, learning how to make links, I couldn't get the links from the "blue" page to link to the "yellow" and "green" pages. I followed her instructions to the letter, reading the same paragraphs over and over. Then, after a frustrating hour, I tried experimenting with other things. Turns out, I needed a "./" before the path to the linked file. The book said to use "../" . One "dot" off, and it nearly drove me crazy! Now, this solution isn't consistent with the code for links on the "index.html" page, and they "should" be the same, but they aren't, and I'm more confused than ever.
If this was the only error, I'd not complain, but the book is simply riddled with sloppiness in the details. The book contains a CD for the reader to use to duplicate the exercises in the book. In chapters 4 and 5, the book uses a page about a bridge to teach formatting, inserting images, etc. The book shows page screenshots where the filler text is in English. The pages from the CD sometimes show the filler text in Latin. The author tells the reader where to insert a bit of code in the English text, but the reader working with the page from the CD is left to figure out where in the Latin text is the same place to insert the code. These are just two errors, and there are so many more.
The book uses small fonts and has a lack of whitespace. There are a lot of tips and notes that, while useful to know, interrupt the instructions and break my train of thought. The screenshots are not aligned well with the text. It would have been helpful to actually have arrows pointing to the parts of the screenshot that the code pertains to, but that's not possible because the screenshots on the pages often pertain to text on other pages.
I recently saw "More Eric Meyers on CSS" and was struck by its' beautiful user-friendly layout. It makes learning almost effortless. It made me regret my purchase of this book.
