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CSS Web Design For Dummies Review by Schmendrick
CSS Web Design BY Dummies
This book may have been useful in a IE6-only world. However, since the world has moved on, a book dedicated to CSS-for-IE6 is now outdated, at best. While I appreciate that he is writing from an IE-centric viewpoint and am OK with skipping functions IE doesn't recognize, including ActiveX in an introductory CSS book (in the beginning chapters, even) is simply misguided. Sure, you can fade your text ... if your viewer is willing to accept the ActiveX warnings.
Further, the author takes the Dummies "casual" approach (which I generally do not mind) beyond the level of good taste. He spends far too much time insulting the creators of CSS (among others), expects me to admire his inability to understand concepts, and actually crosses into condescending far too often. Here's a choice example: "Don't worry about why you use the (0). It's a quirk of computer languages that makes no sense - they start counting up from zero rather than one. Just use the code and don't bother your pretty head about it." (You have the opportunity to be told not to worry your "pretty head" about things more than once. Brilliant.)
Arrogance is one thing, but when there are as many sloppy errors in code and concept as there are here it becomes almost laughable. I can accept the occasional grammar or formatting error, but the code should be checked more thoroughly -- sometimes an error is repeated over and over. For examples, on several occasions he uses equal signs instead of colons, which might leave the beginner wondering a bit why the code misfires, and his demonstration of the nth-child selector is simply incorrect.
I can't say there's nothing to be learned from this book, and it has the makings of being a decent introduction to CSS. Some of his comments on style and avoiding tacky design may be helpful and he does a decent job of avoiding being too technical. However, I'm really glad I made use of the library for this one, and whoever checks it out after me will be glad of the corrections I've left behind.