Rating: 
Summary: Design with Standards and CSS and you will never go back.
Review: I knew I had to update my site, but the thought of trying to create an HTML page using the same old methodology was holding me back. Nested tables to build a fluid structure was just to exasperating to think about. As I started looking at more blog's on the www, and seeing how much more creative and elegant the designs were, I also noticed that the designs were primarily CSS driven. Viewing the source only reveled paragraph and div tags. The structure and presentation had been almost completely separated. This is the deal! I had been using CSS, but incorrectly. I began going through the W3C Specs for CSS and noticed there were a number of help resources. The source I landed on was Jeff's. Although much of the content revolves around the argument for standards, there are great tips and a beginner project to help understand the basics. But if you go to the author's personal website, there is a wealth of information. Also, the author's personal website is very elegant and the CSS that holds it together is free for all. Another excellent source of information is the author's business website, "A List Apart". Thank you very much Jeff!
Rating: 
Summary: Useful book but left me feeling slightly had.
Review: If you could convince Amazon to rip the first 146 pages out of this book before shipping it, it would save a lot of wasted time, annoyance (as well as the some shipping costs). The author has some great insights but also, unfortunately, the gift of the gab, and he's not afraid of using it. Although I learned a lot from this book I wish that there had been much less of it. The first 146 pages are rambling, redundant and unecessary throat-clearing excercise in which the author tells you again and again how happy you will be once he gets around to telling you what he's planning on telling you. You can skip this without loss. I would recommend this book to a friend but I'd tell them to start near the top of page 147, right after where it says "So let's delve in, shall we?"
Rating:
Summary: A worthy addition to any bookshelf
Review: Weighing in a three-quarters of an inch and actually four hundred and fifty-four pages long (456 if you count the inside cover), this impressively-named apologia for CSS-based design greets you with a smile! Or is it a smile? One can't tell, because the mysterious blue-chapeau'ed elf on the front cover does not deign to reveal his expression. Consequently, au courant web designers refer to this paperback as "the Mysterious Blue Elf Book," for the cheeky woodland creature who peeks out at you. Perhaps he had some hand in writing this book, along with Eric A. Myer and Zeldman's facial hair. The book itself fits nicely with other technical books, neither too tall nor too wide, unlike other lesser works that aggressively jar the harmony and aesthetics of a carefully-trimmed bookshelf. That is not to say the book is not without its faults. Many a fastidious web designer has complained about the cover, presented in bold tangerine, arguing for the conventions of technical blue. Being somewhat stingy with my stars, I am compelled to subtract one, marring an otherwise faultless execution. There's always hope for the second edition.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This is the book I have been waiting for! The reams of pages which I have printed from various lists can mostly be discarded because Zeldman's book contains or refers to just about everything needed. Zeldman remarks that 99.9 % of web sites are obsolete. (More recently stated to be about 99.4%!) This book is for the designers of those sites.
First let me say that Zeldman writes in an engaging, humorous style. And thankfully he takes an easygoing approach to the use of standards and accessibility. As he points out, there is a continuum from no standards and no accessibility to rigid adherence to standards and complete accessibility. We are free to place ourselves where appropriate on this continuum. Yet Zeldman makes a compelling case for standards.
A 436 page book cannot be a treatise on everything. Yet Zeldman manages to give enough coverage to enable one to create web sites which use CSS, meet standards, are accessible, and can be viewed in all common browsers. Throughout the book there are historical materials and references to sources and fuller discussions. Among the topics covered are XHTML, CSS basics, the DTD, the Dom and doc type switching. There is extensive discussion of browser problems and how to overcome them. Especially useful is a rather full discussion of font sizing. And a good chapter on accessibility.
This is a practical book and Zeldman takes you step by step through the process of developing a site from a given design-a site which makes full use of CSS, meets standards and is accessible. Chapter 9 contains a brief introduction to CSS. Chapters 8 and 10 which describe the construction of a the aforementioned web site in detail is worth careful study.
To Zeldman's credit, the page uses one table for basic layout; Zeldman is no purist and supports use of the best tools available considering the present state of browsers.
Rating:
Summary: Easier, Faster, Cheaper
Review: Jeffrey Zeldman makes a very compelling case for designing using web standards. None of the technologies he talks about are particularly new, yet designers and developers have been slow to embrace them. Zeldman takes us on a brief history lesson to give context to the good stuff that follows. Real world examples are then used to demonstrate the power and simplicity of using standards to create web documents. With clear explanation, backed up with learned commentary and sensible compromises, Zeldman introduces the reader to XHTML and CSS. Forward-thinking techniques, such as rules-based design, show the reader how easy it is to create documents that work in any web device, not just Internet Explorer. This book will be useful to any designer or developer who wants to make their life an awful lot easier, and is an excellent partner to Eric Meyer's "Eric Meyer on CSS," by the same publisher, where more of the techniques discussed in the book are explored.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the worst books I've ever read
Review: The title of this book should be "Redesigning with web standards": it only tells how to reimplement existing web pages.
No graphical design is done in the book: the design comes from existing pages. Only implementation (writing HTML and CSS) is covered. This book spents a lot of text on describing why the old ways of building webpages are no longer good enough. Over and over again you read stuff like: "During our industry's firs decade, designing for the web was like feeding a roomful of finicky toddlers. To build sites that worked, we dutifully learned to accomodate each browser's unique dietary requirements. Today's browsers all eat the same nutritious stuff, but many professionals haven't grasped this and are still crumbling M&Ms into the souffle." If Zeldman had told us this only once, the book could have been 20% thinner, and less tiresome to read. And he could have covered stuff that was really needed. Lots of workarounds to make old browsers happy. But very little on the basis/structure of how things are done the modern way. The chapter on XML is out of place; this book isn't about XML. The coverage of CSS is insufficient: only some syntax and just a little about precedence rules is described. Text in general is imprecise, vague, and leaves you with lots of questions. The fact that Eric Meyer is a technical reviewer for this book makes you think: maybe Eric Meyer is not such a genius when it comes to book writing.
Rating: 
Summary: Authoritative, tongue-in-cheek, wordy
Review: Jeffrey Zeldman is an authority on the topic. You should read this if you develop Web sites...but be prepared for a Frodo-like journey through Middle Earth to find the tokens of wisdom in Zeldman's circular, cliché-per-minute writing style. Don't get me wrong, it's better than boring, but it could have used a wave of the wand by a concise-thinking (redundancy-slashing) editor. After reading the book, you'll know your stuff, understand the history, and be prepared for productive future-minded, accessible, and tidy XHTML coding.
Rating:
Summary: Possibly one of the best web design books I've ever read...
Review: Target Audience
Web designers who want to move towards coding pages according to standards and forward compatibility. Contents
This book examines the use of CSS and XHTML for web page coding in order to adhere to standards and make pages that are readable on all platforms. The book is divided into the following chapters: Part 1 - Houston, We Have a Problem - 99.9% of Websites Are Obsolete; Designing and Building with Standards; The Trouble with Standards; XLM Conquers the World (And Other Web Standards Success Stories) Part 2 - Designing and Building - Modern Markup; XHTML: Restructuring the Web; Tighter, Firmer Pages Guaranteed: Structure and Meta-Structure in Strict and Hybrid Markup; XHTML by Example: A Hybrid Layout (Part 1); CSS Basics; CSS in Action: A Hybrid Layout (Part 2); Working with Browsers Part 1: DOCTYPE Switching and Standards Mode; Working with Browsers Part 2: Box Models, Bugs, and Workarounds; Working with Browsers Part 3: Typography; Accessibility Basics; Working with DOM-Based Scripts; A CSS Redesign Part 3 - Back End - Modern Browsers: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; Index Review
Even though I'm a developer, I hate books on web design. Simply put, they all seem to be written by "experts" who push their opinions and studies as hard-core truth, and woe to all who don't design based on their recommendations. I really dislike dogmatic ranting in tech books, and I must admit I was not looking forward to this book with much enthusiasm. I knew I needed to read it, but it was going to be one of those things that was "good for me", but not enjoyable. Imagine my surprise when I found myself actually liking the book! There's some really good material in here... Zeldman approaches the subject of standards-based web design from a pragmatic viewpoint. By using XHTML and CSS correctly, you can design pages that render beautifully in modern browsers, but degrade gracefully when you view them in older browsers or other devices like PDAs. The goal isn't to write pages that render exactly the same in all platforms, but to use XHTML to structure your page content, and allow CSS to control the presentation aspects of the page. By maintaining that structure/content division, other browser devices can adequately display the core content of your site without losing all page visibility. And by using CSS to control the presentation of the site, you can dramatically cut the size of your pages down, thereby reducing your overall bandwidth usage. What I appreciated most about the book was Zeldman's humor and practicality. For instance, using nested tables to control a unique page design is bad. You can do the same thing with CSS. But rather than absolutely declare tables as being bad, he suggests a hybrid approach that may use a basic table for simple layout that would be difficult to do in pure CSS. Rather than being dogmatic about it, he focuses on what's practical to get the job done. And the writing style is very humorous and enjoyable. He definitely writes "to the reader", and there are plenty of asides and jokes that make the book approachable and "real", the perfect antithesis to other web design standards books written by "experts". Conclusion
Quite possibly the best web design book I've read, and one that will completely change the way I write web pages.
Rating:
Summary: Worse than useless
Review: Here, Zeldman attempts to translate the cult of Zeldman into some of your hard earned cash. There are two kinds of reviews here. The 4 and 5 star reviews are written by the ingratiating suck-ups hoping to win Zeldman's favor. The 1 star reviews are by those with the kahones to tell it like it is - there's no content in this garbage. It is the total abandonment of substance in favor of style - and not the CSS sort you're hoping for. It's all edge, attitude and posturing, giving the suck-ups what they crave. You need a book that will show you how to do constructive things. You don't need to submit to a cult of personality, which is all Zeldman is.
Rating:
Summary: Great web design and usability book
Review: 'Designing with Web Standards' by Jeffrey Zeldman is a book about the use of standards in creating websites. Jeffrey Zeldman is a very well known web designer that manages the several very popular design websites. He also co-founded the Web Standards Project to persuade browser makers to comply with standards. I've been creating websites using HMTL since the early 90's and wanted to learn more about CSS, XHTML and so I picked up this book. This is not your traditional tutorial book - In fact, a majority of the book is spent discussing the topic of standards, which gives this book an almost academic feel. In spite of that, I still really like this book and found this book extremely helpful is designing standards compliant websites. In particular, the chapter on XHTML is well written and does a great job in explaining everything from DOCTYPE, HTML tags case, closing tags, empty tags and encoding valid XML tags such as < > and &. The chapter on structure combines CSS and XHTML to provide a complete solution for websites. I had used DIV's before but never really understood how and what they were and what was the difference between id and class. After reading this chapter, I feel like I have a very good understanding on the principles of layout and CSS. I love all the examples in the book, especially in the latter part of the book where you work through different layouts using the technologies you just learned about. I also love the section of the book that lays out and documents all the deficiencies and bugs of existing browsers and how to work around those issues. If you want to create websites that work in every browser, load quickly, consume less bandwidth and still be visually and functionally attractive, you need this book.
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