Rating: 
Summary: Lousy Marketing Hype.
Review: I'm not going to state that this particular book is useless alltogether, but, I would like to warn you about sitepoint.com which to me seems to be a book publisher's equivalent of the Scientology Church. Once you download sample chapters from their website (which is actually a pretty nice thing byitself) they follow up with a relentless marketing sequence which is almost semi-spammic, while treating you like some fool who's ready to accept anything they claim, and they always claim that their books are extraordinary, great, the best, i.e. next to, or just that, perfect, and sort of show off the customer feedbacks they receive etc, basically this is about very old types of sales gimmicks that most people should be able to recognize. (Scientology? well, it seems like from reading at their website and their emails, that sitepoint is the one and the only soloution to your problems)
These books are also hideously expensive. Once after I replied to one of their marketing emails which comes as constant followups, as if you're an idiot and don't comprehend where to buy your books if it wasn't for them, the dude tried to lure me into buying their book of close to $50, with a silly 10% discount, and he used an aggressive tele-marketing style approach, like he was trying to sell just to increase his comission. Now I go there only to download free sample chapters, and encourage you to do the same. Then if you like what you see you're simply free to buy it, but if you don't, well then at least you managed to parasite one chunck of merchandize for free. Particularily in this case, with CSS, you can get SAM'S for $24.99, and there are plenty of CSS books that are much cheaper and possibly much better than this one. And there IS not that much to talk about in CSS. It's not a programming language and much tend to be overkill that's there to fill out the pages. I have to add that CSS, the basic webdesign part of the syntax, is very easy to learn. In fact you could use some online tutorial to grasp most of it. The few principles involved can't possibly occupy hundreds of pages unless the author fills half of the book with nonsensical boredom.
Rating: 
Summary: Better Books on the Market
Review: If you want to learn to do CSS tabless designs, then dont buy this book. This book is a waste of the paper it is printed on. If you want the CSS2 Reference, they buy another book or print it out from the web.The author has a lofty goal, but unfortunately did not have a good plan. Again if you want a tabless site, go to google and type in tabless css. Spend a few hours doing those tutorials and you will know more than if you spent any time reading this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Useful reference
Review: Less than a week after I received my copy, I was able to design and develop a website completely using CSS for positioning. If you work through the examples as you go, you'll pick up the technique in no time. It is especially useful if you download the code archive referenced in the book. I've tried several CSS references and this is the only one that left me able to use CSS for positioning.
Rating:
Summary: Great, easy-to-read instruction and reference.
Review: The author explains how to implement a CSS driven layout in easy to understand language. Dan Shafer has a great writing/teaching style that will make it a joy for anyone to learn about style sheets. The book offers a great tutorial and also serves as an excellent reference. It's like 2 books in one!
Rating: 
Summary: Good Introduction to CSS. Clear and Concise.
Review: The book was a useful introduction and suitable for offline reading.
I was able to learn CSS without a PC nearby (at lunch, bedtime, etc.) -- and then get good results at the office.
For someone who is new to CSS, it was a worthwhile purchase.
Rating:
Summary: High Expectations, Disappointing Delivery
Review: The title of this book - 'Designing Without Tables Using CSS' - led me to believe that I'd found a tutorial to teach me how to develop a Web site using CSS for layout. The subtitle further stoked my enthusiasm: 'A Practical Step-by-Step Guide'. Boy, was I disappointed... The second half of the book is a property reference undoubtedly culled from various online sources. The first 100 pages of the book trundles through the obligatory, tiresome overview of CSS that really has no place here. The rest of the book does focus on building a table-less site, but the author has not logically arranged his material and instead of delivering an annotated tutorial wanders hither and yon, discussing topics that sometimes pertain to the site he is trying build, and sometimes not. It seems that the author couldn't make up his mind, on a page-by-page basis, whether he wanted to write a CSS tutorial, overview, or reference. As a result, he failed at them all. The quality of the writing itself isn't bad. The author has a friendly, readable style. In places, though, his pen runneth over, and a good editor could have tightened things up. This book could have been done in half the pages if the author had focused on the tutorial and left the overview and reference for other books. A good printed tutorial on 'Designing Without Tables Using CSS' would have been invaluable. The author should have had faith in his material and written one. At $39.99, with no Amazon discount, the book is grossly overpriced. It does have one of those nifty spines that let you lay the book flat without it closing, but there is no interior color, and both the paper and the print quality are sub-standard, leading me to believe that the book was published by a vanity press instead of a commercial printer. You can judge the book for yourself by going to sitepoint.com and downloading the first couple of chapters. Read before you buy.
Rating:
Summary: The biggest problem with this book
Review: This book is OK as a general CSS guide, but it fails miserably at what it was intended for- teaching you how to create a tableless CSS layout. In other words, it's outright cheating by the author, which no doubt used such a title for the book just to distinguish itself from other CSS books. The problem is, there is less than 1 chapter discussing using CSS as layout in a book that's supposed to be all about it. You can't help but feel cheated. I knew more about using CSS to replace tables going into this book than what the author taught me coming out. The one technique discussed- using absolute positioning to replace tables- is so inadequate and poorly illustrated it pushes you back into wanting to stick to using tables. Oh yes, and half of the book is a CSS reference that's there just to fill pages and make the book appear thicker than it really is. Without the reference this book becomes a booklet, just like their php/mysql book. This is the last time I buy Sitepoint books. There's a pattern emerging here with their books- low quality print, low quality content, poor editing job, and misleading but hyped up marketing (not to mention very high prices). I'll stick with the professional publishers like O'Reilly from now on.
Rating:
Summary: Avoid this one
Review: This book is simply the worst computer book I have ever purchased. The other reviews are either friends of the author or publisher -- I really doubt they have even looked at the book. It's a commercial hack job based on much better previous books on the subject. I already use CSS for text styling and wanted to learn CSS layout techniques, which is what the book is supposed to teach. Shockingly enough, it basically glosses over layouts and rambles on about text styling! To add insult to injury, nearly half the book is dedicated to a reference on CSS 2.0, information that can be downloaded off the World Wide Web Consortium site. Another eye-opener is to look at the author's own ugly and disorganized personal site. Save your money and get Designing CSS Web Pages by Christopher Schmitt, or Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation by Owen Briggs which are both very clearly written and easy to understand.
Rating:
Summary: If it were possible, I'd give it "0" stars.
Review: This book is the one thing that my web site ( http://foxfirestudios.us ) sorely needed. I made an previous attempt of using CSS instead of the infamous >table< tag, but this book really helped me take the design of my site to all new dimensions. In fact, I directly took one of the Style Sheet files from the book and cranked it up several notches. If you want to learn how to do web page design after you found out what HTML does, go get this book!
Rating:
Summary: My strongest recomendation for this book.
Review: This book is the one thing that my web site ( http://foxfirestudios.us ) sorely needed. I made an previous attempt of using CSS instead of the infamous >table< tag, but this book really helped me take the design of my site to all new dimensions. In fact, I directly took one of the Style Sheet files from the book and cranked it up several notches. If you want to learn how to do web page design after you found out what HTML does, go get this book!
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