Rating: 
Summary: Extrememly deceptive title...
Review: This book should have been titled something like "CSS and CSS 2 Introduction". It has almost NOTHING to do with using CSS instead of tables. In fact, it's only covered in one portion of the book, and just barely touched on. Further, it gives little to no practical methods of using CSS instead of tables. In a book such as this you'd expect to see examples of layouts that would normally use tables and then step by step guides on how to make it CSS. Not so.This book is a good overview of CSS, a TERRIBLE book on using CSS instead of tables.
Rating: 
Summary: Eh. Great Introduction. Lacks in the Tutorial
Review: This is a great book as far as getting started in CSS and learning about all of the technical intricicies and browser issues so its nice to have. However if you're a learn by example kind of person,as I am, dont buy this assuming its going to walk you through creating an entire site or even an entire page using CSS. It really shows you how to create the elements of ... as pieces but doesnt really explain how to put them all together. That's something to figure out on your own I guess. If Mr. Shafer had just walked me through how to piece it all together I would have been much more pleased. I should note that although they don't really "Hold your hand" through it the source code is provided and is useful.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book, easy to understand.
Review: This is a great book for understanding CSS. I'd studied quite a bit online but could never get a decent concept of how to use CSS for positioning. This book in less than an hour has already increased my knowledge ten-fold. It also really helped me understand more fully the concepts I already understood pertaining to applying styles to elements. It reads well, not overly techie. If you are looking to learn CSS, and practical applications of it, I strongly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't believe the title
Review: This is an okay book as an introduction to CSS and what would be possible in CSS-2. Unfortunately, support for CSS-2 is extremely limited, so you'll often read about some cool trick you could do if browsers supported it. While some people may like that, this doesn't help people who are looking to create practical web sites today, not in 2 years. The book also barely scratches the surface of layout using CSS instead of tables. The author barely tells us how he did the sample site, and shows no other examples of this technique and variations on it, or ways around common problems. The book spends much more time on introducing all the specifics of using CSS for font properties instead of layout. The CSS-2 reference in the back may come in handy in 2 or 3 years when designers can actually use it. The author's style is also not fun to read. He spends more time telling us what he's about to talk about than on the content itself. The book is honestly just a collection of lots of CSS stuff you could learn from plenty of free web sites, ...There's no originality here at all. Actually, if you read articles online long enough, you can learn much better stuff quicker than you could from this book. Finally, the book costs [dollar amount] and is printed on regular stock paper in black and white. For ... more [money] you can get Eric Meyer's incredible book "Eric Meyer on CSS," printed in full color on glossy paper, showing examples much more clearly and step by step, and with lots of very practical and original advice. I got better information on CSS from one chapter in my beginning web design textbook than from this book.
Rating:
Summary: Worst book I have on my self.
Review: To put it simply, this book sucks. I have many books on CSS and this is by far the worst. I will never buy a book from Sitepoint again. It has to much filler and very little info on what the title says it is (Designing Without Tables). Forget this book.
Rating:
Summary: HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS
Review: Very well-written and intelligently paced.
The CSS2 reference alone is worth the money!
Rating:
Summary: Superb introduction to using CSS in web design
Review: When people first start writing websites, they will inevitably use a WYSIWYG editor, which will inevitably use tables for layout and positioning. This is horribly horribly wrong, and NOT how the Internet is supposed to be designed. For those of you who have been into web programming for a bit longer and no the basics of CSS (i.e. using stylesheets) but need a clearer quide (which is easier to understand than W3!) then this book is certainly for you. Importantly, it assumes little or no prior knoweldge of CSS. It explains many many important concepts in great detail in particular the major page elements and all about positioning. The whole book is based around a case study with full source code so you are able to see the techniques implemented in real time. However, even if you are a zen-CSS master and know all there is to know about table-less CSS driven sites, then this book is still of use to you as it has one of the biggest most complete reference guides in the back. All in all, this is an excellent "starter for 10" into the world of CSS. P.S. If you don't know what CSS is (aka Cascading StyleSheets) - BUY THIS BOOK!
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