Rating: 
Summary: A Great Place to Start
Review: As a person with 8 years of web design experience, I know all too well that things are constantly changing. The vast majority of those years were spent creating table-based layouts. I needed something to jump start me and help me make the switch from table-based to CSS layouts. This book served as the perfect tool.In reading other reviews, where people complained about errors, I didn't run into this problem. I guess that's because of the way I use books. I simply took the code that Mr. Schmitt has in the book, downloaded the great examples on the book's site, and played with the code enough to gain a solid understanding of the principles that he presented. Coupling the book's topics with other info readily available on the web and via CSS mailing lists, creating sites with CSS has been (for the most part) a pain-free experience. My advice? I definitely recommend this book. Just take it with a grain of salt (like any other book or product) and do all you can to get the most out of it. The author definitely knows his stuff, so overall, you can't go wrong.
Rating: 
Summary: Designing CSS Web Pages
Review: As a webmaster, I can highly recommend Christopher Schmitt's book . Along with Dan Schafer's "HTML Utopia," it will give you all the information you need to build a new site from scratch or to revamp your website to make it more professional, easier to maintain and conform to W3 standards. I found "Designing CSS Web Pages" invaluable in redesigning my site.
Rating:
Summary: a lot more than CSS
Review: Christopher Schmitt has taken it upon himself to write a book that not only covers CSS, but the idea of designing websites with sanity in mind. Throughout the book, Schmitt distinguishes between good and bad things to do while you're designing a website. He talks a lot about what clients expect and that kind of things, something teachers need to go over more. He also provides coding for both CSS and Javascript, along with touching on print, audio, and more forms of media CSS can be utilized for. I read this book from cover to cover without becoming bored; Schmitt has found a way to approach a technical subject and make it interesting, as opposed to most tech books which are just straight code and very drull. I definitely recommend this for any web designer, beginning or advanced.
Rating:
Summary: a lot more than CSS
Review: Christopher Schmitt has taken it upon himself to write a book that not only covers CSS, but the idea of designing websites with sanity in mind. Throughout the book, Schmitt distinguishes between good and bad things to do while you're designing a website. He talks a lot about what clients expect and that kind of things, something teachers need to go over more. He also provides coding for both CSS and Javascript, along with touching on print, audio, and more forms of media CSS can be utilized for. I read this book from cover to cover without becoming bored; Schmitt has found a way to approach a technical subject and make it interesting, as opposed to most tech books which are just straight code and very drull. I definitely recommend this for any web designer, beginning or advanced.
Rating: 
Summary: Falls Short on Practical Examples of CSS
Review: Designing CSS Web Pages has very good chapters on the planning and structuring of content as well as designing web page layouts using liquid designs and suspension designs. The book falls short in my opinion in the actual examples using CSS. The author doesn't take the time to discuss the how and why of using various CSS rules so that the reader gains a full understanding of the CSS standard and it's use in modern browsers. Many of the examples use pre-written designs that cannot be used outside of the context in which they are used. More discussion of the proper usage of absolute positioning as well as the correct times to use em and px would have been appreciated. Overall this is a good book, but it cannot be considered a bible on the usage of progressive CSS design techniques.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Design Reference (not CSS language reference)
Review: First, let me point out that this book is NOT a language/syntax reference for CSS. There are many other (mostly larger) books and web resources that cover the technical details of CSS. With that said, I found this book to be an excellent design resource. As W3C standards become increasingly accepted, one of the key tasks for web designers is to master separation of content from presentation. XHTML, XML, XSL and CSS are all key components in the effort to streamline web code by separating the "what" from the "how-its-viewed." Designing CSS Web Pages is an excellent primer on how to retool your designs using a more sophisticated approach. The CSS examples presented in the book are simple, but effective. As a programmer, I spend most of my time worrying about data, not how it looks. The examples helped me quickly transform a project from a boring HTML table-layout into a professional-level presentation. Schmitt's examples demonstrate how to achieve many common effects such as multi-column layouts, layering and a myriad of formatting examples for text. Further, the examples are practical and approachable for most people. Many programming tutorials start with simple examples then proceed to advanced cases without covering the middle. While the exercises in Schmitt's book aren't in laid out as a tutorial, they do demonstrate aspects of CSS that most people will actually use when creating CSS-styled web projects. I found them neither too simple, nor too extravagant (CSS can create some interesting effects). This book focuses on real, practical results. Finally, the extra sections on non-web CSS usage were interesting, and in the case of the printed examples, quite useful, as found I was able to eliminate some code by simply having CSS create my printer-formatted pages (easier for the user, too). In addition, the interviews with various people involved in the web standards and design community helps highlight the effort to make development on the Internet as consistent and efficient as possible, Overall, I found this book to be a great companion as I reworked my projects to use CSS. Again, you will want to refer to a complete language reference when writing your CSS code, but I would recommend Designing CSS Web Pages as a style reference for anyone creating new web pages in the proper, content-separated manner.
Rating:
Summary: DHTML`ers Bible.
Review: Firstly, I loved this book. Very well written! As a Web Developer who specialises in writing DHTML based apps, I needed a resource that could provide me with industry raw tips to help making my CSS development that much more solid. I found the use of interviews with some of the pioneers in the web development industry to be well worth the purchase, as its great to see what the people who invent / author allot of the techniques we use day in day out feel on the subject. Great book, a must for developers and should be regarded as one of those "bible" books we place on bookshelves above our workstations! GREAT WORK CHRISOPHER!
Rating: 
Summary: Poorly written!
Review: Having read lots of other books on CSS, I bought this one trying to find that bit extra.
The book frustrated me with the unnecessary waste of pages -six pages long listings of html code when only an extract of the area you are refering to would be enough.
Some sections I had to re read and still didn't get the message.
The apendixes section are supposed to be useful tips, but I think not even beginners would benefit from it.
So much for writing compact css and xhtml, this book is a waste of paper. Please Christopher go and plant some trees!
Rating:
Summary: Far more errata than the author admits
Review: Horribly written and contains far more errata than the author admits to on his website. Rattle this inside your melon for a while: "Instead of beginning with the design as a means to get to the content, stylize the information you are trying to convey in terms of visual presentation by examining intensely at the message that got to you this point." If anyone can parse this sentence, would you mind letting me in on it? It is followed immediately by this: "Look at the tone of the material you have and how a visual design will best serve your client, your client's audience." One cannot 'look' at the tone and of course "your client, your client's audience" should be "your client and your client's audience". New Riders should be ashamed of putting this book on the market unedited. Save your money until Molly Holzschlag's book on CSS is available later in March. It is bound to be better than 'Designing CSS Webpages'.
Rating:
Summary: It opened my eyes to a world beyond HTML
Review: I agree there were many spelling typos but they were obvious and did affect the real meat of the topic. The real message of the book was how to have simple html markup styled by css in various ways. I loved the many examples,they were very nicely explained step by step with the code and the screen shot all close together. It showed how to do multi-column layout without html tables. I thought css just let you change fonts and colors but it is really so much more. I rarely read tech books all the way through, but this one I did.
| 
