Rating: 
Summary: Learn DHTML & CSS in blazing fast-forward mode!
Review: Another brilliant addition to the Visual Quickstart Guide series! You simply cannot be a web developer and NOT be in possession of this and at least a half-dozen other titles from this series! Since I own over 20 Visual Quickstart Guide titles, I feel qualified to rank DHTML & CSS for the WWW by Jason Cranford Teague among the top 5 best-of-series, right up there with Elizabeth Castro's HTML 3.2 & 4.0, Castro's PERL & CGI for the WWW, Debra and Eric Ray's UNIX, and lastly, I'll cheat by treating PHOTOSHOP 4, 5, 5.5 and 6 as one book because of the consistent and informative efforts by authors, Elaine Weinmann and Peter Lourekas. (I hear the DREAMWEAVER 4.0 by J. Tarin Powers is pretty awesome as well!) In my experience, all, but for a couple of marginal misfires, are excellent. Be forewarned, however, the Visual Quickstart books are not project or tutorial driven. These are the books to use AFTER you've cut your teeth on the application tutorial-- when you're out there in the REAL webdev world, building stuff, even if it's your first time. These books are worth 100 times their weight in gold! Think of a cookbook where brevity is key and success is guaranteed if you follow each step as directed. Anyway, enough free advertising for Peachpit Press and back to DHTML & CSS by Jason Teague! The writing is clear and concise. All of the style and script examples are useful immediately and relevant in the real world of webdev. Each step of every script or style is prefaced by referenced snippets of code so you know exactly where you are in any particular script, which can sometimes be pages long. Teague is also a master at anticipating problems you might encounter when deploying some of his examples. So, he includes on-the-spot browser-compatibility info, helpful hints and browser-specific workarounds, just in case woeful rendering in a misbehaving browser gives you fits! (and because he probably doesn't want to invite litigation for property damage when you throw a brick at your computer out of frustration when you can't get a script to execute properly in say, Netscape V4.715367894508061182745? Or a stylesheet doesn't render as you intended in Opera V2.0 or Explorer V3.0-if at all!!!) Another credit to the author is that he never leaves out steps relying on the happenstance that his readers maintain a preconceived level of knowledge about what might be considered obvious (which is all relative anyway, depending upon whether the reader is left or right-brain hard-wired!). He shows respect for his readers by leaving nothing to chance, while appealing to all levels of audience technical capability. In short, it doesn't matter whether you are a newbie or a seasoned coder. You WILL find a treasure trove of useful information and a bountiful number of useful scripts and style examples for just about anything interactive you could ever hope to add to your web site. GUARANTEED! And, now? TA-DAH!!! I saved the best for last! The prized characteristic of this book? When you need to zero in on a particular task, style or script, the index is magnificent! The subject, phrase or task you are looking for in the index corresponds directly to a page containing the information you need. So when you go to the page noted in the index, THE INFORMATION IS REALLY THERE--FIRST TIME AROUND!!! No guessing games or a dozen hit-and-miss trips back to the index to unlock some kind of elusive clue or national security clearance code known only to the author, that reveals the secret location of the information you seek, the exposure of which carries the obligatory condition of having to kill you! The index, on its own merit, is quite the workhorse that more than justifies the modest cost of the book in time saved, BEFORE you ever key in the first character of code! No, I'm not a representative for Peachpit Press, nor do I play one on TV!!! I'm just a hardworking web developer trying to keep up with ever-changing technology in the blazing speed of internet time. Anyone who contributes to the shortening of my learning curve is my best friend for life! Thanks, Jason. Your book rocks!!
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of useful tricks
Review: I inherited lots of old "browser-sniffing" code with hard-coded style stuff, so this book was timely.
I agree with the other reviewer that some of the code could be more succint. Tables would make more useful examples than Alice in Wonderland.
Rating: 
Summary: outdated and needlessly complex
Review: I think the previous reviews all refer to the 2nd edition. The third edition out in 2004 has a great deal more focus on DHTML navigation and Mozilla-only code. The navigation scripts he provides shows his complete grasp of both CSS and javascript. Unlike the examples in sites like javascriptkit.com and dynamicdrive.com which are written by javascript gurus, JCT's scripts are hybrid models of both advanced CSS and javascript. The code and mark-up combination are so tightly written, it is absolutely necessary that every web developer gets this book. You won't find code like this anywhere else on the web! Also, JCT provides excellent examples of code that shows the new directions taken by the Mozilla development team. He reveals a way of making rounded corners using only a few lines of CSS, and no graphics. My one caveat is that the editors of JCT's 3rd edition did a piss-poor job of copy-checking. On the second chapter, one of the paragraphs in the tips section is duplicated word-for-word. And on page 105, the example is missing a period, thereby making it completely useless unless you spot the mistake. These are only the ones I spotted as I flipped through the book -- I am certain there are many more errors. Buyer beware!
Rating:
Summary: DHTML and CSS: Clearly written, no fluff, good basic book.
Review: Not a comprehensive book, but really easy to read. The information is organized and presented clearly from both the architectural and visual standpoints. Good reference, and good learning tool. It could be improved by adding some summary table "cheatsheets" on browser rendering differences, bugs, etc., and a few more examples, but I recommend it for begining and intermediate designers.
Rating:
Summary: Good CSS and DOM coverage, Lousy JavaScript Coverage
Review: Teague knows his CSS well. This book provides one of the best introductions to CSS on the market. And Teague's coverage of the DOM is easy to grasp, too.
But in the second half of the book, devoted to JavaScript, Teague's head starts to revolve ever so slightly. Based on what I read in the book, Teague doesn't know JavaScript well enough to write clean, modern scripts, and he has trouble explaining what little he does seem to know.
I'm not sure why the publisher felt it necessary to bloat this book by including JavaScript in it. One of their other QuickStart Guides is devoted entirely to JavaScript, and it's a great book, written by an author (Tom Negrino) who knows his stuff. This book should have stuck to CSS, period. Then the publisher would have had an invaluable trilogy of Web books, starting with Castro's XHTML, followed by Teague's CSS and Negrino's JavaScript.
Rating:
Summary: Really Good Book!
Review: The books conversational style helped me follow the writers concepts much more easily than the overtly verbose yet impersonal books that used to clutter my desk and bookshelves. I think anyone with prior knkowledge of HTML and Javascript who really wants a QuickStart {pun unintended} to DHTML and CSS should snap up this book. It not only shows you what to do but actually takes the time to illustrate what not to do! I have found that really tie breaking and refer to it's companion website http://www.webbedenvironments.com/dhtml for it samples, updates and new tips. The site also has tips on other topics that i've found very interestiing.
Rating: 
Summary: Full of errors and typos
Review: The editing and proofreading processes in publishing this book seem to have been bypassed altogether. This book is ripe with errors and typos that will confuse the unfortunate CSS neophyte. It appears to be another example of a web-development book that was rushed to press well before it was ready. I plan on returning the book for a refund.
Rating: 
Summary: Reasonable introduction to HTML and CSS
Review: There wasn't enough on Javascript to really justify the DHTML in the title. Though the book is a reasonable introduction to HTML and CSS. On the positive side I thought the organization was good, the text was easy to read, the use of red to hilight important code fragments, and the reference section were all very good. On the downside I thought the Quick Start format made the book a little hard to read. And the Alice in Wonderland examples weren't always the most appropriate way to illustrate each point. I would have rather had examples that were closer to what we would see in the real world.
Rating:
Summary: THE RULES for implementing CSS/DHTML successfully
Review: This book is required reading for anyone who wants the title of web design guru. It is required that you have a working knowledge of HTML and Javascript prior to reading this book, as it is designed around the much more advanced topic of CSS/DHTML. People with little knowledge of Javascript should get a Javascript tutorial (I recommend SAM's teach yourself...) first. Mr. Cranford-Teague has taken the trouble to explain both the documented use and the real-world implementation of CSS. He has taken away much of the testing that is often required when designing against the CSS2 specification. (He makes mistakes so you don't have to!) His quick reference appendix of what-style-elements-work-where should be the most heavily thumbed pages of any book in your HTML design library. The book is a quick, delightful read with clear, textbook-class examples of every aspect of every CSS specification out there, along with a perfect cross-browser Javascript model that should be the industry standard. The book is small, and cheap enough to keep up with the latest browser platforms. I own all three versions, and so do all my associate developers!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book, far better than "The Definitive Guide"
Review: This is definitively the best presentation I've seen for beginners and intermediate users. Besides a great reference, it goes beyond the usual "what it is" and gets into how to actually do things you're going to want to do. Each CSS facility is described, an example is provided, and has a quick-reading chart showing which browsers it is (or is not) compatible with. Excellent. But that's only half the book - the author then goes on with a great introduction to Dynamic HTML, again in his clear, concise style. By the end of the book, you should easily be up on the next plateau with your CSS and DHTML skills. I didn't mind the low price, either.
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