Ask YC: what are the best books to learn CSS and XHTML from?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=128713

by getp • 18 years ago

10 12 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Today I almost bought the Agile Web Development with Rails book, until I remembered some posts here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=104745 a.o.) that you should The Rails Way instead. So now I'm getting that one :-) But also, I'm looking into the frontend of developing web apps, so what would be the best choices for books on XHTML, CSS, etc.?

iamdave• 18 years ago

Dan Cenderholm's "Bulletproof Web Design" is a must read.

http://www.simplebits.com/publications/bulletproof

xirium• 18 years ago

I advise people to get the oldest books possible. The reason for this is that the books don't get thicker but they have more topics to cover and tend to concentrate on the most whizzy features. If you get an old book then it'll cover the basics in more detail.

Elepsis• 18 years ago

This might make sense in some cases (i.e., C programming), but I don't really know that it does in the case of HTML. I wouldn't want waste time learning, in this day and age, how to make table-based layouts that are strictly compliant with the HTML4 spec.

getp• 18 years ago

The HTML Dog looks pretty good, right? http://www.htmldog.com/book/

m0nty• 18 years ago

Recipe-book style, light on theory but good for solving problems:

http://www.sitepoint.com/books/cssant1/

mdemare• 18 years ago

No idea what there is to learn about HTML, it's CSS that's the problem. I've never found a resource that explained CSS well.

CSS still surprises me almost daily. I'll be probably fluent in Haskell before I ever get CSS. What would really help me is having the source code of a well-written, high-level CSS rules engine - written for educational purposes, not for performance.

showerst• 18 years ago

It's very much paced towards a beginner, but I know a lot of people who love the head first HTML book: http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-HTML-CSS-XHTML/dp/059610197...

If you're more advanced or just looking for a brush up i second Dan Cederholm's book aimdave recommended.

Hexstream• 18 years ago

Personally I learned HTML and CSS from the specifications and some experimentation while doing a project... I don't see why you'd need books to learn those.

rksprst• 18 years ago

http://w3schools.com/ is all you need, the best way to learn is just start working and then look up anything you don't know how to do.

kajecounterhack• 18 years ago

CSS: The Definitive Guide (O' Reily)

joshstaiger• 18 years ago

I like CSS Mastery:

http://www.amazon.com/CSS-Mastery-Advanced-Standards-Solutio...

It does a great job of calling out CSS bugs in specific browser versions and describes how to work around them.

ratsbane• 18 years ago

I've bought several CSS books over the years but the only reference I use consistently is the actual CSS specification from the World Wide Web Consortium: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/

Also, it's free and you can keep a copy of the PDF on your computer and search it when you need something specific. It's more conversational and has more illustrations than most internet spec documents. However it doesn't tell you what parts of CSS aren't implemented correctly by specific browsers or give thorough examples.

The W3C HTML and HTTP documents are really good too:

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616.html

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/

Ask YC: what are the best books to learn CSS and XHTML from?

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