Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Actually makes learning something like html code interesting, and even fun!!
Comment: This book is roughly 650 pages long and I finished it in 3 days. The material in this book is presented in a way that made me anxious to get back during my few breaks between reading it. It is conversational, speaks to the reader, and without over doing it, thouroughly lays out each and every concept from start to finish.
Included with each chapter are puzzles and tasks that really help you reinforce the concepts. Rather than rely on the reader to reinforce the concepts with their own research, they provide the exercises, code(from their website), and projects to really bring home the topics and make them stick. All this in an interesting and conversational format.
Each topic of HTML and CSS they present leaves you with enough knowledge to understand how each works. Further they provide enough information for you to build a pretty impressive site. While not a complete guide to all the different rules(think styles) that you can use in CSS, the foundation knowledge gives you a complete understanding of how, when, and where to use the rules they supply. I'm now ready to get the reference and begin experimenting with all the new rules!
They really do a bang up job focusing on the reader, I wish I could give it 6 stars.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fairwell Tony and Tess...
Comment: I just finished reading Head First HTML w/CSS & XHTML and am quite sad that the book is over!
I have previously purchased Head Fist Design Patterns, got through the first chapter and realized that the subject matter was a tad too advanced for me. I need to do a refresher on OO programming before picking it up again. But I was enchanted by the style of writting the Head First authors presented.
So I purchased Head First HTML. I consider myself fairly knowledgable in web technologies and wasn't expecting to learn a great deal more than what I already know. I simply wanted to read the book to get a feel for the style of writting. Wow, was I amazed!!!
I did learn a lot, however, I can't say most of the stuff I learned was new information. Most of the stuff I learned was about the proper way of using XHTML & CSS. And the best chapter in the book for me was Chapter 12, Possitioning with CSS. I can't tell you how many online articals I have read trying to figure out the difference between absolute, relative, fixed, and static, and how the elements are affected by them. Everytime I tried to implement CSS positioning it felt like blindfolded target practice, I could never get things where I wanted them.
Now I completely understand why pages react the way they do when you use 'float: right;' and 'clear: right;'
Yes!!! <-- a 'kick @$$' moment
The intro of the book explains why they used the style of writting they did and it was almost identical to the Design Patterns book. An informitave read.
Every chapter has puzzles and exercizes that are REQUIRED reading for the book. It states that the crossword puzzles are optional, but I highly suggest you do them. You can feel your brain shift gears each time you focus on the end-of-chapter crossword puzzles.
There are also several stories that weave in and out between chapters. I found these stories helped push me forward through the book; after all Tony and Tess, the CEO of Starbuzz Coffee, and the Head First loung were all counting on me to get their pages up and running ASAP!
This book will obviously benefit beginers more than experienced webdevs, but I think even the most experienced web gurus will find at least something new, or a new way of thinking about something. Even if you know it all, you can read it just to see how Tony and Tess meet. I think something is going on between them that isn't mentioned in the book... ;)
Another plus, this is the first Head First book to be in full color!
All in all, a fantastic trip through 'webville' !!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Applied Metacognition
Comment: Elisabeth Freeman & Eric Freeman have done a magnificent job in this entirely new approach to facilitating one's learning. I look forward to seeing a stream of "Head First" books from O'Reilly. This book is as close to living in a classroom with an excellent teacher as one can get in a book. This book is not a good reference book. Neither is it billed as a reference book. It is a superb introductory textbook, the best I've ever seen. If you know everything there is to know about HTML, CSS, & XHTML, then this book is not for you. If you are learning or teaching these subjects, I give "Head First HTML with CSS & HTML" my very highest recommendation. If you are teaching a course in a classroom, there are other books that would serve you as well. If you are teaching a distance learning course on these subjects, I think it is the best textbook you could assign. Kudos to Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, and O'Reilly Media, Inc. for this stimulating book. Kudos to David Gelernter for whatever influence he may have had on the development of Eric's knowledge of applied cognitive science and of paedagogy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: If a 14-year-old can understand this book, anybody can.
Comment: I just turned 14 a month ago, and this textbook was super easy to read. I shouldn't really call it a textbook, because when I picture a textbook, I imagine a really boring, pictureless, hard-to-read reference. This book is the complete opposite. It has pictures on just about every page, all the hard words are defined so a two-year-old could understand them, and best of all, on top of all the pizazz it dosn't stray away from teaching HTML, CSS, and XHTML.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Best way to get started with html and css
Comment: Starting at the ground floor, this book propels the reader into the world of building web pages. Unlike the other Head First books, the audience is not restricted to experienced developers, but rather it is a kind of inclusive book. In the first chapter, instructions for using a basic text editor are provided. However, by the end of chapter 6, the budding webmeister is endowed with the ability to write strict HTML 4.01 and use the W3C validator. In chapter 7, the content is transitioned to XHTML 1.0. Chapters 8 thru 12 cover CSS. The last topics covered are tables and XHTML forms.
Although this is an introductory book, the authors cover some very important topics in a thorough way, hence the bulk. Upon completion, the reader will have a firm foundation to enhance his knowledge. I felt that the explanations of how the cascade works and how the box model is used were very well done. These appear to be areas of confusion for even experienced web developers.
True to form, the Head First team has made learning HTML and CSS fun and easy. The graphics in the book are in color which is welcome departure from the usual Head First format. The code examples which are downloadable from the web are not the usual fare. While there much more to learn, like more advanced selectors for CSS and client-side scripting, you can create some accessible, attractive, useful pages that present well in most current browsers with this book, which what we all after anyway, right?
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