HTML5 & CSS3 Visual QuickStart Guide (7th Edition)

Want to learn how to build Web sites fast? This best-selling guide’s visual format and step-by-step, task-based instructions will have you up and running with HTML5 and CSS3 in no time. This Seventh Edition is a major revision, with approximately 125 pages added and substantial updates to (or complete rewrites of) nearly every page from the preceding edition. Authors Elizabeth Castro and Bruce Hyslop use clear instructions, friendly prose, and real-world code samples to teach you HTML and CSS

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3 responses to “HTML5 & CSS3 Visual QuickStart Guide (7th Edition)”

Amir Khan “AK”

January 16, 2014

77 of 86 people found the following review helpful

Not the best book to learn bout HTML5, December 30, 2011

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Amir Khan “AK” –

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This review is from: HTML5 & CSS3 Visual QuickStart Guide (7th Edition) (Paperback)

This is an OK book in general, the printing quality and design are nice, but the title is misleading. The title is riding this trendy HTML5 wave, but the main focus of this book is not HTML5/ CSS3. The book is about overall web design and basic HTML/CSS markup with HTML5/CSS3 coverage.

This “quick guide” is actually a heavy 550 page brick, which covers stuff not even related directly to HTML5, e.g. how to size images in Fireworks and Photoshop, how to do FTP file transfer with FileZilla program and how to “Secure a domain name and publish your site”.

Also it contains a lot of trivial stuff such as creating a link to another web page, making text bold, starting a new paragraph with P tag, or creating external style sheets file. Old school HTML4 and CSS2 topics cover about half of this brick. Yet, authors were unable to find any space in this book for many new HTML5-specific topics such as most HTML5 APIs, which are parts of HTML5 specification, e.g. Canvas, Web Sockets, Microdata, Web Messaging, Web Workers, HTML5+RDFa, etc.

Also there is no coverage for the new HTML5 syntax rules, no HTML5/CSS3 browser compatibility info, and no list of new tags.

The book does include new HTML5 markup coverage but this is not enough to claim that HTML5 is the main focus and you will “Learn HTML5 the quick and easy way” (back cover). It seems that instead of re-writing this book from scratch, authors just merged the old CSS QuickStart Guide 5th edition with HTML QuickStart Guide 6th edition providing some facelift updates. The very old Windows XP screenshots look odd in this brand new 2012 “HTML5 book”.

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C. Clark

January 16, 2014

37 of 41 people found the following review helpful

Semi-OK book for learning a little bit about HTML5 and CSS3, December 30, 2011

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C. Clark (Georgia) –

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This review is from: HTML5 & CSS3 Visual QuickStart Guide (7th Edition) (Paperback)

I’ve been working in web development (first as a hobby, then as part of my career) for the past 14 years. I purchased this book to add to my collection of books I turn to for reference. So, here are my thoughts:

OVERALL:
It’s a decent book for learning a little bit about HTML5 and CSS3. I say decent meaning it’s not great but it’s not terrible. If you’re absolutely brand new to web development, there’s plenty enough in there to give you a “quickstart”, but not near enough information for you to perfect the languages. However, if you’re experienced in development, this book will practically bore you to tears with the absolute basics of HTML and CSS markup. By the time you actually get to HTML5 and CSS3, you realize there’s not a whole lot of depth about either iteration of the language in there, and you’re ready to take a nap!

WHAT THIS BOOK IS:
It’s a learning manual. My understanding is that this series of books is used by some colleges and tech schools as course textbooks, and it shoes. There is a lot of markup (programming code) in the book, with screenshots showing what it looks like in the web browser. It doesn’t go into a lot of detail about either HTML5 or CSS3 – it scratches the surface of both and leaves you wanting to learn more. One plus about the book is that it briefly covers development for mobile devices, though there are better books out there for that, such as HTML5 Mobile Websites: Turbocharging HTML5 with jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, and Other Frameworks. If you’re new to web development and want to learn more, this is a good book for you.

WHAT THIS BOOK IS NOT:
It’s not a reference manual. A reference manual would cover everything there is to know about HTML5 and CSS3. This book doesn’t do that. To be honest, there are features of both that I was already using before reading this book, and those features aren’t even mentioned in the book. It’s not a book that someone with a decent amount of web development experience is going to find highly usable – most of what you already know is in the book, and not a whole lot of what you want to know is in the book.

UPDATE:

Going back through the book again, I’ve reconsidered my 3-star review. It’s more like a 2 star. Honestly, it’s nothing more than maybe an introduction to basic HTML and CSS with a little bit of HTML5 and CSS3, but definitely not a book that anyone with more than basic experience wants to consider. There are much better resources out there for both HTML5 and CSS3, and if you’re just learning to code for the web, I’d be fearful that this book is going to “quickstart” you in the wrong direction. Visual Quickstart has had many good books – this is not one of them.

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Robert Y. Elphick “yule”

January 16, 2014

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful

disappointing, January 29, 2012

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Robert Y. Elphick “yule” (Whidbey Island, WA) –

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This review is from: HTML5 & CSS3 Visual QuickStart Guide (7th Edition) (Paperback)

I enjoyed the previous versions of this book by Elizabeth Castro and rated them with five stars. But this one does not meet the same standard. This volume is much more difficult to understand and does not flow from the essentials on to the more advanced stuff ina logical manner. It starts somewhere in the middle as if you already know the material. The appendices that I have heavily relied on in the past up to the sixth edition are missing in this version – bad mistake. Appendices are now available on the website but do not contain the required detail that was in the previous versions and should be in the printed book. Important new elements of HTML5 are missing such as <canvas>, how can a book on HTML miss this very important element.

What happened? Did Bruce Hyslop take Castro’s text and try to update it for HTML5? If so, he failed. Bring back Elizabeth! The publisher did not do well to allow such a downgrade in what was once a great book that I used to recommend to my students. No more.

Perhaps the publisher will update and fix this volume. I hope so.

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