Ask YC: what are the best books to learn CSS and XHTML from? | Hacker News Reader

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

10 pointsgetp12 comments

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.?

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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.

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.

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.

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/

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

CSS: The Definitive Guide (O' Reily)

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