A provocative title to be sure, but after reading a sample chapter on another website, I placed my order.

The book focuses on the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 8, which thanks to the auto-update in Windows will be quickly adopted. IE8 offers vastly superior CSS support, and makes many of the workarounds and hacks obsolete.

Thankfully, the authors haven't completely disregarded older browsers, and chapter 4 focuses on backward compatability with IE6 and IE7 so that you can adopt the new techniques this year.

I should mention - this is a short book. If you're expecting a 500+ pager that'll take you a month to read elsewhere, look elsewhere. If you're after a tutorial on CSS, then I recommend "HTML Utopia, 2nd Edition" or "CSS Antholgoy" by Rachel Andrew (who also co-wrote this book).

What you get though is a concise summary on working with CSS layouts and the information that you'll need to stay up to date and keep your knowledge fresh and relevant.

First off, the title is problematic and basically untrue. Then the authors go so far as to say their previous CSS books are obsolete - also untrue.

What this book really provides is an introduction to CSS-table based layout. It does a good job with that. Later in the book, it describes ways to mitigate the lack of support in other browsers - it does a fair job of that.

Despite what the authors might leave some to believe, IE6 is far from dead, and neither is IE7. If you use this layout technique, you either don't support the browsers currently used by over 60% of web users, or you keep a separate style sheet. Understand that by keeping separate style sheets, the trade is an increase in maintenance.

IE6 will be around for years. Many companies with tens of thousands of employees only support locked-down versions of IE6 on their corporate desktops.

The actual content of the book is extremely light, and a bit disappointing. It is 116 pages, including the table of contents, and you don't get to CSS tables until page 29. The numerous illustrations (pictures of web pages) are all approximately 1/2 page in size, then they stuck in comments from 4 CSS "superstars". There is a chapter on CSS3 grid selectors, which is pretty useless. I figure that there is maybe 20 pages worth of useful content here seriously padded with fluff.

The sample code is extremely simple. The book would have been better for me demonstrating more complete layouts.

When I first started using CSS for some minimal styling of basic HTML a couple of years ago, I discovered that the geeks were on a crusade to use CSS to replicate what can easily be done with tables. They had it in for tables back then for some strange reason, and that hasn't changed a bit.

They have and they will go to any length with unbelievably complicated hacks and workarounds just to mimic a simple table with CSS. Why? Because they can, because it's a challenge...and because tables are, and I quote, "evil", according to this book.

The basic information in this "book" should have been published as a web page instead -- it's basically a very brief diatribe against using tables and an argument for using CSS instead. 119 pages to show me something that I could do in literally 2 minutes with a table? No thanks...

I thought I was going to learn something new and revolutionary about CSS, but the book is a very brief and basic look at how tables might be implemented with CSS when IE8 comes out and fully supports CSS the way the other browsers do. But who knows when IE8 will be released, and since it will be years until the tens of millions of existing IE7 and IE6 users convert, this is purely an academic exercise.

This book is NOT an in-depth look at CSS, but only a discussion about how one example of a simple 3-column table might be rendered in CSS -- using about 10 times as much code.

Now don't get me wrong -- I use CSS all the time for minor formatting tweaks on my web pages. And Sitepoint's email newsletter is one of the few that I always read.

But I definitely feel ripped off after paying the list price for this book and then discovering that it's only a somewhat theoretical look at how tables might be rendered with CSS in the future. Why they didn't simply post this information on their website instead is beyond me.

I'm usually a reasonable person, but I definitely feel burned here, so hopefully others will learn from my mistake.

This book provides an excellent tutorial on how to use the css table class, part of the CSS 2.1 specification, to create page layouts. And the book makes it look easy, showing you how to use CSS tables with colspan and rowspan. To veteran web developers, it brings back memories of HTML table layouts, which are still used by less experienced designers.

However before you get too excited, you need to be aware that the css table class demonstrated throughout this book is not supported by Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 and 7 browsers. Depending which survey you read, as of October 2008, IE 6 and IE 7 browsers are used by at least 80 percent of all Internet users. At this time, the css tables class is only supported by the Firefox, Opera, and Safari browsers.

The authors talk about using css tables with the beta version of IE 8, but do not mention that IE 6 and 7 browsers do not support css tables until after several chapters. To their credit, they provide several suggestions for working with the Microsoft browsers, like setting up two different style sheets with one specifically with the older CSS specification to handle Microsoft browsers.

Most professional web developers cannot use the css table class right now. Imagine telling a client that their new site can only be seen by 20 of their potential audience.

Looking back on the history of browsers with poor CSS support, like Netscape 4.7 and IE 6, it takes years for old browsers to go away.

This book was published well before its time. I'll still give it four stars because it is well researched and written. You can buy it now and read about the future of web page layout or you can wait a few years, when IE 8 becomes popular, and put it to use.

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The title indicates the book is for people who already know a bit of CSS and that is true. However, you don't need to be an expert to get good value from the material. The author sticks to some pretty fun stuff with a limited focus, like another book of hers I reviewed a while ago (Build Your Own Standards Compliant Website Using Dreamweaver 8 (Build Your Own)).

It will not hurt to have IE 8 (beta 2 at the moment) installed while going through the chapters. Rachel Andrew is definitely excited about the capabilities of the new browser in relation to standards-based coding. A lot of the examples will be eye-opening and certainly a bit of fun for fellow cubicle dwellers stuck with older versions of Internet Explorer!

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