Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong!

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Expert Reviews

Making me think differently about CSS tables is Rachel's aim in Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong! As we'll see, she does a damn fine job.

Andy Clarke forabeautifulweb.com

The sooner that IE8 can be adopted, the better, and these techniques can start to get a proper working out. Who knows, there may be a whole new raft of tricks that will arise as a result of these CSS table layout properties...

Ian Lloyd accessify.com

Customer Reviews

Live, unmoderated reviews from our customers, typos and all.

"Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong" is a very misleading title. The main content of the book deals with CSS-based tables, which is not fully implemented except in a few modern browsers (and will only work under certain conditions). We have to deal with older browsers (like IE6) for a while longer, so there is no need to even try to implement CSS-based tables (professionally) at this point.

Had the title been something like "Use CSS-based Tables in Your Design" I would have bought the book for research and knowledge. I know a lot about CSS and nothing changed by reading this book. My problem is not with the authors; I have great respect for both Rachel and Kevin, but this one is a bit under par.

Over the years I have bought a lot of books from Sitepoint; this one is the first book I regret buying.

Kim Vigsbo, USA

"Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong" assumes you think CSS is "too difficult" to learn and suggests that you use the display: table property as an easy solution (mimicking table TR's and TD's). Although this is a great option, it is only supported in IE8 (Firefox and Opera support it, Safari in strict-mode only). Most of us have clients still using IE6, so this isn't a viable solution. Plus, CSS isn't difficult to learn at all - it's actually quite easy. I was surprised the authors made this assumption, and also for the price, the book is rather slim. If you're really serious about web standards and design, learn CSS, it's really not that hard. Then, play around with the display: table property as an option for more recent browsers.

Ellen, USA

I have been reading your book Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML &CSS, 2nd Edition by Ian Lloyd. It was required reading and used as a reference for a college course I am taking. It is a awesome, well written book explaining HYML and CSS in a very understandable way. I am taking this course in college so I can maintain my own website http://www.longviewbiz.com on my own with out the help of a webmaster. I will be ordering more books in the near future to supplement this one. Thanks Jim Hay owner Longviewbiz.com

Jim Hay, USA

My web designing life will never be the same again! This book was so easy to follow, i'd created my first css tables layout in not more than an hour, and catered for that "other" browser in 5 mins flat!

Thanks guys, for making my 10th Sitepoint book such a good one!

Richard Plyer, USA

Rachel and Kevin hit it out of the park with this one! I've shied away from using CSS Tables in websites for everything shoddy documentation to sketchy browser support.

But with this book Rachel and Kevin have taken away every reason not to try using CSS Tables in your next layout.

Jeffrey G. Allen, USA

This book would be awesome if Microsoft would disappear altogether with all their previous version of IE when they release a new one... But what good does it make having a cutting edge browser that allows anything if you still have to worry about IE6 and 7? If they were talking about Firefox that actually updates their products without leaving the user with old stuff sitting in their machines I would think their book is fantastic. But since I live in the real world, I still find myself coding css for IE6 and IE7 and now I will have another annoying IE release to worry about...
So I don't think this book is ahead of its time, I think this book is utterly utopian and unrealistic. Unless, of course, Microsoft decides to change the way they work, which would be awesome....

MontyCora, Brazil

I was a bit surprised when the book turned up at how thin it was. The content has due weight, and is a book paving the way, a little ahead of time. Clearly the methods suggested in the book work, indeed work elegantly; and the death of anything less that ie8 can't come soon enough for my money.

You need to buy this book early to stay ahead of the game. If you do html and css you will probably change some of the things you are doing now.

Philip Barrington, Australia

Wrong? How could it be?

I was put off by the 'cutsie' title but Rachel and Kevin led through their multi-column layout demonstrations in a truly logical fashion. Every one of my questions was answered within a few pages and I became "a believer." Indeed, I WAS doing it wrong because I was catering more than I knew to the cripple browsers that dominate the Internet rather than providing a graceful degradation (as I do for JavaScript).

Now it's time for multiple site updates ... and waiting for CSS3.

DK Lynn, New Zealand

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