HTML/CSS Book Reviews + resources

What I’ve been consistently using:

Books I’ve used (oldest to most recent):

Beginning HTML5 and CSS3 for Dummies

Overall, this book is good. It has nice lesson files for everything, but if you’re familiar with the material, it can get tedious very fast.
Also, the book has a huge amount of potentially helpful links
This was a good refresher on HTML/CSS; I got bored after doing multiple w3schools tutorials, and this was a tad more interesting
However, this book alone was not enough to get me completely comfortable with HTML/CSS
After this book, still did not understand all the CSS selectors and the power of divs. I did learn about pseudo-selectors though.
This book is okay as a reference, with all its facts and info
I would not buy, or read again. It was tedious to complete, and the info is very easily look-up-able.

HTML5 for Masterminds

This was really good! It paved the way for me to make my first complete website.
Instead of giving a brief overview of many things, it focused on the things that really mattered and what I would often use.
Right from the get-go, it gave good examples of a well-constructed website in terms of HTML and using the new HTML5 tags like <header> and <nav>
Introduced CSS3 animations and effects.
Covered the CSS flexible box model, which was a bit confusing for me, but intriguing. The book says it has great potential, but I haven’t looked into it enough to agree or disagree.
I would definitely read again (still reading). Might buy a used copy. The book also covers different APIs and JavaScript, which I would find useful.

Building Websites All-in-One for Dummies

This book covers even more topics than the first Dummies book I read. It’s a very big book, around 700 pages, covering things like how to interact with clients, how to gather feedback for websites, how to plan website meetings, how to lead a website team, different code-generating tools, software like Fireworks, Photoshop, and a lot of Dreamweaver.
It covers basic HTML, with one section about a lot of the new CSS3 features. I was familiar with the material, so I ended up skipping/skimming a majority of the chapters.
The most helpful parts I found from this book were about media queries, facts about jQueryMobile vs. mobile-friendly CSS, and SEO.
Otherwise, I would have died of boredom had I attempted to read this from cover to cover, as I know my basics.
This would work better as a first book to read for fundamentals. The range of topics is more suited to someone building a large-scale website or a multitude of different web projects.
I might borrow this book again if I needed more information on one of its topics, but I would rather get a different book devoted to one thing, rather than this book, which touches upon many. Too many, in my opinion. It really does feel like 7 different minibooks combined into a huge book.

HTML & CSS design and build websites

This book is a piece of art. It’s very pleasant to look at, being full color and just beautifully constructed. It gives you a good feeling, just flipping through, because of the excellent use of colors and formatting.
Like HTML5 for Masterminds, this book cuts down to what you really need for a website. Everything I’ve read so far is immediately applicable. I also feel reassured that this book was written by a designer – the appearance of the book itself speaks testimony.
The author does a precise job telling you what’s deprecated and what’s new, and covers the basics while keeping it interesting for those who are experienced.
It’s definitely a book I would consider buying for future reference and good feels (it seriously is fun to just flip through)

I hope this was helpful! I’ll add reviews as I peruse books.

Adventures