This book is for Web developers who are ready to roll up their sleeves, and get to work on creating standards compliant Web pages. It isn’t just a nuts and bolts book, however; author Dan Cederholm does an excellent job of explaining the whys along the way.

The book contains two main parts, followed by a well-organized and functional index. Part 1 focuses on making sure the page markup addresses the structure of the page, so the presentation can be controlled in one or more cascading style sheets (CSS). Part 2 focuses on creating style sheets, to present the content in an interesting and appealing format.

Each chapter addresses a topic by presenting several methods of accomplishing the task at hand. The first method is usually the least desirable method to use, with each subsequent method improving on the previous one. There are some situations, however, where there is no one best solution. The pros and cons of each method must be evaluated, to determine what is best at the moment. And there are times when it is best to abandon a standard, because it is not adequately supported by current browsers.

Each chapter closes with an “Extra Credit” section, applying the current topic and methods to more challenging situations. Of course, like any other recent book on Web standards, the author has to address ways to work around poor standards implementation, especially by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

One set of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tags used inconsistently is the heading tags. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendations (which are really standards) state developers are to use the <h1> tag for the top-level heading, followed by the <h2> tag for the next level heading, and so on. This structures the page, so when a visitor using assistive technology accesses the Web site, his or her device will be able to present the page headings to let the visitor know how the page is organized.

Two misconceptions about using standards compliant HTML are: you can’t use graphics, and tables are evil. Chapter 3 helps address these myths. The author points out that using tables to display data is part of the Web standard. He explains the different tags to use, and how CSS can style the table. One of the techniques he discusses is using graphics for a background image, and defining it in a style rule. This adds interest to the page, and also makes it easier to update the image without editing all of the pages.

Chapter 9 focuses on minimizing HTML markup. Even in standards compliant code, there may be all sorts of unnecessary tags and class attributes. It’s very easy to add a class attribute to an HTML tag, to make sure it can be targeted for styling. But, to minimize code, look for structural tags that can be used, instead of adding a “div.”

Part 1 addressed what style rules to include; Part 2 begins with a chapter on applying CSS, namely on how to get the semantic markup to use the rules. This is where being organized can be very important. You need to know how style rules are applied, based on where they are located, and how to hide some rules from noncompliant browsers.

Developers are not limited to using one style sheet per Web page, nor are they limited to either external or embedded styles. A Web page can include one or more external style sheets, styles embedded in the “head” section of the page, and inline styles. While the last two techniques are useful during development, they have drawbacks when used on the final version of a page.

It is easy to use multiple style sheets created for specific situations and page layouts. Later in the book, chapter 15 explains how to use id attributes in the “body” tag to set the page format to use either a two- or three-column format. Creating multi-column layouts using CSS can be very frustrating for new developers, as well as developers experienced in using CSS. This is mainly driven by how well modern browsers implement CSS standards. Chapter 12 does an excellent job of leading the reader through the techniques needed to position content using CSS, with no layout tables needed.

The last chapter provides descriptions of resources available to help developers implement Web standards and CSS. Probably the best example is CSS Zen Gardens (http://www.csszengarden.com). It shows how the same semantic markup can be used to create different interesting and beautiful Web pages, by only changing the style sheets.

This is a book for every Web developer interested in keeping up-to-date with recent developments in applying Web standards, while creating attractive and functional Web sites.