Web Design Playground: HTML & CSS the Interactive Way First Edition

I really enjoyed this book. I refer to it often. It covers everything I want to know – AND it explains the mechanics of what’s going on very well. I recommend it to needs a desk-side HTML and CSS reference.

I love this book. It takes you from the very basics and then walks you through the more advanced design techniques, while thoroughly explaining how everything works.I love how it shows how floats work and how to apply the clear fix to get the old fashion holy grail design to work.I am in awe of how web designers can create magnificent web designs. I really want to be able to do that. This book is helping me do that.Also, it comes with a great online supplement too! The RWD tutorials are awesome too!If you buy this book, you won't regret it!

At first, this book seemed really good. I had already finished reading Jon duckett’s html&css book cover to cover, and I was beginning to feel as if this playground book would have been better. It fully explains things in a way that made Ducketts book seem vague. I liked this book teaches html and css simultaneously, which I thought was better than duckett’s approach which was to teach html on its own first, then add a few chapters devoted to css at the end of the book.I was going right through this book, then, I began wondering if it would be as easy to understand had i not already known a bit already. Halfway through, I realize there are more and more typos, missing chunks of code in the examples, and many things are discussed without any explanation at all.It’s annoying that a lot of the examples are cut off and continued on the following page, so that I have to flip back and forth between pages to understand what they’re talking about.The online “playground” is pretty faulty and very frustrating to deal with. I ended up just practicing on text edit instead. It was a good idea, but I think they need to have someone, or a few people, test it out first, all the way through, because it just doesn’t work well in some aspects.Overall, I think it’s an ok book. It has a lot of things that are missing from the other book I read, but it also has many flaws. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m probably going to have to read many books by different authors to fully grasp web development.

I just finished reading this book from cover to cover. While the material is dense, the author does a phenomenal job at keeping your interest piqued. The Web Design Playground companion website (webdesignplayground.io) is packed with lessons, tools, and projects that have totally helped me grasp HTML & CSS.This is my 6th attempt trying to learn to code since I was 15, and I’m really, really glad that I bought this book; as it was pivotal in helping me finally achieve a life long goal.The only bummer is that I wish this author had additional books and resources for people learning to code — but that’s only because I enjoyed his work so much!

Very Easy to understand for both beginner and advanced Web developers. To me, it's my most favorite book for learning HTML and CSS excluding JavaScript. What makes this book to stand out of the crowd is because it is Interactive (every definition is shown with real example images). 100% would recommend to those who is starting to learn or is already learning HTML and CSS.

Wonderful, because at first time, Manning said that this book pages come in B/W, is naive but is a web user interface design and must be come in colors

Step by explanatory narrative content with practical application exercises laced throughout. Well done!

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of this full-color book are the examples from someone, who apparently, loves words and writing. If you learn nothing about HTML/CSS, the enjoyment of reading the text about word origins, psychology of color, and even the history of royalty makes it worthwhile.The project-based content is presented in a logical manner, and there are very useful and interesting callouts on the page margins: Learn; Remember; Master; Beware; Play. The Play callout signals the reader to go to the author's "Web Design Playground" to practice coding what was presented in a lesson.Although I did enjoy the interesting literary and historical content, I did not finish the book. Along the way, I was confused about the lesson presentation. To my dismay, I realized that certain content was missing. For example: Example 4-2-1 is followed by Lesson 4-3-0. What usually happens is that an Example is followed by a Play callout which directs the reader to the Playground. In this case -- and there are many -- the missing book content -- the 'Play 4-2-2' is found online at the Playground.Unfortunately, this kind of omission makes it very difficult to stay focussed on the lesson; ultimately, it was too frustrating to try to follow. Consequently , I never finished the book, but I did skim through it to see the other interesting example content.Lastly, what is touted as a benefit could -- as time passes -- become a detriment: the online Web Design Playground is necessary for a complete presentation of the information. The book and online site go together. If the online Playground disappears, the book is pretty much useless.Hopefully, the author and publisher will release an update, but I'm rather doubtful. (Just peruse the publisher's site and note all of the older books that haven't been updated in years!)