If I edited this book, I’d condense the first 153 pages down to about 25 pages. Zeldman goes on and on trying to convince you of why web standards are good and useful. I’d argue that anyone who buys a book called “Designing with Web Standards” doesn’t require 153 pages of convincing.

But starting on page 154, the book is detailed and useful. Zeldman continues to be unnecessarily verbose, but it’s possible and worthwhile to skim. Since this book was published in 2002, it spends a lot more time on hybrid layouts (using tables for some positioning) than newer books do.

At first I all-but-ignored the chapters on hybrid layouts. But then I discovered how insanely difficult it is to create multicolumn layouts with fixed and fluid columns (aka “The [CSS] Holy Grail”). At that point the hybrid layout chapters became my best friends. 

So, this book is another useful tool to have in your XHTML & CSS toolbox. I haven’t really evaluated the usefulness of these CSS books versus the authors’ websites. Either way, be sure to check out www.alistapart.com, www.zeldman.com, www.simplebits.com, www.accessify.com, and so on.