A couple of weeks ago I found a copy of The HTML and CSS book in my bookstore. It looked very visual, so I started flipping through it — and before I knew it, three and a half hours had passed and I had read/skimmed through the entire 490-page book.

I promptly bought it for a couple of reasons:

• It’s very pretty!
• I could see myself using it as a reference book. What I’d learned about HTML and CSS thus far had mostly come from googling occasional articles and reading CSS: The Missing Manual, by David Sawyer McFarland, on my ipad. My e-version is great, and goes into a lot of detail, but doesn’t quite make it as a handy reference guide.

I was happy with the fact that although much of what I was reading was already familiar, there were small details that filled the gaps of my knowledge. And the book was organized in such a way that the placement of each chapter (color-coded!) made total sense.

I lied: I actually ended up buying two copies — one for myself, and another for my boyfriend who had expressed some desire in learning web design.

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