(e-mail address removed) wrote in
As per the title, really.
[nitpick: it's not a good idea on Usenet to ask a question in the title and
nowhere else. People may be using a newsreader that only shows titles in a
fairly short navigation bar, so the entire title may not be visible without
scrolling. No big harm done in your post, but I've seen posts that were
essentially unintelligible because the body couldn't stand alone.]
You need to qualify "newbie." Newbie to Web design in general? Newbie to
writing HTML as such rather than using a "WYSIWYG" editor? Newbie to CSS,
but expert in nearly all other aspects of Web authoring? The best book for
one such "newbie" won't be the best one for another. For example, many CSS
books have large sections devoted to helping designers unlearn bad habits
like tricky and rigid nested-table designs (and in many cases to convince
designers *why* they need to unlearn those habits). If, however, you never
picked up those bad habits, either through lack of experience or a genuine
desire to do the Right Thing, then those sections will be just fluff to you
and the book will be "thinner" to you than it would be to a designer in
need of rehabilitation.
(Note, though, that even if you never picked up the bad habits, you'll
likely find yourself eventually called up on to repair sites created by
people with them, so it's worth at least skimming over the "site makeover
stories.")
Are you looking for a reference book, a tutorial, or a "cookbook"? Do you
learn best through presentations of theory, or through lots of worked-out
examples?