When I bought that book I didn’t know it was going to be so good. In less than 300 pages, Dan Cederholm shows you how to build bulletproof websites by replacing old-style (tables, spacer gifs and so) messy code with clean and meaningful XHTML and CSS. Bulletproof means flexible design and content easily readable by any device, including assistants for visually impaired people.
It’s not a book for newbies nor a CSS reference, but if you already know the basics and want to get some advanced skills, that’s your book. Each chapter starts with an unbulletproof approach to do something, explaining why it’s not bulletproof, and then a bunch of ways to accomplish the same design using bulletproof approaches, explaining their pros and cons and why are them bulletproof.
In eight chapters you can learn how to design and implement flexible text, scalable navigation, expandable rows, creative floating, indestructible boxes, meaningful structure without CSS or images, stylish tables, fluid and elastic layouts, and sum it all up in a final master chapter. Dan also gives useful references to online articles for further reading.
What I’ve personally learned is that you don’t need a lot of markup to create really good-looking designs. Forget about tons of divs and spans and start styling your pages like the pros!