A NOT Wrox HTML & CSS book

Last fall we published a new HTML and CSS book. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be news. But this is a very different book for the Wrox team, so different in fact that we chose not to call it Wrox but simply let people know it’s "from the publishers of Wrox." The book has gradually generated tremendous interest and incredibly positive reviews, so I’m taking a few words to share about it here.

It’s HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites and it’s written by Jon Duckett. If you’re a hard-core Wrox fan, you may recognize Jon’s name. Not only was he the author on several editions of a Beginning HTML book for us, he’s a multi-talented author and developer who’s written parts of Beginning XML and Beginning Active Server Pages - two of Wrox’s all time best sellers. And, he was an incredibily talented editor at Wrox a dozen or so years ago.

What I didn’t know at the time, was that Jon’s a great web designer and designer in general as well. Then he came to us with a proposal for a book that looks like this. At the time, I didn’t know what to do with it but given Jon’s technical expertise and publishing experience, I was inclined to give him a chance to publish this book his way with us. And I’m very glad I did. The early reviews of the book are staggering they’re so positive. The first 18 reviews at Amazon’s U.S. site are 15 five-star and 3 four-star. Or Khoi Vinh (former design director of NTTimes.com and co-founder of Mixel) saying "it’s easily the most elegantly designed technical book that I’ve ever come across." Or hundreds of postive tweets.  

But you’re a programmer or a web developer. Why would you care about an elegantly designed HTML book? If you’ve ever read a Wrox book or smile when you see 

System.out.println("Hello World!"); 

then you know this book isn’t for you. But, you know someone who needs it. That sloppy HTML code from the designer you can’t get to read Beginning HTML because it has too much code, HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites - this book is for that designer. Your friend who needs to you massage the template for their WordPress blog – HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites on their desk solves that. You know 10⁶+1 people who would never read "Programmer to Programmer" but need this book. Make your life better, send them to see the sample at Jon’s site. Have them look at the tweets like "This book looks like the "beginner’s guide" I’ve been searching for to recommend to my novice friends! "

The book’s been suddenly so popular (an overnight success that took a year to create) that we’ve actually had an impossible time keeping it in stock. And because of the unique layout, you won’t find it in your ebook reader store. But I also want to share (Jon’s idea) that there are more coming soon and what it looks like to print a book. Many thanks to our good man Paul in manufacturing who got someone at the printer to snap a few photos. The next printing was rolling through the presses yesterday and will be on the way to your favorite retailers next week. And if your friends want to see it before they buy it, in the U.S. almost every Barnes and Noble has a few copies. You can use the pick up in store feature on their site to find the closest store with copies. And the book’s page on our site has links to many other retailers with the book worldwide.

So there you have it. Jon Duckett’s HTML and CSS isn’t for you. But I’ll let you recommend it to your designer friends.