Style Sheets Books

I got this book for a preasent amd tryed to play all the songs. I havent played for a long time and can figur out most music but some things ae just strange. Cornflake Girl's rythm was way of in beging it was straight 8ths from the what i thinkquart 16th 16th doted quarter. It also includes all the girls hate her and over it which are easy and fun.

Given the nature of Tori Amos's music (and slightly obsessive fans) one would think that Amsco would be interested in releasing the most accurate possible piano score to each of her recordings ... complete with vocal notation and extensive editor's notes! However, this is not always the case. Her sheet music books often provide over-simplified piano parts reduced to melody and the bass-line. Harmony vocals are nearly unheard of, and comments from the editor are virtually non-existant.

The biggest problem with many of her books is their follow-the-vocal approach to right hand notation, which typically ignores Tori's expressive playing in favor of a cut-n-paste job from the melody line along with sparse chords on the down-beats. This issue is somewhat avoided in Pink, on which Tori follows her own vocals much of the time already.

Some sections are slightly "dumbed down" from Tori's playing ("Yes, Anastasia" specifically), but the changes blend better and are much subtler here than in other books. Even the repetitive left hand parts of "Pretty Good Year" and "Icicle" are preserved nearly verbatim from the record. Bonus piano compositions "All The Girls Hate Her" and "Over It" are stunningly well-done.

However, off-setting the faithful transcriptions in this book are a few key transgressions. Foremost is the neutering of "Cornflake Girl," presented here without any of its awe-inspiring solos and with too much right-hand-play-a-long. Luckily, a brief internet search will lead you to several quality transcriptions of this gem. Equally as offensive is the trimming of the classical-style openings of both "Icicle" and "Yes, Anastasia," but the rest of each song is faithful.

Pink is a challenging album to play, and includes a few remarkable passages ("Cloud On My Tongue"), key signatures (Cb on most of "Icicle"), and ever-shifting time-signatures ("God" ... yikes). Vocals are noted with precision -- this album is largely lacking in backing vocals. The exception is "Space Dog," which *does* include backgrounds in its bridge/outro.

For the guitarists among you (of which I am one), Under The Pink offers sensible chord translations, and it includs the use of capos where chords would otherwise be painful to play. The book only ever suggests capoing up to the first fret, but you may find better options for some tunes on your own (try 6th for "Pretty Good Year").

Aside from "Cornflake Girl" every song in this book is presented in a playable *and* mostly accurate fashion. Not for the beginning pianist, but unless it comes back into print it will soon be hard to find!

Generally speaking, this book will be good for most fans of Tori who happen to also be reasonably competent on the piano. That said, these are not exactly what she plays (a bit easier, right hand tends to follow the melody), though they are in the correct key signatures. Advanced pianists who read music and have poor ears will likely be frustrated by the book because of the transcriptions, while advanced pianists with good ears likely can play a more accurate version of the songs than the transcriptions in the first place (this was my situation). Also, if you're a beginning pianist (<2 years), the difficult key sigs will likely be hard for you. Still, I'm sure the book fits a nice broad swath of Toriphiles who worship the ground she walks on, so I give it 4 stars.

I have been playing the piano for almost a decade and I find "Under the Pink" a challenging book. However, I am new to the music of Tori Amos and I have noticed tricky key signatures followed by many accidentals in her other book transcriptions. Rhythms are often complex but should be dampered if you are familiar with the original recording by Tori. "Pretty Good Year" is the only piece I can play in its entirety. This song alone is worth the price of the book. Other reviews of this book are correct. Some songs follow the vocal line in the right hand whereas some use the piano harmonies. Notable segments are removed from "Cornflake Girl" and "Icicle" but you do receive two piano instrumental bee-sides, which is a treat.

Personally, "Under the Pink" is my favorite studio album from Tori Amos. The piano is presented in a more dignified and classical manner than her other albums, which makes these transcriptions open to potential disappointment from fans who excel in piano and expect exact transcriptions.

I recommend this book for any pianist. To a beginner, you can simplify the transcriptions easily. Intermediate players should be able to play the music as written. Advanced players can probably ad lib to what is presented.

This is a great and fun book for those of you who desire to play the basic notes; however, since Tori is so talented, it is somewhat toned down (at no fault of the editors). Its a fun book - I love the beginning with the pictures of Tori and the ones she drew, as well as the discography of even the hard to find singles. Aspiring serious Tori collectors will find this useful. Songs like Cornflake Girl and Yes, Anastasia are toned down a lot, but thats b/c she is just too good to transcribe efectively. Pretty Good Year is fun to play - it's pretty easy. Great book for those who want to play the basic notes, and a lot of fun :)

As with the first book, the designs included with this one have helped make me look extremely professional among my clients. I am able to customize a couple designs, show them to my clients, and always close the deal. Plus, I learned a lot about creating tableless designs. The book also helped me to better understand the how e-commerce works. I definitely recommend this book for someone needing a quick fix to creating a graphically professional site.

I maintain most of my site by myself. I've wanted to incorporate more css into it. This book gave me the basics to understand how to do so. I, too, wish the examples were available on the cd. However, I was able to acquire the code from the publisher. I have also been able to use of those amazing designs for a second site I am working on. I'm already proud of it, and I've added only five paragraphs of text.
This is not an "advanced" web manual, as the publishers title indicates, but for the average web designer or web site owner, this book offers a high level of easy to follow direction.

I spent months trying to get the colors of my site to go down both sides of the page. When I saw that this book explained this, I bought it instantly. It did not disappoint. I now have a site that does exactly what I need it to do, with very little effort. Along the way, I also discovered a few ways to tweak my code to make it more user friendly. I have had other people in the office comment that I should have used a design or two from the book, but I went with my existing layout. Overall a very helpful resource.

Unlike most people, I purchased this book for the e-mail templates. I was able to add a sharp-looking signature within an hour. Granted, I also understood Photoshop prior to customizing the design. Along the way, I also learned how to create a basic web site, which I plan to have fully operational in a couple days. The tips on e-commerce sites will also be helpful as I continue to develop my home-based business.
Much of the technical mumbo jumbo didn't help me much. I'm not sure how helpful or hurtful it would be to a more experienced designer, but for examples of easy-to-use designs, it works great for me!

Here's my husband's review of the book:

I'm an old-school developer who has spent nearly a decade building table-based designs. This book helped me bridge the gap from the older style of design to the newer way of creating CSS designs. The advanced part didn't help me. Deconstructing various templates from the CD has really helped me understand how to build sites that rival the quality of many design firms.

Use this book once you have Pence's basic HTML book down. It will provide many new tools to spruce up your exist web programming.

It is a great hands on textbook. The author did a great job conveying concepts. Easy to understand especially talking about codes. However a lot of typing error and project data or instructional errors. Misspelled in a lot of places. Information inconsistency. Requires professional editing services. I think the author should continue to write these book. Pence is a good writer but need to make sure information, data or examples are consistent. It hinders the student when trying to do the projects.

This book teaches what it claims to teach. It teaches CSS 1 for everyday tasks you would perform. It also teaches you how to create entire layouts using CSS. I strongly recommend this book to those who have just learned HTML and want to go ahead. This book also gives overview of very basics of CSS 2.

The book is well structured and includes hints, tips and other similar helpful stuff along the way.

Of course reading a book does not really make you a master unless you think and work hard yourself as well. So if you know HTML then this shud be your next step.

This book covers basic CSS. It succeeds in offering a very gentle and fairly comprehensive overview of CSS1 features, with some CSS2. However, his constant warning about the lack of robust support for CSS in browsers is somewhat dated and tiring. The book is also full of annoying typos that at times prevent examples from working--a missing period here, a misplaced semi-colon there. Perhaps to make the chapters (called "Modules" here) independent, there is quite a bit of repetition of the same ideas in many chapters. The gradual introduction of CSS syntax and techniques also seems to incourage the author to use examples that mix CSS and traditional html in ways that are not good CSS practice, just apparantely oversimplified examples to make simple points about transitioning from HTML to specific CSS features. That distinction could be lost on a lot beginners who don't get a more solid understanding of how to use CSS to build more complete and consistent pages and websites. I therefore wish the author would have included more comprehensive examples, rather than lots of smaller out-of-context and disconnected ones. This book is not terrible. I just think you could probably do better now. I would give it 2 1/2 stars if I could.

I swear the author of this book goes out of his way to make its readers feel incompetent. While full of useful information, this book is also just as full of typos and inconsistancies.

Do you want to know how frustrating it is to try and re-create a page using the code given to you in a book, have the page come out looking nothing like the example in said book, then finding out the reason for the discrepency is because the author actually coded their example differently? Well there's plenty of opportunities in this book!

I now have to learn inline CSS which I believe might have been covered to some extent in this book. I can't remember. That's how badly I want to forget this book! I'm sticking with CSS for Dummies!

I started my search for an HTML+CSS book on Amazon, thinking that the highest-rated books would be a sure bet. I'm glad I browsed at the bookstore before buying, since otherwise I would have missed this gem of a book.

It was a good fit for me. The writing is concise, thoughtful, and light-hearted with an under-stated humor that makes you think how nice it would be to sit down and have a chat with the author.

The order of the presentation is very logical, and the integrated teaching of a little XHTML with the CSS to go along with it in every chapter was exactly what I wanted. I had a sense of orderly, steady progress while reading along and doing the exercises, moving from one "baby step" (my word choice) to the next.

What this book teaches, you will learn well. It gives as much depth and coverage of HTML and CSS as I think a single-volume primer should: not too little and not too much. I don't feel intimidated now at all, to pick up Eric Meyer's CSS books or to read through the HTML of popular web pages, to see how they tick.

Sure, there are errata--those are corrected on the author's website. I also wasn't thrilled with Sybex's typesetting and choice of inserts at the front of the book. There are quibbles to be found once or twice in every chapter, but overall this book seems to be a product of experience and careful attention to the presentation.

This book isn't as flashy as some, but it's solid, acceptably up-to-date, and worthy of your time. I recommend it especially for beginners who tend to procrastinate when seeing large tomes and who want to start small but have big ambitions... like me!

After learning HTML a few years ago I decided to write my new website using CSS. This book was to be my introduction to CSS, and I am sorry I spent my money on it. Learning should be fun, and this book is not. It has good information, but such poor layout and so many errors in it I hardly know where to begin. When I'm learning something new and an exercise doesn't turn out right, it's natural for me to assume I've made a mistake. After literally hours of fighting with the code, I find out it's because of a typo in the book!

For example, in chapter 7, learning how to make links, I couldn't get the links from the "blue" page to link to the "yellow" and "green" pages. I followed her instructions to the letter, reading the same paragraphs over and over. Then, after a frustrating hour, I tried experimenting with other things. Turns out, I needed a "./" before the path to the linked file. The book said to use "../" . One "dot" off, and it nearly drove me crazy! Now, this solution isn't consistent with the code for links on the "index.html" page, and they "should" be the same, but they aren't, and I'm more confused than ever.

If this was the only error, I'd not complain, but the book is simply riddled with sloppiness in the details. The book contains a CD for the reader to use to duplicate the exercises in the book. In chapters 4 and 5, the book uses a page about a bridge to teach formatting, inserting images, etc. The book shows page screenshots where the filler text is in English. The pages from the CD sometimes show the filler text in Latin. The author tells the reader where to insert a bit of code in the English text, but the reader working with the page from the CD is left to figure out where in the Latin text is the same place to insert the code. These are just two errors, and there are so many more.

The book uses small fonts and has a lack of whitespace. There are a lot of tips and notes that, while useful to know, interrupt the instructions and break my train of thought. The screenshots are not aligned well with the text. It would have been helpful to actually have arrows pointing to the parts of the screenshot that the code pertains to, but that's not possible because the screenshots on the pages often pertain to text on other pages.

I recently saw "More Eric Meyers on CSS" and was struck by its' beautiful user-friendly layout. It makes learning almost effortless. It made me regret my purchase of this book.

I know that this is written by someone very knowledgeable (at least for HTML and related web technology) right from the beginning when I read the first chapter. I learned HTML 8 years ago and didn't keep up with the latest version for a while; I read about CSS on the web, but never felt like mastering it, until I read this book. She is good in pointing out all the interesting details.

I definitely recommend this book strongly.

Virginia really teaches those of us who were weaned on tables how to approach the way of thinking about CSS based design. An excellent reference, I look at this every day. If it weren't for Virginia's clear thought process and method of thinking, I doubt that my web design business would be anywhere near keeping up with the times.

This is a good book, but I don't think it was proofread. There are numerous gramatical errors that are annoying. More than I have ever seen in a technical book.

a very informative treatise on an "Old World" art that few know how to do in todays industrialized and technological society. Remarkable, Very easy to read and follow. Will become your reference when need arises!

The book is an interesting history of coppersmithing, but too much is relating to boring the apprentice. The style of the book is in the old English wording (late 1800's) which is a slow read for today. The needs of the day were well explained but don't relate well today. Most current artist keep their skills a secret, so you will be looking for more.

This book I believe deserves much praise. The Astragal Press have here reprinted a book written in 1893 which highlights skills that in my part of the world have essentially disappeared. With the technological progress that has sweep across the western world since this book was written you would I suspect have to travel to India, Iran or maybe Eygpt to see this sort of hand skill in use today.
In the authors day copper was the metal of choice for making the Glue Pots and Tea kettles, the Stock Pots, Frying Pans, Tallow Coppers and Brewing Coppers to name just a small aray of items listed in this book. Today the vast bulk of these would be manufactured from either Stainless Steel or may Aluminium.
So the author desribes with words and some outstanding drawings how these items could have been constructed during this period. Pattern Development of some of the items is also covered. The universal subjects of Soldering and Brazing do get good coverage as does the subject of Tinning a copper to be used for cooking purposes. He has included formula for working out some of the blanks required to start from and some good descriptions of the hand tools and stakes etc. to form the work with and on.
A previous reviewer has said that this book is mainly a historical text and of little practical worth today. This is valid only up to a point. It is my belief that this book does have a practical worth and anyone who is looking at this book will be looking precisely for what this book delivers on. That is that this book is about crafting and the art of working metal. The skill to plastically deform a metal to a desired shape is very well covered here and I think that there is a movement, even if a small one, to relearn some of the skills lost in the last few decades with the march of technology. I work in a sheetmetal fabrication shop and no one has these skills anymore and some will say "so what!". But when a job comes in with compounding curved surfaces it is to books from this generation that we must return.
The book itself has been well manufactured though I would have perferred a hard cover. Both the Table of Contents and the Index are clear and concise.
I therefore give this book 5 stars and believe that if you want to do some serious metal working in your job or at home as a hobby then this book will serve you very well.

This book shows how to make every kind of pot, pan, still, kettle, teakettle or brewry gadget that you would want to make out of copper. Big and small. Household and industrial.

Although, dealing exclusively with copper, most of the techniques shown can be applied to other common sheet metals.

This book doesn't deal with raising from the whole, as in silversmithing, but with piecing something together, and using dovetail joints along with soldering to make a whole.

Lots of woodcut illustrations and concise text. There is some obscure and obsolete terminology; such as 'spelter'. Do you know what that is?

Spinning, dies, power presses and such are not delt with in this book. Neither are the common sheet metal gadgets and tools, such as slip rolls, brakes, shears, roll crimps, and such. Hand hammering, stakes, charcoal firepots; that is what you will find in here. This is like blacksmithing for copper.

If you are interested in working with copper sheet, or brass,I have not seen another book out there as good as this one. Especially if you want to make utilitarian objects. The book is packed with information.

If you are interested in artistic copper forming you will still find the basic techniques in here as to how to work the copper. But there isn't much in the way of artistic design, like how to make a copper rooster weather vane.

This is a book which may be of historical significance but is of little practical value today. It was originally published in 1894. Do not get this as some kind of how-to guide or you will be disappointed.

Thanks to blogging, I've learned the very basics of HTML. However, I wanted to learn more before I tackled Dreamweaver. This is what I learned.

-How to colorize a background without messing with the css file.
-The difference between block and inline tags
-Controlling line breaks and spaces
-Preformatting text
-How to create a variety of lists
-Breaking lines around an image
-How to set up a CSS page
-How to adjust the leading (line height) of a paragraph
-How to format tables
and more.

If you're a rank beginner to website design, you'll learn a lot but not everything. Thankfully, there are many free resources online that will help you. If you're a visual learner and are willing to spend the money, this is a decent investment because you can go back and watch what you didn't catch the first time.

What you get out of this is more than worth the price. It took me from a very rough HTML coder to the level where I know understand the code the Dream weaver places when I do something in the WYSIWYG and has set a good foundation for me to start looking into other aspects of web development (CSS, server-side languages, etc). On thing to note is that if you are going to take this course and never take it again, you can get in on a subscription basis from other vendors and save some $$

One of my loves is playing the piano. And this book is a good book to learn the songs you love on the instrument you love. So I would recommend it. Plus it comes with an array of different types of songs so yo uget a little of everything. Enjoy. I know I will be.

Since I play a clavinova.....music that will be able to cross over into "lots of instruments" sometimes needs to be easier than harder in the presentation. This book allowed me to use the music to make a variety of versions using the different instruments that the clavinova affords me so that I can play them in a variety of styles.

I've been studying writing in college for 3 years now and this is the best book I've come across because it is super explanatory. The book probes your mind and gives you "universal" questions to ask when writing about anything. It really spells out the writing process in an easy to comprehend way.

This is an well-organized book that offers advice to a writer in a college level course, or as a reference tool for other writing classes. Although the book is somewhat dated in content, it is still a good source for information. Each chapter is subdivided into different categories, which make it easy to reference material. The beginning chapters deal with choosing a topic and how to analyze literature. The analyzation of material is split into different categories such as literature, fiction, drama, and poetry. Under each section there is a division that helps in the definition of `good literature.' For example, the literature is split into sections of literature as language, aesthetic, fictional, true, expressive, and affective. Under each section in the chapter there is a description of what the section entails and how the writer can distinguish whether the work in question applies to the rule or doesn't apply. Chapter seven contains a list of the different types of criticisms that are usually used in literature, such as Historical Criticism and Biographical Criticism. This chapter has a description of what the type of criticism means and how it is applies to literature of different genres. Chapter eight helps in the evaluation of literature on the basis if it answers some of the 13 questions listed and described in the chapter. The next two chapters help in the production of good essay content. There is, as in most books, a section on how to document sources, how to handle quotations, and the format of the paper. The last chapter contains six sample essays for the writer to look at and see how all the parts of this book are contained within a single piece of writing. Overall, I found this book to a helpful guide or source book. If unsure of something, it is an easy guide to look back at and find a definition and how to apply it to a paper. Although it is not the only book that provides this information, I believe that it presents it in such a way that it is user friendly for beginning writers.

a very useful book intended to gather the best songs.

If you're looking for fluff and hype and "how to" create cascading style sheets, don't buy this one. If you're looking for a compact yet complete reference book endorsed by W3C, you've found it. Cascading Style Sheets are worth implementing to save valuable programming time as well as enhance the visual impact of your web pages. This particular book focuses on CSS1 which is plenty for now; there are too many incompatability issues to start using CSS2 just yet. I'll keep this book on the shelf that I can reach while my hands are still on the keyboard. I'm certain the pages will become dog eared.