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This is one of the most boring books you’ll ever read.
It contains long lists of HTML elements and attributes and CSS selectors and properties.
Why bother? Why read this book?
Because it provides you with a unique opportunity to learn HTML and CSS, one that isn’t available in this form elsewhere.
Its goal is to show you the rough and raw skeleton of HTML and CSS, so that you can focus on that. Elements, attributes, selectors, properties. No explanations, no examples, no context. The raw material.
The idea is that even when you only review this book once, you will already notice things about HTML and CSS that you weren’t aware of and couldn’t have noticed otherwise.
It’s that when you thoroughly review the book, and memorize the various lists and tables, you’re not an expert web developer (unless you’ve already been one)—but have a strengthened foundation to build upon.
That foundation—the elements and attributes, the selectors and properties—allows you to explore and practice more than you would have been able to, should you have not made the effort to review this book.
Apart from using boringness for the purpose of making you a better web developer, there’s one more challenge to support that same purpose:
Although an ebook, the book deliberately uses few links.
From here on, your mission is to consult the actual, canonical HTML and CSS specifications, whenever you have a question related to HTML or CSS. Learn the spec URLs by heart, and embrace weeding out previous spec versions and unauthoritative sources by locating the latest drafts. Make this a habit; study the specifications, always turn to them first. Doing so will provide you with the most accurate information—and, again, make you a better web developer.