This is a very good book for beginners. It has a nice two-page layout for each topic. Description and instructions on the left page, accompanying images and figures on the right page. The Independent Challenges at the end of each chapter are good practice as well. Those challenges tell you what to do to edit a website, but don't tell you the specifics of how you do it, which makes you think and actually helps you learn better. The reason this gets four stars instead of five is because it doesn't go into depth very much. There's a whole chapter (16 pages, half of which are figures/images) on JavaScript, and I am still no closer to getting it to work correctly. The same goes for some other html elements and CSS. Like I said, great for beginners, and a decent head-start, but to build websites with confidence and far fewer errors, this book just does not spend enough time explaining things it should. Overall, I would definitely recommend though, especially for beginners.
Used it for school, however when all was done I felt that I didn't learn it just read through and followed directions. I picked up things here and there, but if I wanted to build a website I would struggle through it. (I am an A student with a 3.88 GPA and study what I don't understand) The book is also a bit outdated.
For my final we had to build a 5 page website encompassing much of what we learned and I did nothing but flipped through the book to try and do it.