Okay, yes, some of this is so very basic, why would anyone with any experience in web design or development even look at it? Well, this anyone has been learning catch-as-catch-can for as long as there has been a World Wide Web, using all kinds of software, content management systems, books, free training online, and the like. And I have been increasingly confused as heck because my knowledge has been on a need-to-know basis and my foundation is full of holes and mighty rickety.
I'm one of those people who tends to read books backwards, dipping into whatever looks pertinent to what I'm doing and skipping over anything I think I already know. I am impatient with the course-like stye of books like this one, too; I want to get right to the meat. But by forcing myself to work through this course, Chapter 1 to the end, I'm picking up important bits of information that I need to fully understand what I am doing. Meloni has provided a framework to help organize the many disparate bits of information one encounters when trying to work through the web. She makes it less likely that the reader will skip over words like "DOM" or "AJAX," as I have done, thinking they are some geeky programming jargon not applicable to my simple little web project.
The book is only dirt-basic in the beginning. As you progress through the book, it gets into more intermediate-level material, always building on what's come before. A lot of that intermediate-level material (especially the Javascript portions--about half the book) are new (and therefore advanced) to me. But I find it very strange, as some others have, that there are no useful syntax lists and the like in an appendix. The description of this book on Amazon specifically refers the reader to an appendix, so I have to wonder if this material wasn't left out by mistake.
Because of the missing reference material (which one should not have to go online to refer to while working through a chapter), I'm giving this 3.5 stars, elevated to a 4 because it's certainly better than a 3. I do think this book is a good choice for anyone who would benefit from the guiding structure of a sequentially organized course such as you would encounter in a formal classroom. In fact, I can see this All-in-One book used as a textbook in some settings.
Will this be the only book you will need? Depending on what you want to do, probably not. But at least after completing it you can better evaluate what else you need or which direction you want to take in your skills acquisition. It is a very good value for a course you can take at your own speed, and there are plenty of other books and free online materials to supplement your training when you are ready.