This book is a tutorial, NOT a reference on rudimentary web design. In that role it serves very nicely. What you will learn from this book is rather simplistic text-based web design, with images relegated to simple banners or inline distractions. Some of the tutorials in the book produce rather ugly webpages, while some are attractive and functional. However, all of them look old. If this is the only book you use, then your web design will look about 8-10 years out of date.
The code examples also contain a few errors which can be frustrating, but also present a good learning opportunity. You need to get used to hunting down small punctuation errors in your code, so you might as well start now! There is no errata offered for this edition as far as I know. The publisher is on the verge of releasing a new edition, so I'd recommend that you find that if possible.
This book was assigned for my course SLIS 5714: Website Content Development and Maintenance.