Product Description

CSS-based design doesn't need to be boring. "The Art & Science of CSS" brings together a talented collection of designers who will show you how to take the building blocks of your web site's design (such as headings, navigation, forms, and more) and bring them to life with fully standards-compliant CSS. This full color book helps you to design web sites that not only work well across all browsers, are easy to maintain, and are highly accessible, but are also visually stunning. Create truly attention-grabbing headings. Discover multiple ways to present images effectively. Use background images to give your site zest. Build usable and attractive navigation. Design forms that are stylish and functional. Learn how to break away from the square box gclich. Create funky tables. And lots more From the Publisher Jonathan Snook, Steve Smith, Jina Bolton, Cameron Adams, and David Johnson, five of the biggest names in CSS design have joined forces to bring you The Art & Science Of CSS. Beautifully presented in full color, this book will teach you how to apply innovative CSS-based techniques to create visually stunning headings, forms, menus, navigation, backgrounds, and much more... Using The Art & Science Of CSS, you'll see just how easy it is to unleash your creative talents and design inspirational web sites with CSS. All designs in this book are visually appealing and inspiring. The CSS code used to create each of the components is included and guaranteed to be simple, efficient and cross-browser compatible. Among its many treasures, this book will show you how to: Format calendars, menus and table of contents using CSS Create horizontal, vertical and tab-based navigation systemsusing CSS Create rounded corners using CSS Design stylish Website headings Put together funky & artistic Website backgrounds Use CSS to render blockquotes, dates and lists in a visually appealing manner All designs in this book are visually appealing and inspiring. The code CSS code used to create each of the components is provided and is "guaranteed to be simple, efficient and cross-browser compatible." Who Should Read This Book? This book is ideal for anyone who wants to gain the practical skills involved in using CSS to make attractive web sites, especially if you're not the type who likes to learn by memorizing a formal specification and then trying to work out which browsers implemented it completely (does anyone enjoy reading specifications?). The only knowledge you'll need to have is some familiarity with HTML. This book will give designers the skills they need to implement their ideas, and provides developers with creative inspiration through practical examples.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #279917 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Mark Holgate, May 5 2007
What can i say... as someone who has albeit limited CSS experience
(having mostly built sites in HTML or languages other than CSS), this book
is awesome.

"It gives you an easy follow guide to what works as far as CSS coding,
across a lot of areas... and shows how much more control over design
specifics CSS can have...

Nate Klaiber, May 2 2007
The Art and Science of CSS was a quick read (208 pages) and packed
full of valuable code examples. Unlike other CSS books that teach you the
specifics of CSS with vague examples (not vague in a bad way), this book
teaches you specific examples and gives you extra resources.

Frank Stepanski, April 12 2007
If you have been using CSS for awhile this book is a useful
reference for specific techniques you have had trouble with or if your new
to CSS it will help you learn all the cool things you can do with CSS but
never thought to think of. The book is written in an easy to learn format
that is great for any level.

Customer Reviews

Really useful book - definatley recommended
I'm not normally a fan of CSS - the mere thought of the amount of tweaking and hacking my CSS usually needs just to work correctly across a decent range of browsers gives me nightmares! But I did really enjoy this book. It's a short read, coming in about about 210 pages, the content is concise and well written. This makes it perfect for anyone who wants to read this book while learning or working on a project - you can read a section and straight away start working the techniques into your code instead of reading 4 chapters of syntax and theory just to get started.

The sections of the book are also really independent - for example, the first chapter I read was chapter 5 (forms) because that was relevant to what I was working on at the time. Since then I've dipped in and out at various points depending on what bits of information I needed. The way the book is written makes this really easy - you can dip in and out at different points and not have any trouble following the text and examples.

This book isn't for a total beginner, but this book is perfect for anyone who knows the basics of CSS and wants to move to the next level or anyone with experience with CSS who just wants to brush up a few gaps in their knowledge. Definitely a welcome addition to my bookshelf - I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

There is no science
I am sorry, but I don't agree with rating this book more than two stars for the following reason.

1- The method used is the static way of creating mark ups for example creating the photo album with out server side include (ssi will reduce the amount of typing and would make things easier to understand instead of having so many pages to create.

2- the title says the art and science of css, what you will find is only art work. There is no explanation of the meaning of each code. its only examples.

I don't recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn css.
this book is not for beginners even though the concept is. the book has failed to show beginners how to start for example file extension save as etc.
this book is only recommended to wanna be web masters who wants to borrow some ready made examples (serious web masters don't need this book)

when i bought this book i expected to find information about the following:
absolute and relative positioning. And how to use them together in one application for example you could have an absolute inside relative to have a two or more boxes as parents child relation.
the usage of percentages, pixel, etc in relation to screen.
more details about ms explorer bugs and how to fix them.
and more

unfortunately the book does not have any explanation and clearly the title is misleading by using the term science.

sadly as always, bad books takes lots of writers and this book is one of them. It took five writers.

If you want to learn css don't buy this book.
If you want examples and just examples this book is for you
If you don't know css this book is not a very good start.

Nice, but not mind blowing
Most of the examples in this book are aimed at streching your imagination a bit further than previously, specifically in how you approach a design and the coding aspect behind it. If you want a CSS manual, don't buy this book, this title would be better left until you're looking for inspiration.