Product Description

The Internet abounds with information on CSS based design. However it's spread across a large and disparate group of sites and can be very difficult to find. The purpose of this book is to pull all this information together in one place, thus creating a definitive guide to modern CSS based techniques. The book can be read cover to cover, with each chapter building on the previous one. However it can equally be used as a reference book, dipping into each chapter or technique to help solve specific problems. This second edition contains: * New examples and updated browser support information * New case studies from Simon Collison and Cameron Moll * CSS3 examples, showing new CSS3 features, and CSS3 equivalents to tried and tested CSS2 techniques

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27162 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Customer Reviews

Bookshelf Essential
There's a plethora of books and Internet resources on the subject of designing websites with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) but whether you are just starting out as a complete novice or have solid, intermediary experience this book offers a very useful grounding in theory and application.

The foundation chapter provides a clear and easy to understand introduction to meaningful markup techniques for CSS "hooks" - divs, spans, ids and classes as well as discussion on DOCTYPEs, browser modes and validation before diving in to CSS selector types, the cascade and specificity. The chapter finishes with discussion on how best to organise your stylesheets - no, don't just lump it all together in a single file ;)

The second chapter is a very useful recap of the visual formatting model (i.e. the box model and absolute / relative / float positioning) and will serve as a great reminder for when your complex layouts start to misbehave - something that all CSS practioners will experience at some point.

The bulk of the book covers styling specific elements of your design and includes layout, image replacement, styling links, lists, forms and tables. People tend not to get too adventurous with styling tables and forms so that chapter is welcome and the advanced treatment of visited and external-website links is also of interest.

The major selling point for me was the two chapters on CSS hacks (filters) and bugs (and bug fixing). There are a number of websites that cover these issues but I lack that particular resource on my bookshelf and call me old-fashioned, but I do like my books to pull stuff together in this manner. Inside these chapters you'll learn about the (in)famous star hack, the !important hack and bugs such as the three-pixel text jog and the "HasLayout" effect to name but a few. Armed with these two chapters I may well spot a problem in the stylesheet before seeing it in a browser and save a few hours of debugging later on - incidentally, the section on debugging will certainly reduce any feeling of headless chicken in that regard.

The book bows out with the obligatory case studies that pull together a couple of websites using the techniques previously explained.

Highly recommended.

Good for learning advanced CSS
If you've covered the basics of CSS and HTML, but want to know the difference between divs, classes and styles, this is a good book. Covers from start to finish on how to build table-less sites.

One scary point, though: the two example sites that they have built are both broke in IE7, though fine in Firefox. Admittedly, the book was written before the current release of IE7, but they should update their site and issue guidance on where the box is wrong.

I would recommend the book as the best on the market for self-teaching advanced CSS concepts, but there's room for something better.

A great book for web designers juniors and seniors alike
Since I bought that book, it's been on my desk rather than in the book shelf like most others.

It's very accessible, and it covers basics (always good to be reminded) as well as more adanced CSS. I'm very happy with that purchase and use it everytime I code, and take it along with me when working on-site at clients offices.

That book replaced my beloved Zeldman's "Designing with Web Standards" which needed an upgrade.

Same handy format, nice and clear info, answers off-hand for most tricks and a no-nonsense approach from a well-known dude in the web design community.

Thumbs up Brighton!