Product Description

Inspired by the enormously popular CSS Zen Garden Web site, this beautiful full-color guide reveals what's possible with CSS design.
Scads of full-color spreads of Zen Garden sites demonstrate the creative potential afforded by CSS-based Web design.
Authors Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag are leading lights in the world of Web design—she with more than 30 books under her belt, and he as the creator of the legendary CSS Zen Garden project.
Book includes six major sections, each of which contains six unique Zen Garden designs, all of which can accessed via the Zen Garden Web site.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7486 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-03
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Synopsis
Proving once and for all that standards-compliant design does not equal dull design, this inspiring tome uses examples from the landmark CSS Zen Garden site as the foundation for discussions on how to create beautiful, progressive CSS-based Web sites. By using the Zen Garden sites as examples of how CSS design techniques and approaches can be applied to specific Web challenges, authors Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag provide an eye-opening look at the range of design methods made possible by CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). By the time you've finished perusing the volume, you'll have a new understanding of the graphically rich, fully accessible sites that CSS design facilitates. In sections on design, layout, imagery, typography, effects, and themes, Dave and Molly take you through every phase of the design process--from striking a sensible balance between text and graphics to creating eye-popping special effects (no scripting required).

About the Author
As well as being a member of the Web Standards Project, Dave is the owner and director of Bright Creative, and he writes about all things Web for his daily weblog, mezzoblue.com. With over 6 years of experience working on the Web, Dave is a leader of the new generation of Web designers that believe in responsible Web design. An author, instructor, and Web designer, Molly E. Holzschlag has written over 27 books related to Web design and development. She's been coined "one of the greatest digerati" and deemed one of the Top 25 Most Influential Women on the Web. There is little doubt that in the world of Web design and development, Molly is one of the most fun and vibrant Web characters around. As a steering committee member for the Web Standards Project (WaSP), Molly works along with a group of other dedicated Web developers and designers to promote W3C recommendations.

Customer Reviews

For beauty, be patient.
I've been an admirer of the CSS Zen Garden online for a number of years and when I caught sight of this book I knew I had to add it to me design collection.

This book is NOT a reference or tutorial in the fullest sense - but it's a brilliant inspiration of what can be done with CSS to craft artistic, striking and unique web sites that allow yours to stand out from the mundane crowd.

If you are looking for design ideas, design tips and a few good suggestions add this to a good tutorial guide and you'll not want for anything.

Remember though, that many of the designers features in this book have spent long hard hours to perfect their designs and ensure they were compliant to both CSS standards and the idiocy of browser programmers. If you want the same then you'll need the patience to work through the standards and the lack of browser compliance. Perhaps one day we can all look forward to even better designs when all browsers comply to a universal presentation standard.

Brilliant!
If you thought standard-compliant CSS web pages had to be boxy and bland, this book will show you how wrong you were. The book simply shows many designs for the same web page and then talks you through the logic behind the CSS techniques used in the design. It is a great source of inspiration. What the book is not is a CSS reference book - try the O'Reilly series for one of these. What this book is, however, is a demonstration of what can be acheived with a modicum of CSS skills and a lot of artistic talent.

Take a walk in the garden...
This book is delightful, like the website behind it.
Theres a lot of books about CSS, most of them is CSS
from a to z, and you only get small pieces of what you
actually can with CSS. The strong point for The Zen of
CSS design is that you can find a lots of ideas about
have you can realise your own ideas. Learn CSS of other
books and when they dry out, read this book.