Product Description

Ready to commit to using more CSS on your sites?  If you are a hands-on
learner who has been toying with CSS and want to experiment with real-world
projects that will enable you to see how CSS can help resolve design issues,
this book is written just for you! CSS master Eric A. Meyer has picked up
where Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design left off.  He
has compiled 10 new, highly useful projects designed to encourage you to
incorporate CSS into your sites and take advantage of the design
flexibility, increased accessibility, decreased page weight, and cool visual
effects CSS offers.

Each project is laid out in an easy-to-follow, full color format complete
with notes, warnings, and sidebars to help you learn through example rather
than theory.  Some of the concepts covered include:

• Converting an HTML-based design to a pure positioning layout
• Styling a photo gallery
• Using background images to achieve cross-browser translucency effects
• Using lists of links to create tabs and drop down menus without the use of
  JavaScript
• Styling weblog entries, and placing them in a full-page design
• Creating a design for the CSS Zen Garden

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #317231 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From the Back Cover
Ready to commit to using more CSS on your sites?  If you are a hands-on
learner who has been toying with CSS and want to experiment with real-world
projects that will enable you to see how CSS can help resolve design issues,
this book is written just for you! CSS master Eric A. Meyer has picked up
where Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design left off.  He
has compiled 10 new, highly useful projects designed to encourage you to
incorporate CSS into your sites and take advantage of the design
flexibility, increased accessibility, decreased page weight, and cool visual
effects CSS offers.

Each project is laid out in an easy-to-follow, full color format complete
with notes, warnings, and sidebars to help you learn through example rather
than theory.  Some of the concepts covered include:

• Converting an HTML-based design to a pure positioning layout
• Styling a photo gallery
• Using background images to achieve cross-browser translucency effects
• Using lists of links to create tabs and drop down menus without the use of
  JavaScript
• Styling weblog entries, and placing them in a full-page design
• Creating a design for the CSS Zen Garden

About the Author

Eric A. Meyer has been working with the Web since late 1993 and is an internationally recognized expert on the subjects of HTML, CSS, and Web standards. A widely read author, he is also the founder of Complex Spiral Consulting (http://www.complexspiral.com), which focuses on helping clients save money and increase efficiency through the use of standards-oriented Web design techniques and counts Macromedia and Wells Fargo Bank among its clients.

Beginning in early 1994, Eric was the visual designer and campus Web coordinator for Case Western Reserve University Web site, where he also authored a widely acclaimed series of three HTML tutorials and was project coordinator for the online version of the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History combined with the Dictionary of Cleveland Biography (ech.cwru.edu), the first example of an encyclopedia of urban history being fully and freely published on the Web.

Author of Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design (New Riders), Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly & Associates), and CSS2.0 Programmer's Reference (Osborne/McGraw-Hill), as well as numerous articles for the O'Reilly Network, Web Techniques, and Web Review, Eric also created the CSS Browser Compatibility Charts and coordinated the authoring and creation of the W3C's official CSS Test Suite. He has lectured to a wide variety of organizations, including Los Alamos National Laboratory, the New York Public Library, Cornell University, and the University of Northern Iowa. Eric has also delivered addresses and technical presentations at numerous conferences, among them the IW3C2 WWW series, Web Design World, CMP, SXSW, the User Interface conference series, and The Other Dreamweaver Conference.

In his personal time, Eric acts as List Chaperone of the highly active css-discuss mailing list (http://www.css-discuss.org), which he co-founded with John Allsopp of Western Civilisation and is now supported by evolt.org. Eric lives in Cleveland, Ohio, which is a much nicer city than you've been led to believe, and is the host of "Your Father's Oldsmobile," a Big Band-era radio show heard weekly on WRUW 91.1-FM in Cleveland (http://www.wruw.org). When not otherwise busy, he is usually bothering his wife Kat in some fashion.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant
If you're a web designer you ought to know about standards. If you know about standards you need to know XHTML and CSS.

This book will teach you all about CSS in a practical series of demonstrations. You don't need to have read Eric's first book (Eric Meyer on CSS) to read this one, but if you have you might get into this one a little easier than if you havent.

Eric's style is informal but thorough, you get the impression that you're sitting at his side watching the master at work, solving problems. In this book you'll learn the basics right through to some very advanced 'tricks' such as pure CSS drop down menus (ones that work in ALL modern browsers, and yes, that includes the browser that is the thorn in Standards Compliance's side : Internet Explorer).

The book itself is entertaining and informative to read in its own right, but if you're going to follow along and do the projects yourself you'll learn even more. The style is easy and friendly with a clear explination for what's being done and pointers to potential problems or a new direction that could be taken.

If you need to figure out more about the benifit of CSS and what it can do take a look at http://www.csszengarden.com where you'll find one of the walk-thru projects covered in the book : a complete skin for the CSS Zen Garden project.

Worth getting no matter what your level of expertise (or not) in CSS. You'll learn a lot. Painlessly.

CSS from the master
It's no secret that Meyer is one of the world's leading authorities on CSS, if not the most accomplished expert.

In addition to his knowledge, he writes very well, and the book is formatted so that it's easy to see where he is taking each design, step by step.

This is NOT a book for beginners. Although he does explain what he's doing with clarity, it does assume some knowledge of CSS. That's not a criticism, just something to be aware of; if you're new to CSS, try another book.

One of the highlights for me is Eric's design for CSSZenGarden.

Another tour de force by Eric Meyer.
In many ways similar to his previous volume, each chapter of this book is based on a project. Meyer demonstrates some truly remarkable results that can be obtained by using modern CSS2 compliant browsers He shows how to overcome the shortcomings and bugs in Internet Explorer that still does not "do" CSS2 correctly even in its 6th reincarnation.
Highlights for me include unordered lists that become cascading navigation menus and Eric's version of the Zen Garden site.