CSS: The Missing Manual
| 2006-08-01 00:00:00 | | 0 | CSS
Web site design has grown up. Unlike the old days, when designers cobbled together chunky HTML, bandwidth-hogging graphics, and a prayer to make their sites look good, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) now lets your inner designer come out and play. But CSS isn't just a tool to pretty up your site; it's a reliable method for handling all kinds of presentation--from fonts and colors to page layout. `CSS: The Missing Manual` clearly explains this powerful design language and how you can use it to build sparklingly new Web sites or refurbish old sites that are ready for an upgrade.
Like their counterparts in print page-layout programs, style sheets allow designers to apply typographic styles, graphic enhancements, and precise layout instructions to elements on a Web page. Unfortunately, due to CSS's complexity and the many challenges of building pages that work in all Web browsers, most Web authors treat CSS as a kind of window-dressing to spruce up the appearance of their sites. Integrating CSS with a site's underlying HTML is hard work, and often frustratingly complicated. As a result many of the most powerful features of CSS are left untapped. With this book, beginners and Web-building veterans alike can learn how to navigate the ins-and-outs of CSS and take complete control over their Web pages' appearance.
Author David McFarland (the bestselling author of O'Reilly's Dreamweaver: The Missing Manual) combines crystal-clear explanations, real-world examples, a dash of humor, and dozens of step-by-step tutorials to show you ways to design sites with CSS that work consistently across browsers. You'll learn how to:
Style text by changing fonts, colors, font sizes, and adding borders
Turn simple HTML links into complex and attractive navigation bars-complete with CSS-only rollover effects that add interactivity to your Web pages
Style images to create effective photo galleries and special effects like CSS-based drop shadows
Make HTML forms look great without a lot of messy HTML Overcome the most hair-pulling browser bugs so your Web pages work consistently from browser to browser
Create complex layouts using CSS, including multi-column designs that don't require using old techniques like HTML tables Style Web pages for printing
Unlike competing books, this Missing Manual doesn't assume that everyone in the world only surfs the Web with Microsoft's Internet Explorer; our book provides support for all major Web browsers and is one of the first books to thoroughly document the newly expanded CSS support in IE7, currently in beta release.
Want to learn how to turn humdrum Web sites into destinations that will capture viewers and keep them longer? Pick up CSS: The Missing Manual and learn the real magic of this tool.
User review
One of the best teaching instruments I have ever purchased
I first purchased a book on CSS way back in the 90's. It was horribly written by a man who didn't really understand it himself and I quickly gave up on it. I would have to give this book 5 stars's. It is well written and easily understood but then I have been writing my own code and simple web pages for 15 or so years now. As far as I can tell the author seems to have a firm grasp of the subject and after only getting through the first hundred pages or so I was able to make countless improvements to my web site. In fact I did everything I wanted to be able to do and could have quit there.
If you know html already I believe you will love this book. CSS is complex but at the same time so easy if you understand html. The only negative thing I would say is that like any true believer he goes out of his way to prove that css can do almost everything better than html. In fact it seemed like sometimes he didn't even consider css code. He gave many examples of css being able to do the same thing that html does faster, better, easier and with less code. A few I disagreed with. One example I can think of right off the top of my head is the `sprite` method of preloading images. It can be done with html so much simpler. It's one thing to be able to prove a thing can be done but quite another to be practical. But then again I guess that is what I expect him to do. I did after all buy the book to learn - everything.
Still I think everyone would benefit from this book. Especially if you are creating complex web pages or want to be able to really fine tune your pages and what you are getting with html isn't acceptable to you. It is probably one of the best teaching instruments I have ever purchased for so many different reasons and I know I will be using allot of CSS from now on.
IMHO
User review
The CSS book I was searching for
When I bought the book, I knew what I needed to know and what I could expect as far as my knowledge of building websites reached. I'm not an expert, but certainly not a beginner.
I started my first website in 1997 and only started daring to use CSS in 2005 - eight years later. At that time I began to read books by Mulder (yes, one of the first) and later Cederholm, Meyer, Clark, Zeldman and found information on CSS on the internet. I learned some things I needed to know and the more I read, the more I understood what I didn't know. I'm not criticizing these books, but `CSS: The Missing Manual` explains backgrounds, which the other ones lacked - for me that is. I'm still reading it and not from front to back, but back and forth, and learning more than before. There's more about CSS3 in this book also, presented in a way that I understand.
This is not a book for the beginner, who still has to learn about HTML (but then,,. who's going to buy a book on CSS if he doesn't understand HTML?); but it is also not a book which can only be understood by the experienced.
User review
Beginner's viewpoint
As an IT pro, but website/CSS novice, I highly recommend this book. The author makes breaks down a difficult subject (CSS), making it accessible for any dedicated reader. Some pages must be read 2x or 3x, but the exercises provide the student with the necessary experience for progressing through each successive chapter. This book does not cut the `chaff` and take you straight to creating web pages, but I wouldn't recommend that approach to CSS web design anyways. A comprehensive understanding of the subject is necessary to effectively create the site of your dreams. This book, so far (just finished chapter 7), delivers on that.
User review
Superb book for learning how to use CSS effectively
I didn't think I would find a CSS book that I liked better than Eric Meyer's, but this one appears to have reached or surpassed that bar. This book is ideal for someone who is already familiar with CSS syntax but isn't yet clear on how best to use CSS in actual web page design. I've been using CSS to build web pages for over 5 years and still learned dozens of new (at least to me) and interesting techniques. The book is well written and concepts are clearly exclaimed. Simply a superb technical book in every way. One caveat: I completely passed over the tutorials, finding this to be mostly filler for anyone who's already been using CSS.
User review
not bad, but may be difficult to follow
this book has some good in dept details of the function of css and the tags that may be used. but if youre unfamiliar with syntax and general knowledge of page layout, it might be difficult to understand what the writer is referring to. and it lacks graphic representation of each example they refer to. there is free content that you can download online that is mentioned at the end of the book. might be worth looking at if youre familiar with other forms of coding and want to go into a more graphic approach to building web pages.