CSS Books
Reviewed by: T.J. Nelson
CSS: The Definitive Guide, 3rd ed. by Eric A. Meyer
ric A. Meyer, a well-known Web designer, has
written an authoritative reference in CSS: The Definitive Guide. The style
is light, informal, and easy to read, but it contains a few annoying PCisms
(fortunately, not very many). Despite the 2007 publication date, it only covers
versions 1 and 2, and not the upcoming CSS 3.
Although it teaches CSS well, the book suffers a bit from being somewhat verbose (518 pages!) and disorganized. For example, on page 17, after spending several pages showing how to include @import in a <style> statement, with appropriate warnings, caveats and hacks, Meyer informs us that <style> attribute is actually deprecated and should not be used. So now what? Meyer doesn't say. The only way to find out is to read the HTML spec.
Occasionally, Meyer also veers off into what seems to be his real interest: XML, tempting the reader to wonder whether it might not be easier to learn CSS the old fashioned way, by stealing and modifying someone else's .css file. Chapter 10 in the book describes how to create “floats”. This is an example of some floating text. But it's not Meyer's fault. As a computer language, HTML ranks with BASIC as one of the ugliest ever created. Adding CSS to the HTML specification must have felt like putting a band-aid on a bleeding patient who has a concussion, high cholesterol, two broken legs, bad breath, and no health insurance. HTML is held back by the result of the need for simplicity and speed, and by the need to accommodate buggy browsers like IE6 and Netscape 4.x. For example, as Meyer points out, it's necessary to enclose @import statements inside comments to prevent some browsers from printing the statement on the screen instead of executing it. XHTML is even worse, with its "self-closing tags" like <link ... />. Stuff like this can make even BASIC programmers cringe.
Another problem: since it's an O'Reilly Press book, Meyer is limited to four colors: gray, light gray, black, and white. For programming books, the lack of color is not usually a problem; but HTML is an exception, and the discourse suffers from the lack of color. There are few suggestions about artistic style. Andy Clarke's book (reviewed at right) is better at describing the many browser-specific caveats that the spec won't tell you. But if you just need to learn basic CSS, along with a couple of tricks, this is an excellent book, and it's the book I use when I need to check some detail about CSS.
HTML, XHTML & CSS, 6th ed. by E. Castro
primer on basic syntax of XHTML
and CSS for beginners with little experience with computers and no prior
experience creating Web pages. In color. Has many useful tips, and
helpful tables at the end. However, the writing style is badly marred by
the author's continual attempts at political correctness (especially in
the later chapters), which makes reading this book an unpleasant task by
anyone who cares about the English language.
Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design by Andy Clarke
his book delivers what the title promises: fine
art. It's laid out like a typical art or architecture book, with lots of artistic
photographs of random, unrelated items, along with colorful photos of well-designed
web pages and snippets of CSS and XHTML that help the reader understand the general
principles of using CSS to create them. The purpose is not to teach CSS, but to inspire
web Two-column CSS layout is described in this book, but
there are also many good tutorials on the net, such as
http://css.maxdesign.com.au/floatutorial/.
designers to use CSS 2 and CSS 3 creatively to build web sites that are not only
visually appealing, but also maintain accessibility on any platform. It succeeds
spectacularly, encouraging visually-oriented but non-technically-savvy users to
unleash their creativity through CSS. You can see an example of the style Clark
promotes at www.onions-usa.org (which actually
is done entirely with tables instead of CSS). CSS can be learned easily enough
from a book like Meyer's (reviewed at left) or from the W3C website
(http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/),
then use this non-technical guide to give your pages pizazz, panache, and
professionalism.
CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions by Andy Budd
nce you've gotten oriented with
CSS and XHTML, read CSS Mastery to become fully acquainted with the
real tricks. This book doesn't pretend to be complete; fonts, for example, are
omitted entirely, and the section on forms doesn't discuss how to actually
send data to the server. But its coverage of browser quirks and CSS tricks,
including rounded boxes, tabs, navigation bars, CSS tables, and multi-column
layout, is more thorough and easier to follow than most other books on this
subject.
The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web
utstanding book on the
principles of graphic design. Discusses CSS files from the authors'
Zen Garden website, explains what makes them beautiful, and how changing
them in various ways would make them worse. The level of presentation is
far above the high-school / color wheel level of some other books on web
design. As a tutorial on graphic design for those of us who lack the
interior decorator gene, this book is first-rate. Assumes the reader is
already familiar with XHTML and CSS.
The Design of Sites: Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites, 2nd Ed
ood advice about usability
for designers of commercial Web sites, but incredibly verbose and lacking
in technical detail.
