Product Description
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are one of the most important technologies on the web today. They give web developers the power to style their web sites so those sites are usable, compact, good looking, consistently displayable, and quick and efficient to change if so desired. There are many books out there on CSS, but Beginning CSS Web Development is different—it doesnt waste time discussing theory, and it delves straight into the practical matter. It provides you with what you need to know, faster. It is also completely up to date, covering the most modern CSS standards and design techniques. In addition to the essential CSS basics, this book covers advanced techniques like accessibility, hacks, and filters. The book concludes with a case study, and features a CSS reference section that allows you to look up required syntax as quickly as possible. Summary of Contents - PART 1 - Get to Know CSS
- Getting Started
- Core Concepts of CSS
- CSS Building Blocks
- Text
- Color, Backgrounds, and Images
- Lists
- Links
- Tables and Definition Lists
- Forms
- PART 2 - Logical Layouts
- Layout Basics
- Classic Layouts
- Layout Manipulation
- The Journey from Layout to Template
- Usability and Accessibility Enhancements
- Tips, Tricks, and Troubles
- Case Study: The Dead Goods
- CSS Reference
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 I almost never write reviews, but...
..this book deserves recommendation. I bought it based on the other good ratings left by others and can confirm they're well deserved.
In a very clear and easy-to-read manner the author thoroughly explains the basics of CSS, complete with examples, and takes great care advising on good coding principles.
Having known very little about CSS before picking up this book I'm now very much informed and writing, I dare say, professional and advanced code.
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 Good, but not fantastic ( ken@spatulacity.com )
I agree with other reviewers that this is a good book for intro to CSS and I recommend its purchase. It is fairly thorough and Collison explains the subject clearly, in most cases. However, I disagree that it's fantastic or any other superlative that others have applied.
My biggest complaint is the short-shrift given to the subject of the CSS box model. Without a crystal clear understanding of this subject you will never understand why margins, borders and padding are screwing up your layout. For understanding CSS layout there is nothing more important than the box model and the precise relationship between margin, border and padding.
Directly related to the paragraph above, in chapter 11, page 248, the exercise instructions tell you to switch the physical order of two elements in the html file (and there is a big erratum here, too), and then additionally lists the required changes to the css file. HOWEVER, if you make only the html changes the layout will be completely messed up even though that doesn't seem to make any sense! Collison missed an important opportunity here to explain WHY switching the order of the html requires changes to the css! The true learning opportunity in this exercise was squandered.
Onto more picky items, every single time the author refers to web markup, he writes (X)HTML. After the first 10 times it's incredibly annoying. He should have just written XHTML since his book is 100% compliant with the new standard.
Lastly, and clearly leastly, for a Brit his humor is NOT funny! Collison needs to read "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" if he wants to learn about British humor. In the meantime, just skip it; you're not John Cleese!
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Excellent, except for Quirks mode omission ( mckenziebooks )
I read this book from cover to cover. It is excellent, and I successfully used it to convert my cash4books website from table-based disorganization to use CSS and web standards.
However, I think what was missing was a discussion on Quirks mode. Go to wikipedia and search for "Quirks mode" if you do not know what that is. In fact, if you use the code examples Collison provides, a few of them do not work right, due to Quirks mode issues. Specifically, once you get to the layout chapters, things don't work quite right in the latest versions of BOTH IE and Firefox.
But, as I said, other than that bit of quirkiness, the book is great.
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A book I will turn to over and over again. ( gracefulgraphics )
What a great book. I just could not put this down and read the whole book in 1 day. As a asp.net coder, Css is the last thing I needed to learn to make great looking websites.
Simon explans things clear and complete. I was always a but lost with id and class and what one I should be useing. The way it was expland left me with no questions. I fell CSS is something that you look up when you need to get a result. This book is well layed out to find things fast.
The only thing I fault is that it would be great if the samples were in colour. A must have for beginners to pro.
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Just The Kick Start I Needed
I bought this book a year ago to get me started in writing CSS web pages. This was just the book I needed to get me started. It is reasonable simple to following along with and experiment with the examples. The outcome of my trek through this book is my personal home page (http://www.intergate.com/~waltwilliams/) which is now so much more presentable and professional looking. I have actually had people ask who I hired to create it. I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to learn CSS.
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