CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions
by Andy Budd, Cameron Moll, Simon Collison
List Price:
Our Price: $0.01
You Save: $34.98 (100%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Andy Budd, Cameron Moll, Simon CollisonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-02-08
ISBN: 1590596145
Number of pages: 280
Publisher: friendsofED
Accessories:
- Pro C# with .NET 3.0, Special Edition (Expert's Voice in .NET)
- Microsoft SharePoint: Building Office 2007 Solutions in C# 2005 (Expert's Voice in Sharepoint)
- Workflow in the 2007 Microsoft Office System
Book Reviews of CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions
Book Review: Truly Amazing! The best CSS book I've read and a great CSS Reference
Summary: 5 Stars
This was the first CSS book that I purchased. I was always hesitant to purchase a book on CSS because most of the resources that I've found have been mostly beginner's tutorials or instruction and I felt that I had at least a "beyond beginner's" understanding of CSS. I wouldn't go as far as saying I'm an expert at CSS, but at least mid-level to advanced. However, this book had some previous good recommendations from amazon.com so I bit the bullet and bought it. I must say that I was NOT disappointed!
This book starts off with a very quick introduction/recap of CSS basics including good code structure and organization, validation, DOCTYPES, common selectors including IDs and classes, pseudo-classes, and the advanced selectors such as universal, child, attribute and more, and some wonderful reference on the specificity and inheritance, or the "Cascade", the core of CSS. Although this introduction is provided, it is relatively short at about 25 pages and I would suggest a good working understanding of these basics first, as it will help understand the rest of the book easier as opposed to trying to learn CSS for the first time from this book. The following chapter is another quick 15 pages with on "Visual Formatting Model Recap" including the Box Model and Positioning, two EXTREMELY important concepts to understand CSS properly. Although it is short, it is an extremely powerful section.
Chapter 3 finally jumps head first into the code with "Background Images and Image Replacement." With the movement towards "Web 2.0? websites, one of the most common features you'll see in these websites is rounded corners. These can be difficult to achieve successfully and the authors make it very easy. This chapter also touches on different drop shadows and image replacement techniques, which are useful for placing a logo in place but still having the text remain search engine friendly. Chapter 4 is a fairly short chapter on "Styling Links" with some interesting uses of attribute selectors.
Chapter 5 is all about "Stylig Lists and Creating Nav Bars" including the popular "Sliding Doors" popularized by Douglas Bowman of Stopdesign and first published in October of 2003 in A List Apart online magazine. During the section on creating nav bars, this chapter shows how to use CSS sprites for rollovers and visited links, something which I'll be blogging about soon. Chapter 5 also shows how you can use CSS to create image maps, something I've never even thought of doing with CSS.
The next two chapters are two of the best in the book I think. Chapter 6 deals with "Styling Forms and Data Tables", while Chapter 7 tackles "Layout". I think that styling forms properly can be one of the most difficult things to do in a website Chapter 6 shows some good tips and tricks to handle this properly. After all the chapters on styling elements, comes the final code chapter which deals with Layout and shows how to center designs, create two and three column layouts, and liquid, elastic, and hybrid (elastic-liquid), or fluid, layouts.
As any web designer knows, IE doesn't do the best job of displaying HTML and CSS properly according to the W3C. Fortunately, the last two chapters in the book are about "Hacks and Filters" and "Bugs and Bug Fixing", two excellent chapters for dealing with the countless IE CSS bugs. Finally, the last two chapters of the book are Case Studies that put everything together and take you through building two different web sites in a Web Standards way with CSS.
Overall, this is an excellent book, one I'd highly recommend to any web designer, or CSS developer, looking to expand their knowledge of the powerful language that is CSS. Definitely worth adding to your library. On an additional note, this book is published by Friends of Ed, a fantastic publisher of technical books, and one of my favorites. I currently own 8 books published by "Friends of Ed" and 2 more from their parent company Apress, all of which are excellent books.
Summary of CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions
This book is your indispensable guide to cutting-edge CSS development?all you need to work your way up to CSS professional.
While CSS is a relatively simple technology to learn, it is a difficult one to master. When you first start developing sites using CSS, you will come across all kinds of infuriating browser bugs and inconsistencies. It sometimes feels like there are a million and one different techniques to master, spread across a bewildering array of websites. The range of possibilities seems endless and makes for a steep and daunting learning curve.
By bringing all of the latest tips, tricks, and techniques together in one handy reference, this book demystifies the secrets of CSS and makes the journey to CSS mastery as simple and painless as possible. While most books concentrate on basic skills, this one is different, assuming that you already know the basics and why you should be using CSS in your work, and concentrating mainly on advanced techniques.
It begins with a brief recap of CSS fundamentals such as the importance of meaningful markup, how to structure and maintain your code, and how the CSS layout model really works.
With the basics out of the way, each subsequent chapter details a particular aspect of CSS-based design. Through a series of easy-to-follow tutorials, you will learn practical CSS techniques you can immediately start using in your daily work. Browser inconsistencies are the thorn in most CSS developers' sides, so we have dedicated two whole chapters to CSS hacks, filters, and bug fixing, as well as looking at image replacement; professional link, form, and list styling; pure CSS layouts; and much more.
All of these techniques are then put into practice in two beautifully designed case studies, written by two of the world's best CSS designers, Simon Collison and Cameron Moll.
Graphics & Multimedia Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Graphics & Multimedia Books
Linear Algebra and Linear Operators in Engineering, Volume 3: With Applications in Mathematica® (Process Systems Engineering)by H. Ted Davis, Kendall T. Thomson
Academic Press; Published: 2000-06-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $131.67
Price in other shops:
Phigs and Phigs+: An Introduction to 3-D Computer Graphicsby Author Unknown
Academic Press; Published: 1993-02-26; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops:
The Mathematica Handbookby Martha L. Abell, James P. Braselton
Academic Press Inc; Published: 1992-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $20.00
LabVIEW Graphical Programmingby Gary W. Johnson, Richard Jennings
McGraw-Hill Professional; Published: 2001-07-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $94.84
LabVIEW GUI: Essential Techniquesby David J. Ritter
McGraw-Hill Professional; Published: 2001-11-28; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
North America (Where, How & Why)by Allan Murray
Collins Educational; Published: 1987; Unbound; Book
Apple Pro Training Series: Final Cut Pro HDby Diana Weynand
Peachpit Press; Published: 2004-06-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $53.33
Adobe Illustrator CS Hands-On Trainingby Jeff VanWest
Peachpit Press; Published: 2004-04-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.95
Price in other shops:
Final Cut Pro for Avid Editorsby Diana Weynand
Peachpit Press; Published: 2002-10-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $110.98
OpenGL Programming for Windows 95 and Windows NTby Ron Fosner
Addison-Wesley Professional; Published: 1996-11-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.00
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS (2nd Edition)by Dan Cederholm
New Riders Press; Published: 2007-08-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $20.00
Price in other shops:
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, 2nd Editionby Jason Beaird
SitePoint; Published: 2010-12-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $22.47
Price in other shops:
Pro CSS and HTML Design Patternsby Michael Bowers
Apress; Published: 2007-04-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $18.99
Price in other shops:
Designing with Web Standards (3rd Edition)by Jeffrey Zeldman, Ethan Marcotte
New Riders Press; Published: 2009-10-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $29.44
Price in other shops:
Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Editionby Steve Krug
New Riders Press; Published: 2005-08-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $20.90
Price in other shops:
The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Webby Dave Shea, Molly E. Holzschlag
Peachpit Press; Published: 2005-02-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.14
Price in other shops:
Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook, Special Editionby Dan Cederholm
friendsofED; Published: 2009-05-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.86
Price in other shops:
Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Designby Andy Clarke, Molly E. Holzschlag
New Riders Press; Published: 2006-11-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $20.98
Price in other shops:
DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Modelby Jeremy Keith
friendsofED; Published: 2005-09-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.86
Price in other shops:
CSS: The Missing Manualby David Sawyer McFarland
O'Reilly Media; Published: 2009-08-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.49
Price in other shops: