CSS: The Missing Manual
by David Sawyer McFarland
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Book Summary Information
Author: David Sawyer McFarlandEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-08-31
ISBN: 0596526873
Number of pages: 496
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Book Reviews of CSS: The Missing Manual
Book Review: A fairly excellent book; will get you up to professional speed quickly.
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this book along with Eric Meyer's book CSS: The Definitive Guide. I started reading Eric's book first and got through the first 1.5 chapters. I'll write a review of that book later. However, I wanted to get a bit more immediate knowledge, and that's where this book comes in. While it's content is mostly excellent, there were a few glaring problems with the book. Having said that, it's still an excellent read on the subject and therefore, comes highly recommended.
As I have already said, the content is mostly excellent. That means that there are some things the author says that I do not agree with. For one, the author seems (and I emphazise seems) to recommend using the HTML transitional DTDs. I would disagree. I know the author's point for mentioning these DTD is so that those websites that have traditional HTML 4.0/4.01 out there wouldn't have to be reformatted immediately if the DTD were changed to a strict type when one goes to update the site, however, I--like Eric Meyer--would stress that any new pages (or sites, for that matter) would be better off to use the Strict XHTML 1.0 (or 1.1) DTD right from the get-go. The things the transitional DTD's allow will eventually be phased out and is generally considered not good web design.
Here is one thing the author wrote I would never tell a beginner in CSS or HTML:
"Technically, you should place all the @import lines before any CSS rules, as shown here, but it's okay if you forget. Web browsers are supposed to ignore any style sheets you import after a CSS rule, but all current Web browsers ignore that restriction." (page 34)
First, I'm not sure that Firefox 2.0 ignores that restriction, nor Opera at whatever version it's at. Regardless, I would never count on the fact that a browser ignores a CSS implementation detail, even if we're talking about IE; afterall, browsers are updated all the time (at least, now with IE7.. ;) ) and are constantly adding greater and stricter support for CSS.
Besides those two examples of "technical" detail (which, in my opinion, don't make this book any less valuable), there is one thing that really annoyed me which is why I rated it 4 stars instead of 5--grammar.
The grammar is mostly excellent, but there is one aspect that you'll find annoying if you speak English as a first language: the author's use of contractions. For example:
"The headline's now massive in size." (page 36)
"To a browser, any tag's a box with something inside it--..." (page 133)
"Things get ever weirder when one element's inside another element." (page 138)
There are many more examples in between page 36 and page 133, and I'm sure more follow page 138 (as far as I've gotten in the book so far), but this really annoyed me. The apostrophe-s contraction is mainly used as a shortcut for "<someword> is" for only a few English words, like it (it's) or that (that's). But when used like the author has used it, it becomes very hard to tell what's meant to be a contraction and what's meant to be a possessive. The editor of this book should really have caught this improper usage of apostrophe-s and removed all the extraneous contractions, as it's really a huge distraction while reading this text.
Other than that, the book is technically very well written, just don't take everything as gold. This book will bring you up to speed quickly if you are a beginner to immediate HTML/CSS coder/designer. For a more thorough discussion of CSS and what particular browsers support which aspect of CSS and how, read Eric Meyer's CSS: The Definitive Guide published by O,Reilly. That book is more technical than practical (but still practical) whereas this one is more practical than technical. Eric Meyer's book is a lot more fun to read than the actual CSS spec itself (believe me, I've read the spec...boring...and confusing.).
If you want to get up to speed quickly, get this book. But also get Eric's book for the nitty-gritty details once you're up to speed.
Summary of CSS: The Missing Manual
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:
- Create HTML that's simpler, uses less code, is search-engine friendly, and works well with CSS
- 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.
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