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Summary: Use this book to CODE, not to DESIGN.
Review: This book is an indispensible resource if you've already decided HOW to implement CSS on your site and are looking for the best explanations of CSS selectors and syntax. The sections on typography and block-level elements, in particular, are detailed and extremely helpful (all that typography was much more than I needed to know, but it's good that it's there).However, do NOT use this book if you haven't decided yet which CSS methods to use and cross-browser compatibility matters to you (or your clients). Each chapter cheerfully explains CSS features the way the creators WISH they would work, without indicating serious bugs or pitfalls you may encounter in the real world when trying to implement them the way they tell you to. The browser support charts are buried in the back -- they barely scratch the surface, especially where Netscape 4.x is concerned. Making design decisions based on the information in this book could lead to some very unexpected and ugly results. Instead, use O'Reilly's "Cascading Style Sheets: A Definitive Guide", which documents browser compliance much more thoroughly, and turn back to this book as a quick-reference while you code.
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Summary: All Web Designers Should Read This Book
Review: This book is excellent. It reads well, and provides both practical and philosophic information on the creation of web pages using CSS and on separating content from layout. Those complaining that this book isn't useful because their browser doesn't currently implement all CSS features are woefully off-base - I was able to immediately put the knowledge gained from this book to use and have passed the book on to coworkers.
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Summary: So so... Probably not for an absolute beginner
Review: This book is so so. It's got me through some tight spots while designing. The down side is that it has no real structure to it. It is all over the place when looking for specific topics and doesn't seem to have any coherent order to it. The index could be better. There are also not a lot of good examples. If you are an absolute beginner, you should pass this one by and get O'reily's CSS Definitive Guide instead.
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Summary: Style atrocious, content incoherent.
Review: This book's own style is atrocious -- which is ironic, considering its subject. The outside back cover's clumsy rendition of the standard promotional cliche for tech manuals sets the tone: "This book should be on every web content provider, every web designer's shelf." Between the covers, one finds a bizarre inattention to basic editing practices. The customary space is often not inserted after periods and commas. On pp. 213-217, for example, one sees: "ments,or"; "block.The"; "below.The"; "top,right,etc.,are"; "sheet,and"; "printed,such". (If you happen to see spaces, they were probably automatically inserted by some process after I wrote this.) The index also breaks new stylistic ground, by not listing entries alphabetically. The "quick reference" gives wrong page references (p. 202 for "border-top-style," instead of p. 190), making things a lot less quick. The book also has terrible substantive problems, namely incoherence. Perhaps if you already knew CSS, you'd be able to figure out what the authors are talking about. Most of the time, I couldn't. This is not a first edition, but the second. Addison-Wesley should be embarrassed. [Courtesy copy of this review emailed to Addison-Wesley.]
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Summary: CSS From The Source
Review: This is an excellent, straight-from-the-source book on Cascading Style Sheets, both from a how-to implementation stand-point, and as a way of understanding the intent of this technology. The writing style is clear and easy, and the information coverage is comprehensive. The chapter on converting existing (real-world) designs to CSS is very useful.
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Summary: The most excelent reference book in the world
Review: This is the best book to learn CSS I have read so far
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Summary: don't waste your time - most features can't be implemented
Review: This would be a great book if it discussed more than the W3C specifications, most of which are not implemented properly by today's browsers. If you are serious about learning CSS, you need to understand browser implementations, and practical uses of the CSS spec. For example, the discussion on CSS-Positioning leads one to believe that this will replace HTML table alignment. It gives no indication to the usefullness of CSS-P to DHTML and such effects like drop-down menus. If you want to learn CSS, there are many online resources. Also, a great product called TopStyle has built in code validation that clearly reveals browser implementation issues...it can't be beat.
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Summary: Theory great - practise bad
Review: Very clear written book about the power of CSS. Every feature is explained in detail. So this would be the one and only book about CSS - if only the browsers would comply to the standard! The indications which browser supports which feature are far to superficial to be a guideline for the practitioner. So the book is ahead of his time. Hopefully, in the third edition this book will meet compliant browsers and Addison-Wesley will get rid of the editorial errors which are indeed ironic (see first review).
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