Beginning CSS : Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design

Rating:
Summary: Easy to recommend this book to others...
Review: I received a review copy of Beginning CSS - Cascading Style Sheets For Web Design by Richard York (Wrox). I'm impressed with the way he covers the material...

Chapter list: Introduction; Document Standards; The Basics of CSS Anatomy and Syntax; Data Types, Keywords, Color, Length, and the URI; CSS Selectors; Pseudo-Element and Pseudo-Class Selectors; Inheritance and the Cascade; Text Manipulation; Font Manipulation; Liquid Design and the CSS Box Model; CSS Buoyancy: Collapsing Margins, Floating, and Vertical Alignment; Styling Lists and the User Interface; Backgrounds: Setting the Scene; Positioning; Styling for Handheld Devices and Print; Styling Tables; Styling XML; Cross-Browser Compatibility; Exercise Answers; CSS Reference; CSS Color; Browser Rendering Modes; Index

For me, the book really kicks into gear starting with the CSS Selectors chapter. York starts to cover all the different statements and concepts of CSS in a readable and understandable format. He states the release of CSS where the documentation can be found, along with what level of browser first supports the feature. This is great information as you're trying to figure out if a feature is cross-browser compatible. After an explanation of the feature, there's a "Try It Out" section that shows actual code and screen prints that illustrate the concept. This is always followed by a "How It Works" part that dives into the code a little deeper to cement your understanding of the feature. The chapter then ends with a summary and some exercises you can do to push yourself a bit more.

Something you don't see in a lot of CSS books are chapters on CSS formatting for handheld devices. As PDAs and web-enabled cell phones become more common, CSS that addresses this target is increasingly important. I also appreciated the separate chapter on cross-browser compatibility, specifically dealing with common IE bugs and how to best handle them. Since the book has a 2005 copyright date, the information is probably more up-to-date than other books that are a year or two older.

This is definitely a book I'd feel comfortable recommending to anyone working on learning CSS.

Rating:
Summary: solid book
Review: solid coverage of css. good organization re: what works in which browsers, current bugs, and workarounds. written clearly and, technically, the examples are helpfull (although not much to look at). i'm sure i'll use this book as a reference for a while to come.

Rating:
Summary: Well Written Introduction to CSS
Review: Sub-Title: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design

One of the Programmer to Programmer books from Wrox.com. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a relatively new standard that allows web programmers to specify something not unlike the Page Setup function in Microsoft Office. That is, a style of appearance including fonts, colors and the like can be defined once and remain consistent throughout a web site.

CSS are replacing the individually crafted page layouts that were previously required to be repeated on each page. CSS is intended to replace the presentational portion of the HTML language - such as the font tag.

This book is intended to be a beginners guide. It starts with a simple command to set color to be black. It then adds the font family, the font size and goes on to ever more complex tasks until the full range of the language. Mr. York is a very good writer. The text is both informative and very understandable. For the beginning designer, this book is highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive with many examples
Review: This is the most comprehensive CSS book I've seen. In addition to introducing CSS, the book if stuffed full of examples you can put to use immediately and easily modify to suit your needs.

Rating:
Summary: Best introduction to CSS I've seen
Review: Well organized, clearly written, comprehensive, approachable. This is a real tutorial, with step-by-step exercises that are excellent learning aides and are fun to boot. The end of each chapter includes "assignments" that offer additional opportunities to practice what you've learned. (The solutions are provided in an appendix.) This book gave me the foundation to begin coding "table-less" layouts and have a pretty good time doing it. Very good stuff.