Product Description

This book is your indispensable guide to cutting-edge CSS developmentall you need to work your way up to CSS professional. You'll learn how to:

• Plan, organize, and maintain your stylesheets more effectively
• Apply the secrets of liquid, elastic, and hybrid layouts
• Create flickr-style image maps, remote rollovers, and other advanced CSS features
• Lay out forms using pure CSS
• Recognize common browser bugs, and how to fix them

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. Summary of Contents:

• Chapter 1: Setting the Foundations
• Chapter 2: Visual Formatting Model Recap
• Chapter 3: Background Images and Image Replacement
• Chapter 4: Styling Links
• Chapter 5: Styling Lists and Creating Nav Bars
• Chapter 6: Styling Forms and Data Tables
• Chapter 7: Layout
• Chapter 8: Hacks and Filters
• Chapter 9: Bugs and Bug Fixing
• Case Study 1: More Than Doodles
• Case Study 2: Tuscany Luxury Resorts

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1813 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-13
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 280 pages

About the Author
Andy is an internationally renowned web designer, developer and weblog author based in Brighton, England. Andy specializes in building attractive, accessible, and standards complaint web solutions. Andy enjoys writing about web techniques for sites such as digital-web.com and his work has been featured in numerous magazines, books, and websites around the world.

Simon is lead web developer at Agenzia, and has worked on numerous web projects for record labels, high-profile recording artists, and leading visual artists and illustrators, including The Libertines, Black Convoy, and Project Facade. Simon also oversees a production line of business, community, and voluntary sector web sites, and passionately ensures everything he builds is accessible and usable, and complies with current web standards. Simon regularly reviews CSS-based web sites for Stylegala, and does his best to keep his highly popular blog (collylogic.com) updated with noise about web standards, music, film, travels, and more web standards.

None Available

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Customer Reviews

Perfect for those starting out
This book was in a sense life changing for me. It helped lay the foundation for my understanding of CSS and ultimately led me to a job in web development. The writing is very accessible and easy to read. I highly recommend it for anyone who is starting out with web standards.

Perfect CSS book for anyone who attempted to self teach
This book is well written, a breeze to read from cover to cover. It is laid out well, with a logical progression of topics. And it cleared up many misconceptions I personally had with how to use CSS. Unfortunately, CSS references on the internet often use bad techniques due to a misunderstanding of what some key declarations mean. In my attempts to emulate some of these techniques, I frequently found myself having to make large amounts of change for browser compatibility, etc. This book has shifted my perspective on how things should work. Since then, my time spent fine tuning has been minimal.

I would highly recommend it to anyone who was self taught and having troubles getting things to work like desired. Great for beginners up to intermediate too. I think anyone who is truly advanced in CSS will be familiar with most of what is covered, but maybe not bad as a reference.

A master's level course on CSS
If I were to recommend one professional level book on CSS, this is it. It offers real world solutions that work across browsers and that are fully standards compliant. Explanations are clear. Examples are well chosen and described and I've found solutions for head scratching problems that actually work.

This is probably not the first CSS book that a web designer should buy. Take the "Advanced" part of the title seriously. But if you have your HTML and chops and a basic understanding of CSS, it definitely belongs on your bookshelf. Or if you're like me, it will be handy on your desk with coffee stains on the cover. It's my first choice reference for anything CSS related.