Product Description

Professional CSS Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design

As the preferred technology for Web design, cascading style sheets (CSS) enable Web designers and developers to define consistent styles on multiple pages. Written by leading CSS authors who are also professional programmers and designers, this is the first book to showcase examples of high-profile, real-world Web sites created by world-famous designers using CSS.

Each chapter offers an exploratory look at each designer's process from start to finish and how he overcame each site's unique set of challenges. You'll learn what each designer would have done differently as well as various CSS tips and techniques that were used for each site. This is a resource to which you can turn regularly for more know-how and insights into designing large-scale, professional-level Web sites with CSS.

What you will learn from this book
* The preliminaries you need to iron out before you begin a site in order to avoid problems later
* How to tackle browser-compatibility issues
* Best practices for using XHTML with CSS
* How to successfully integrate Flash content into an XHTML and CSS site
* Using drop shadows, drop-down menus, bounding boxes, and rollovers
* Ways to develop a site that can reliably handle constant streams of up-to-date information

Who this book is for

This book is for designers who understand CSS at an intermediate to advanced level, but who are looking to learn how to effectively develop CSS-enabled designs at a professional level.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #596407 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 456 pages

Download Description
"* Written by leading CSS authors and a team of professional programmers and designers, this book details the techniques of top CSS designers and showcases the real-world Web sites that made them famous
* Each chapter focuses on one designer and a Web site that he or she worked on, documenting the process from start to finish, showing how each designer overcame the site's unique challenges, and explaining what they would have done differently
* After completing Beginning CSS (0-7645-7642-9), readers will turn to this book for more know-how and insights in designing large-scale, professional-level, standards-based CSS Web sites"

From the Back Cover
Professional CSS Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design

As the preferred technology for Web design, cascading style sheets (CSS) enable Web designers and developers to define consistent styles on multiple pages. Written by leading CSS authors who are also professional programmers and designers, this is the first book to showcase examples of high-profile, real-world Web sites created by world-famous designers using CSS.

Each chapter offers an exploratory look at each designer's process from start to finish and how he overcame each site's unique set of challenges. You'll learn what each designer would have done differently as well as various CSS tips and techniques that were used for each site. This is a resource to which you can turn regularly for more know-how and insights into designing large-scale, professional-level Web sites with CSS.

What you will learn from this book

• The preliminaries you need to iron out before you begin a site in order to avoid problems later
• How to tackle browser-compatibility issues
• Best practices for using XHTML with CSS
• How to successfully integrate Flash content into an XHTML and CSS site
• Using drop shadows, drop-down menus, bounding boxes, and rollovers
• Ways to develop a site that can reliably handle constant streams of up-to-date information

Who this book is for

This book is for designers who understand CSS at an intermediate to advanced level, but who are looking to learn how to effectively develop CSS-enabled designs at a professional level.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

About the Author
Christopher Schmitt is the principal of Heatvision.com, Inc., a new media publishing and design firm based in Tallahassee, Florida. An award-winning Web designer who has been working with the Web since 1993, he interned for both David Siegel and Lynda Weinman in the mid-1990s while an undergraduate at Florida State University pursuing a Fine Arts degree with emphasis on graphic design. He is the author of The CSS Cookbook (O’Reilly, 2004) and Designing CSS Web Pages (New Riders Press, 2002). He is also the co-author (with Micah Laaker) of Photoshop CS in 10 Simple Steps or Less (Wiley, 2004) and contributed four chapters to XML, HTML, & XHTML Magic by Molly Holzschlag (New Riders Press, 2001). Christopher has also written for New Architect magazine, A List Apart, Digital Web, and Web Reference. In 2000, he led a team to victory in the “Cool Site in a Day” competition, wherein he and five other talented developers built a fully functional, well-designed Web site for a non-profit organization in eight hours. Speaking at conferences such as The Other Dreamweaver Conference and SXSW, he has given talks demonstrating the use and benefits of practical CSS-enabled designs. Also helping to spread the word about Web design, he is the list mom for Babble (www.babblelist.com), a mailing list community devoted to advanced Web design and development topics. On his personal Web site, www.christopherschmitt.com, he shows his true colors and most recent activities. He is 6'7" tall and does not play professional basketball, but he wouldn’t mind a good game of chess.

Mark Trammell of Gainesville, Florida, directs the Web presence at the University of Florida.

Ethan Marcotte of Boston co-founded Vertua Studios (vertua.com), a Web design shop focused on creating beautiful, user-focused sites. A steering committee member of the Web Standards Project, he is a leading industry voice on standards-based Web design. Ethan is also the curator of sidesh0w.com, a popular Web log that is equal parts design, coding, and blather.

Dunstan Orchard of Dorset, UK, and San Francisco is Senior UI Engineer at Apple’s online store. He is a member of The Web Standards Project, a silent developer for the popular open source blogging platform Wordpress, and an occasional contributor to his own site at http://1976design.com/.

Todd Dominey of Atlanta founded Dominey Design (domineydesign.com), an interactive Web development and design studio that has produced original work for Budweiser, The Washington Post, Google, Winterfresh Gum, and others. He is also a Senior Interactive Designer at Turner Sports Interactive, designing and developing Web destinations for major PGA tournaments (including the PGA Championship and The Ryder Cup).

Customer Reviews

Not Impressed!
By the name "Professional" I expected a book that would pick where most "Beginning" CSS books left off. This book is mostly filled with case studies, that is it showing the code of several web sites, instead of being an instructional on how to take advantage of CSS's more advanced features. Its defiantly not what it was described as being.

CSS Best Practices
This book is a little out of date because it does not cover Internet Explorer 7.0. However, it does teach you all the CSS techniques that have been used for the past few years and points you to many resources for more information. I only read this book to review the best practices for using CSS and XHTML.

The Whole Picture
I had learned CSS back in 98, when everything was new, and most of what CSS was MEANT to do just didn't work yet. Move forward 9 years and guess what? It still doesn't! However, this book helped me to expand my CSS understanding and do a lot more cool stuff than I used to be able to do. This is an industry that is ever changing and it pays to keep learning.