Product Description

The Internet abounds with information on CSS based design. However it's spread across a large and disparate group of sites and can be very difficult to find. The purpose of this book is to pull all this information together in one place, thus creating a definitive guide to modern CSS based techniques. The book can be read cover to cover, with each chapter building on the previous one. However it can equally be used as a reference book, dipping into each chapter or technique to help solve specific problems.

This second edition contains:

• New examples and updated browser support information
• New case studies from Simon Collison and Cameron Moll
• CSS3 examples, showing new CSS3 features, and CSS3 equivalents to tried and tested CSS2 techniques

What you'll learn

• The best practice concepts in CSS design.
• The most important (and tricky) parts of CSS
• Identify and fix the most common CSS problems
• How to deal with the most common bugs
• Completely up to date browser support information
• Covers CSS3 as well as CSS2 showing you the future of CSS

Who is this book for?

This book will be aimed towards intermediate web designers/developers although the examples should be simple enough for novice designers/developers with a basic understanding of CSS to follow along with. Readers will probably have read beginner/intermediate instructional books such as Web Standards Solutions and will be looking for more practical and in-depth information. This book is likely to have a broad appeal, attracting intermediate developers wanting to improve their skills as well as advanced developers wanting a useful reference.

The CSS 2/3 content of the book is delivered in a way that allows readers to learn CSS2 techniques that they can implement now in professional work, and then gem up on CSS3 techniques if desired, if they want to start looking towards the future.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14832 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781430223979
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author

Andy Budd is one of the founding partners at User Experience Design Consultancy, Clearleft. As an interaction design and usability specialist, Andy is a regular speaker at international conferences like Web Directions, An Event Apart, and SXSW. Andy curates dConstruct, one of the UK’s most popular design conferences. He’s also responsible for UX London, the UK’s first dedicated usability, information architecture, and user experience design event.

Andy was an early champion of web standards in the UK and has developed an intimate understanding of the CSS specification and cross-browser support. As an active member of the community, Andy has helped judge several international design awards and currently sits on the advisory board for .Net magazine. Andy is also the driving force behind Silverbackapp, a low-cost usability testing tool for the Mac. Andy is an avid Twitter user and occasionally blogs at andybudd.com.

Never happier than when he’s diving in some remote tropical atoll, Andy is a qualified PADI dive instructor and retired shark wrangler.

In October 2006 Simon started Erskine Design—based in Nottingham, UK—that grew to become an eight-strong team of creative web designers and developers who are afraid of nothing. Some people say they're one of the best agencies out there, and their clients include major magazines, government stuff, software companies—and polar explorers.

Moons ago, he was a successful visual artist, and founded an independent arts org and annual arts festival, putting his degree to some use at least. Then he caught the interwebs bug.

As lead web developer at Agenzia from 2002 to 2006, he worked on numerous web projects for major record labels (such as Poptones, Universal) and bands (including The Libertines, Dirty Pretty Things, Beta Band), visual artists and illustrators (Jon Burgerman, Paddy Hartley, Lucy Orta, NOW Festival), businesses, community, and voluntary sector orgs, passionately ensuring everything was accessible and complied with current web standards.

He does a bit of public speaking here and there, and will generally do anything for a biscuit and cup of tea, but prefers hard cash.

He has lived in many cities, including London and Reykjavik, but has now settled back in his beloved Nottingham, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty. He also drives a 31 year old car, and has a stupid cat called Bearface.

Cameron Moll has been designing meaningful web interfaces that harmonize utility and presentation since the late 1990s. His work or advice has been featured by HOW, Print, and Communication Arts magazines, Forrester Research, National Public Radio (NPR), and many others. He speaks on user interface design at conferences nationally and internationally, and he is also the author of Mobile Web Design.

Cameron is the founder and president of Authentic Jobs Inc., a targeted destination for web and creative professionals and the companies seeking to hire them. He is also the proprietor of Cameron Moll LLC, whose products include letterpress typography posters available for purchase at cameronmoll.bigcartel.com. And amid all this craziness, he still finds time to play ball with each of his four boys.

You can also find Cameron online at cameronmoll.com, twitter.com/cameronmoll, flickr.com/photos/authentic, and vimeo.com/cameronmoll.

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Customer Reviews

The Best CSS Reference Book in print today!
When I heard Andy Budd (http://www.clearleft.com/, http://www.andybudd.com/)was writing a CSS book I knew I had to get it. Andy is one of the top UK web designers for past years and anything he has to say you should listen. :)

This book is for anybody who has played around with CSS a little and wondered "what the h*ll can I do with this stuff?". CSS has been around for awhile now, but only recently has the most current browsers been able to support the cool stuff you can do with it. What cool stuff? You need to buy the book to find out, but I'll give you some highlights...

First off, the first chapter explains how to use document types, divs and spans, validation, basics of CSS (selectors, pseudo-classes, child and sibling selectors, attribute selectors, etc), how cascade and specifity works, and how to organize your style sheets. A great primer to the rest of the book.

The 2nd chapter focuses visual formatting with CSS with the Box Model, Positioning and Floating. This is an important topic because creating CSS layouts requires a good understanding of how these topics work (and work together) in creating "real-world layouts.

Chapter 3 talks about using background images and replacement in creating rounded corner effects, drop shadows (4 different kinds), and some cool image replacement for optimizing search engines and screen readers (accessibility).

Chapter 4 has some great examples on styling links to create efficient CSS buttons without the images or the JavaScript for the "roll-over" effect. Yes, CSS can create some cool buttons without you ever having to use Photoshop. :)

Chapter 5 continues with styling links but extends it in showing you how to create button nav bars (horizontal and vertical) and adds a few tricks with using some image placeholders and sections to create some nice looking professional navigation for your website.

Chapter 6 focuses on the right way to use tables: for displaying data (not layout for web sites - no more nested tables). With the use of the very popular border-collapse property and others, Andy shows some very eye-please table layouts.

Chapter 7 in my opinion is the meat-and-potatoes of the book. Its goes over some how to use CSS in creating some standardized layouts. The whole point of CSS is to separate your content and layout and this is the way to go. It is explained in a very easy to follow manner with plenty of screenshots to show you each step.

The rest of the book (Chapter 8 and Chapter 9) review the common and not-so-common CSS hacks that are used to overcome some browser deficiencies. I can't tell you how many website I had to search to find out about these, and its all here in these 2 chapters!.

The last part of the book has 2 Case Studies that show how a website created purely with CSS was created from beginning to end. A great finish to a great book.

Throw out all your other CSS books and just get this one.

Useful book, but sloppy editing
This is quite a useful book, as has been well documented in other reviews. The tips are helpful, the examples are useful, and the typography and layout are easy on the eyes.

However -- and this is a big however -- the book is riddled with technical errors. The errata file, available for download from the publisher as a PDF file, currently runs a whopping 11 pages. While a small handful of errors in a technical book's first edition is inevitable, 11 pages is not a small handful for a book as thin as this. It's really inexcusable that so many errors -- some of them quite obvious -- made it past the editor.

Good Book but how about checking typos before publishing?
Before you buy this book from all the glowing reviews check this link below, & it will show you all the aggravating typos in this book. (10 total pages of corrections.)

http://www.cssmastery.com/CSSMastery-Errata.pdf

It makes it very irritating to use.

The book is good if you are ready to stick with it, but before I buy from these authors again, I am waiting for the errata to be a few months old. It kind of feels like a ripoff to get a book that you have to constantly go back & forth to a pdf (painful) to make sure it isn't a typo on your part when css does not work as expected.

I like friends of ed books in general, but we do pay money for these things as customers & should demand more from authors.