CSS: The Definitive Guide

A real educational experience. Also a well defined book. Be ready to learn when you read this book. This book gets two thumbs up.

Before purchasing this book, I had purchased about a half dozen books on css, one from the same author. I was really surprised to find new ways to use css that I hadn't learned in the other books. Each topic is discussed completely and in detail. For a reference on css, this book is the best I've found.

This is a book about CSS, and CSS, is about the presentation aspect of web pages. How the text appears, the size, the layout, etc.

However, the presentation style inside the book is kind of sloppy. For example, on page 186 and 187, when it talks about inline elements, Figure 7.33 "Strongly emphasized" is printed not as tall as Figure 7.34 and 7.35 when the CSS style is the same. And the word being used is "which is" and is changed to "that is" in Figure 7.34 and 7.35, when it is changing the vertical-align only. The reader would be better helped if they can see the contrast of the CSS style, without the change of wording for no reason at all. Also, in Figure 7.34, the bigger words should not overlap with the smaller words above, as tested in CSS compliant browsers, but it is printed so on the book.

Then again, in Figure 7.36, for no reason at all, the picture is shrunk down to 1/4 size of the previous examples, when they are all talking about the same case except for some vertical-align difference. It may be done just because the page is running out of space. That is pretty sloppy.

On page 181 to 182, it talks about various terms of the inline box model, and there is no figure at all to exemplify the terms at all. Then after the reader goes through a tough time to read through those text of hard definitions, 3 pages later, the figures start to appear. Please, can the book be designed so that the readers are considered? CSS is partly for making the content easy for the audience, and how about this CSS book is made easier for its audience too?

Nicely written, very informative. My deduction of a star is for the reference having neither examples nor page numbers where a more detailed explanation would be found. This is a common omission, so I would still recommend this book. I would not recommend this as a first introduction to web authoring, as it is strictly CSS, which of course does nothing without structural mark-up. For those who have been building sites for a while, and need some guidance and insite into CSS, this is a great choice. However, for those who have very little or no experience I would instead recommend 'Build your website the right way...' by Ian Lloyd.

As others have pointed out this is not a CSS "cookbook" full of design templates. If that is what you are looking for, you will be disappointed. If however, you want to understand CSS, how it works, best practices and so on, this is a great book. Although you can find all of the info in various places on the web, Mr. Meyer is a good author explaining in detail how things work and bringing up valuable points to be aware of along the way. A good addition to any web developers library.