Nice Follow up to "Beginning CSS Web Development" | Pro CSS Techniques (Pro)

Real-World CSS Techniques | Pro CSS Techniques (Pro) | Jeff Croft, Ian Lloyd, ...

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	• Pro CSS Techniques (Pro) Jeff Croft, Ian Lloyd, ... Apress, 2006 - 408 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Be gone tables! Hello CSS!

I come to web development as so many of us, through the back door. There are a hundred web projects for every web developer. And so, anybody with the desire can start building sites. This is how I started and how I continue. I learn just what I need to know to get this current project out the door. Now several years later I find myself deep in PHP programming with out any real knowledge of CSS. Free CSS templates have gotten me far and I have learned to hack them into something useful. But the fundamentals and advanced concepts escape me. So I did it, I got myself a CSS book and tackled the task I have procrastinated on for so long.

Pro CSS Techniques turned out to be a great choice. I didn't want to waste my money on a beginner's book that usually are full of "not much". So I went for the book with "Pro" in the title fully expecting to have to struggle a bit. I was pleasantly surprised on two accounts. First I didn't find myself struggling much. And second this book actually covers a wide range of material including the basics. The tutorial style that most of the book is written in lends itself well to my practical side. At several points in the book I had a break through that took me straight to my computer to implement techniques on current projects. I found myself running through the section like a recipe, substituting their examples for mine. That's my kind of book!

My favorite chapter turned out not to be a chapter at all but Appendix A - CSS Reference. It's a full reference for all CSS properties. This is what you would never get in a beginner book. How awesome to just look up the float property in the positioning section. I have to admit I may be over using the float property a little too much. But I have been freed from the bonds of tables and shale never return.

Now I just need to live up to the Authors' challenge and write semantically correct code. I see the need and appreciate it when ever I come upon it but this will be the true change for an implementor like me who just needs to get the job done. "Take the time and do it right", is my new mantra!

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Nice Follow up to "Beginning CSS Web Development"

A nice addition to Apress' bookshelf covering CSS Web Development. The book is well-written, easing you through specific topics and techniques that will take your developement skills to the next level. Simon Collison, Dan Rubin, Ian Lloyd and Jeff Croft are revolutionizing standards-compliant, accessible, responsible web design.

Well done again fella's. Looking forward to more advanced books from you and Apress!

Cheers,

Elias

Real-World CSS Techniques

Having read through Pro CSS Techniques, I can recommend it to web site creators who occasionally (or often) find themselves scratching their heads wondering why that browser isn't rendering the page the way they intended. The book's subtitle reads: Real-world CSS Techniques for real-world CSS professionals. As a practical manual for developing today's websites, Pro CSS Techniques covers all the real-world bases.

What I especially like about the writing is that it isn't preachy and it offers options. For instance, it explains two techniques to expand anchor elements across their containers, providing both pros and cons for each. In addition, having been released after the final version of IE7 and Windows Vista, Pro CSS Techniques covers both IE6 and IE7 rendering anomalies as well as Windows Vista-specific typography information.

The authors are undoubtedly creating real websites every day. This book is a great resource for the areas we're most likely to need, as well as a fine reference for CSS techniques in general.

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Great CSS book for developers

There are many CSS books on the market now, so distinguishing yourself from the many is getting harder and harder to do. Since there are less intermediate to advanced books compared to beginner CSS books this is a start. Another thing this book focuses on that is different than the majority of other CSS book is that is stresses creating semantic markup throughout the design and development process. Semantic markup means understanding the meaning of the XHTML that you write. What this means is that the code is free of presentational information using only and when absolutely necessary. These two tags can be very useful in creating intricate CSS designs but they have no semantic meaning. Many blog posts have called this "divitis" because their web page is just a whole bunch of tags with identifiers (id or class) and that's it. While this visually helps the designer quickly create the site, to screen-readers, or PDAs or cell phones may not render the page exactly as you may think it should and using semantic markup helps the browser for that particular device render that page that makes the most sense. It is a hard concept to grasp or fully explain (as I probably am not), but it is used more and more in current web practices.

Now this book is written by a couple different authors which seems like the norm nowadays. [...] They all have contributed to various blogs (including their own) about web design techniques and many of them are here in this book.

Now the title of this book may be misleading. You do not have to be a professional web designer using XHTML and CSS in the workplace to buy this book. Nor do you have to have memorized every CSS property and value to understand what the authors are saying. All you need to be able to grasp the concepts talked about in the book is a basic understanding of Cascading Style Sheets. As long as you know the basics, this will be a very enjoyable read. The reason it is called "Pro" I am guessing is that many "pro" fessionals use the same techniques and practices that are talked about in the book. It doesn't mean that it is so complex and intricate that only the select few will understand.

So to start out the book goes into an excellent explanation (of what I started to in the beginning) of what semantic markup is, why it should be used and practical uses for it. The book then (chapter 2) goes into quick summary of CSS basics but from a perspective of why each element and style should be used (semantic meaning) and some of the least understood properties and selectors. The next chapter goes into a great explanation of how the "cascade" part of CSS works with using descendant, child and adjacent sibling selectors. This is a difficult concept to grasp and the author(s) explain it very simply and easily for almost any level of reader. Lots of code snippets and examples here with great uses for everyday stuff. The next chapter (chapter 4) is skipped in many other CSS books but is a very important issue: browser differences. This chapter explains each browser's (Firefox, IE, Opera and Safari) history and incompatibilities with CSS 2.1 and CSS 3.0 standards and discusses some of the big issues that started "hacks" back in the early years of CSS development. Hacks themselves are discussed in chapter 6 and are a very valuable skill in creating designs that are consistent across browsers. Though the author(s) explains that hacks are much a reason of non-semantic markup as they are with browser incompatibilities.

CSS layouts (chapter 7) and common page elements (chapter 8) are great chapters to get your website started with good design ideas or help you redesign your site without tables.
Some of the techniques shown are: rounded corners, image swapping and hover effects, creating tabbed navigation, and styling a logo image. Another concept explained in detail that gives most people headaches at first are floats which are used extensively in layout design and creating properly aligned forms without tables.

Another great chapter (chapter 10) focuses on layout designs for styling tables. Although there are a lot of examples on the web on how to do this it makes it easier to find it and apply it to your own site.

This is a great book for anybody wanting to further their CSS knowledge and experience by learning techniques that are used by some of the top designers out there. A must buy!

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Pro CSS Techniques is the ultimate CSS book for the modern web developer. If youve already got web design and development basics under your belt, but want to take your knowledge to the next level and unleash the full power of CSS in your web sites, then this is the book for you. It is a collection of proven CSS techniques that you can use daily to get the most out of the time you spend on your projects, from start to finish.

Every topic is presented in an informative tutorial style, with each point backed up by several real-world examples and case studies. The authors cover all the essential areas of CSS development, like browser support (including IE7), hacks and filters, code management, advanced layouts and styling, typography, and much more. CSS levels 1, 2, and 3 are given a full treatment. The book also includes several reference sections that allow you to look up details quickly and easily.

The book aims to help you in four areas: maintainability, compatibility, reusability, and practicality. Youll be able to keep your code organized and easy to maintain, avoiding browser issues before they crop up (or hacking around them when absolutely necessary). Youll learn to get the most out of your styles with inheritance, and by using techniques you can build on. And youll learn to use what works in the real world, without getting too caught up in ideals, because you can always optimize later.

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