The Art and Science of CSS (Paperback)

by Jonathan Snook (Author), Steve Smith (Author), Jina Bolton (Author), Cameron Adams (Author), David Johnson (Author)
Key Phrases: serving sushi, bit worn from overuse, roof ofthe car, Internet Explorer, Lucida Grande, Contact Details Name (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
CSS-based design doesn't need to be boring. The Art & Science of CSS brings together a talented collection of designers who will show you how to take the building blocks of your web site's design (such as headings, navigation, forms, and more) and bring them to life with fully standards-compliant CSS.

This full color book helps you to design web sites that not only work well across all browsers, are easy to maintain, and are highly accessible, but are also visually stunning.

• Create truly attention-grabbing headings.
• Discover multiple ways to present images effectively.
• Use background images to give your site zest.
• Build usable and attractive navigation.
• Design forms that are stylish and functional.
• Learn how to break away from the square box gclich.
• Create funky tables.
• And lots more

From the Publisher

Jonathan Snook, Steve Smith, Jina Bolton, Cameron Adams, and David Johnson, five of the biggest names in CSS design have joined forces to bring you The Art & Science Of CSS.

Beautifully presented in full color, this book will teach you how to apply innovative CSS-based techniques to create visually stunning headings, forms, menus, navigation, backgrounds, and much more...

Using The Art & Science Of CSS, you'll see just how easy it is to unleash your creative talents and design inspirational web sites with CSS.

All designs in this book are visually appealing and inspiring. The CSS code used to create each of the components is included and guaranteed to be simple, efficient and cross-browser compatible.

Among its many treasures, this book will show you how to:

• Format calendars, menus and table of contents using CSS
• Create horizontal, vertical and tab-based navigation systems using CSS
• Create rounded corners using CSS
• Design stylish Website headings
• Put together funky & artistic Website backgrounds
• Use CSS to render blockquotes, dates and lists in a visually appealing manner

All designs in this book are visually appealing and inspiring. The code CSS code used to create each of the components is provided and is guaranteed to be simple, efficient and cross-browser compatible.

Who Should Read This Book?

This book is ideal for anyone who wants to gain the practical skills involved in using CSS to make attractive web sites, especially if you're not the type who likes to learn by memorizing a formal specification and then trying to work out which browsers implemented it completely (does anyone enjoy reading specifications?). The only knowledge you'll need to have is some familiarity with HTML. This book will give designers the skills they need to implement their ideas, and provides developers with creative inspiration through practical examples.

About the Author
Cameron Adams has been adding to the Internet for over seven years and now runs his own design and development business: www.themaininblue.com. He likes to combine the aesthetic with the technological on his Weblog, which contains equal parts of JavaScript, design and CSS.

Jina Bolton, Interactive Designer, holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Computer Arts and Graphic Design fom Memphis College of Art. In addition to being featured in CSS Professional Style and Web Designing magazine, Jina consults for variuos agencies and organizations including the World Wide Web Consortium. She enjoys traveling, is learning Italian, and considers herself a shushi-enthusiast.

David Johnson is one of those evil .NET developers from Melbourne, Australia. He is the senior developer at Lemonade (http://www.lemonade.com.au), and his role includes C# programming, database design using SQL Server, and front-end development using XHTML and CSS. He makes up for his evil deeds by being a firm believer in web standards and accessibility, and forcing .NET to abide by these rules. His favorite candy is Sherbies.

Steve Smith is the lead Web developer with the University of Notre Dame Web Group, and believes in "finding joy in small steps" when it comes to advocating web standards.

Jonathan Snook has been involved in the web since '95, and is lucky to be able to call his hobby a career. He worked in wb agencies for over six years and has worked with high profile clients in government, the private sector, and non-profit organizations. Jonathan Snook currently runs his own web development business from Ottawa, Canada and continues to write about what he loves on his blog at Snook.ca.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: SitePoint; 1 edition (March 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0975841971
• ISBN-13: 978-0975841976
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #47,215 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book full of real-world applications of CSS, April 10, 2007

By	Nate Klaiber (nkbookreviews.com) - See all my reviews

The Art and Science of CSS was a quick read (208 pages) and packed full of valuable code examples. Unlike other CSS books that teach you the specifics of CSS with vague examples (not vague in a bad way), this book teaches you specific examples and gives you extra resources. This book is somewhat of a `cookbook` of commonly used CSS methods. Each author brings their unique writing style to the table, and each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of design and its CSS and styling methods.

Chapter 1 stars with Headings. The author of this chapter gives a brief introduction to hierarchy and branding, and how you can achieve more control with your look and typography. As typography is discussed, he moves on to talk about image replacement and the many techniques available to us today. There is no perfect solution when it comes to image replacement, but the author does a great job of showing current methods, their advantages, and their disadvantages (including an in-depth section on sIFR).

Chapter 2 is all about Images. The author starts by showing you how to create a basic, but aesthetically pleasing, image gallery. The task at hand is to create the enlarged version, the thumbnail page, and the galleries page while keeping the markup lean and semantic. Each of these are put together very nicely with flair not usually seen in off the shelf image galleries. The author also discusses how to create images (in context) with captions, including a nice use of transparent PNGs. The author's creative use of captions give you options `outside of the box' (both semantically and philosophically) of normal captions that are seen all around the web.

Chapter 3 shows us that backgrounds don't have to be boring. This is a very simple chapter that discusses backgrounds of the past (repeating pictures, large pictures, etc), and then looks forward to the present in getting creative with your backgrounds. He uses a case study as an example, and it shows specifics of positioning and layering.

Chapter 4 jumps into Navigation. Different types of navigations are discussed (vertical, horizontal, tabbed, variable width, etc) and shown with specific examples. The author shows how to take from each of those to create advanced navigation systems using images and your semantic markup. I think that from this chapter a user could create an advanced navigation - simply because the foundation is set pretty solid before he gets to the advanced section. This chapter goes hand-in-hand with chapter 1 when talking about image replacement.

Chapter 5 discusses the dreaded (sometimes feared) Forms. Forms come in all shapes and sizes - and it is up to us to build them accordingly with the user in mind. The styling in this chapter spruces up what is a rather mundane form - while giving you great flexibility and hooks to extend yourself. The author discusses the several different layout types (top aligned label, left aligned label, right aligned label) and shows how to enhance each. If you work with forms often, this chapter will help you whip up a clean interface for the task.

Chapter 6 is everybody's favorite chapter - Rounded Corners. The author gives you an arsenal of tools (and knowledge) to attack the task of adding rounded corners. He discusses the different methods (horizontal stretching, vertical stretching, and full flexibility) and shows you how to achieve each - keeping in mind the task of keeping the marking minimal and meaningful. We also get a brief glimpse into what CSS3 will have to offer us with multiple backgrounds per element.

Chapter 7 closes out the book with Tables. Tables still have a strong place in web development - and the author shows you how to use tables properly (with semantic markup) and then how to give them a little visual jumpstart and interaction. The markup presented here helps you give clear meaning to your tables - as well as building with accessibility in mind (which is always important with tables, specifically). We round off the chapter looking at some interaction enhancements via Javascript that we can use with our tables (sorting, striping, and hovering).

Overall I found this book to be an excellent read. It was short and to the point, and gives the reader a great starting point (as well as inspiration). The book itself is well designed. My only qualms with the book is that the code examples are listed in full in many places, which gives less room for content related to the chapters. As I said in the beginning, this was a fairly quick read - but well worth it. I would say that this is for an intermediate CSS developer, as specific CSS is not discussed in great detail but given to you as a way to achieve a specific design task. If you are familiar with CSS and need a quick way to achieve the tasks listed above, then this book is perfect for you.

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Another CSS Rehash, June 8, 2007

By	Joshua K. Briley "somecallmejosh" (Manchester, CT) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought this book based on the reviews. Foolish was I. I'm not sure I'll purchase any more Sitepoint books without driving over to the local book store and flipping through the pages first. My last three purchases from them have been a little disappointing.

If you haven't already read tons of books on CSS, then I can see how this would be an "ok" source of information. If you haven't already read "Transcending CSS" by Andy Clarke or CSS Mastery by Andy Budd, or even the somewhat outdated "Bulletproof Web Design" by Dan Cederholm, then I strongly suggest you start there. This book teaches/shows how "these" authors/designers pulled off certain tasks. I'm concerned about the techniques that are being used to teach those who are supposedly less informed than the authors.

I couldn't help but ask myself why they're teaching their readers to use empty <div>'s in their markup just for styling purposes. Many classes and ID's were assigned throughout this book simply for styling purposes alone. Not much emphasis was placed on semantics. In saying this, many things could have been accomplished with leaner markup and the use of adjacent and sibling selectors, attribute selectors, etc. If you read Clarke's or Budd's books, you'll learn that this extraneous code is completely superfluous and there are smarter ways to use your markup.

Topics they cover that have already been covered in numerous other books include:
1. Rounded Corners. This has been covered a ridiculous amount of times in other books. Try Dan Cederholm's Bulletproof Web Design that was released by New Riders a few years ago. Douglas Bowman has articles in his blog covering rounded corner navigation styling (Sliding Doors of CSS) that you can read for free at www.stopdesign.com.

2. Form Styling. Same information can be found in Andy Budd's CSS Mastery. It's essentially the same information. Cameron Moll also discusses some of these techniques on his blog.

3. Navigation/Link styling. The same information can be found in almost every CSS book I've read (to date is over 10 books on the subject) and every free online tutorial. This information hasn't really changed over the last 2 years.

4. Image Stacking and Transparency - Done by Jeff Croft in a recent Sitepoint publication entitled "Web Standards Creativity". See chapter 5. Feel free to check out my review on that book as well.

I'm still scratching my head over the significance of the word "Scientific" in the title of this book. Anyone care to comment on this review and explain that one to me? I'm becoming more and more disappointed with Sitepoint Publications as they come out. They're good at marketing, I guess, because I keep buying them and reading them. The titles are more misleading as each new publication comes out, and the content is re purposed from existing books - some of which are New Riders and Friends of Ed publications. There's nothing new here. If you've read other "good" books on the subject, I strongly recommend saving your money.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great CSS Book..., April 12, 2007

By	Frank Stepanski (PA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This new type of "workbook" format really visually helps display all the cool things you can do using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Plus since this book is co-authored by Cameron Adams and Jonathan Snook, there are tons of useful techniques that incorporate JavaScript with CSS. I have never seen a book that integrates CSS design techniques with JavaScript (accessible of course) and make it work seamlessly together.

There are beautiful screenshots of code snippets, screenshots of what each page will look like and really makes it easy on the eyes in learning the useful techniques of CSS. It is hard to list all the cool things that are covered in this book so I will just give a highlight.

Chapter 1- Image Replacement with CSS, Flash Image Replacement (sIFR) and JavaScript

Chapter 2 - Creating an image gallery: Styling the images, creating thumbnails, creating an album page; Styling contextual images, manipulating borders and padding, using floats for alignment of text and images, stacking and transparency (IE6 and IE7)

Chapter 3 - Using the background styles for images, creating a case-study design (Deadwood Design), absolute and relative positioning of images, using multiple background images (CSS3)

Chapter 4 - Creating navigation lists: Basic Vertical Navigation, IE issues (whitespace issue versus Firefox), creating a class for remember where user is in list; Basic Horizontal Navigation: Tabbed navigation, variable tab width issues, hover styles, creating multiple level navigation.

Chapter 5 - Forms: Labeling form elements (<label for = "">); fieldset and legend tags, creating table-less form layouts; styling error message labels for validartion (JavaScript)

Chapter 6 - Rounded Corners - Everything you ever wanted to about creating nicely rounded corners

Chapter 7 - Tables, creating some nicely styled professional looking tables with CSS and JavaScript.

If you have been using CSS for awhile this book is a useful reference for specific techniques you have had trouble with or if your new to CSS it will help you learn all the cool things you can do with CSS but never thought to think of. The book is written in an easy to learn format that is great for any level.

Go get it!