Customer Reviews

The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

My guess is that there are many hundreds, if not thousands, of web designers who continue to build sites and web applications using "old-fashioned" tables and HTML layout formatting instead of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). I'm one of them. The problem is that the modern trend is away from HTML table and layout formatting and towards newer standards-compliant means. The protocols and standards of the World Wide Web are evolving towards "cleaner" code, more standardized code, and more capable code, generally guided by principles and standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium, known as W3C.

In the book, "The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks, and Hacks", author Rachel Andrew provides an easy way for hold-outs to ease into CSS design. This is not a treatise or concept-minded book, but a practical introduction and guide to putting CSS to immediate use in real-world contexts that every web designer is already familiar with. The author shows how to use CSS to style text, format headings and images, create navigation, style forms and user interfaces, and work with browser-compatibility issues.

Andrew is a working web designer and applications designer and presents the material in a very straightforward practical manner - almost as if the reader was following along at a workshop. The writing is clear, all examples are illustrated with relevant code samples, and she offers the insights of an experienced professional regarding everyday problems and solutions.

The book is composed of a preface, nine chapters, and an index. Chapter 1 is an introduction to CSS showing why it is replacing HTML table and layout formatting, and the basic concepts of CSS. The other chapters are set up in a "problem/solution" format where various design issues - text styling, image layout, etc. - are presented and solved by adept usage of CSS.

Even readers who have never paid much attention to CSS will quickly get a useful, working sense of how it is used and how to use it immediately themselves. Although CSS is yet another language to learn, Andrew presents it in such a way that it seems like it is an easy learn. And it demonstrably is, as here, easy to use.

The best parts of the book are the designer tips from an experienced code-writer on how to work with code across different browsers and platforms, and how to understand that browsers have two modes of parsing - a compliant mode and a "quirks" mode. Some browsers, she shows, just have "quirks", especially Microsoft's Internet Explorer. (Surprise!). Although all the CSS tags necessary to illustrate the solutions presented here are shown, a list or chart of most commonly used CSS tags would have been helpful here. Downloadable code for all of the book's examples are available at the publisher's website - www.sitepoint.com/books/cssant1.

This is a very nice book to transition to CSS and current web standards-compliant code.

This book takes a cookbook approach to organizing CSS best practice information. It has 101 problems that it presents which it then fixes with tips and tricks designed to work in a cross platform setting.

There are a lot of CSS books on the market. This book stands out in the field because of it's real world examples and practical advice. So many books have esoteric examples of pages you would never find in the wild. This book has elegant examples that show you not only what you can do, but also guide you towards what you should do.

Well written with lots of example code and screenshots. You will need to know CSS before you pick this book up.

This is a great book on CSS. I bought it on the strength of the reviews here, and I was not at all disappointed.

I am a developer by trade, and while I've had some experience with web design through various past projects, I've done very little with CSS. Laying web pages out in tables was what I knew, and so that's how I did it. Occasionally, I would use CSS to pull some of the markup out of the HTML so I didn't have to reuse it, but I never really leveraged (or understood) the power of CSS. This book changed a lot of that.

Within days of receiving this book, I started a couple new web projects. The first was a new website, and I got the opportunity to put a lot of the fantastic recipes to work, modifying them to suit my needs. The second web project involved taking a pre-existing web module (built with heavy CSS usage) and using it as a template for a new web system. The two systems were very different (the first was a news/content site and the system being built was a web application), so there were a lot of modifications that needed to be made, while keeping the general look and feel of the original site.

If this book was just recipes, I would have had a hard time with the second task. But because book goes into explanations of why the recipies work, breaking each recipe out into a series of steps with exposition of each, I was able to reuse concepts rather than just recipes.

As I mentioned before, I had a little CSS experience before reading this book. I was familiar with HTML, but I have never been a designer, and it has been a few years since I've really built a website. I feel this book got me back up to speed quickly, and I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to familiarize themselves with CSS.

The book is an excellent reference manual that you will find yourself referring back to time and again. Got a CSS problem? Scan the table of contents for a match, and I'll bet you'll find your answer.

I have been writing web applications since the mid nineties, so I am very familiar with HTML. Until recently, I have been using CSS mostly for text formatting. Positioning and layout has been left to tables. We are starting a new project so I started looking into CSS more closely so we could create XHTML 1.1 compliant pages. I started with a few CSS reference books, but they didn't help. Then I tried CSS Zen Garden. While the book contains interesting web design information, it does really help someone looking for how-to information. The CSS Anthology was my third try and it was just what I was looking for.

Rachel's book is also a very easy read with a lot of screen captures. I was able to finish the book in a few hours, and I tend not to be a fast reader.

I don't write alot of reviews, but I need to comment on this book. There are plenty of CSS books available, but I really appreciate this one. Here's why: This book "breaks down the wall" that you will eventually hit while coding something up and need an answer fast.

You know the feeling, you're in the zone, and you really don't want to stop for a half-hour google search and work with someone's wacky code. No need to do that with this book by your side. Pop open to the TOC and you'll likely find exactly what you need. My example from this past weekend: I wanted to find some quick code to allow me to highlight form fields as the user is in them, open the book and the author gives you the CSS. She quickly points out that the CSS only works in Firefox (currently), so she gives us the Javascript, too!


As someone who is (much) more of a programmer than a designer, I highly recommend this book. It has saved me several times in the past few days, well worth the cost.

This book is a useful complement to the other members of my XHTML / CSS library. That is to say that no one book, including this one, provides a complete solution to the problem of learning and using CSS.

By way of illustration, my CSS library already contains a so-called "definitive guide" that provides excellent, albeit somewhat spare and dry, descriptions of every single CSS selector and property. The problem is that while this definitive guide is a useful reference, it seldom illustrates how to use CSS to achieve many common formatting effects. I'm thus obliged to wade through the descriptions of several CSS selectors and properties in a search for the ones that will allow me to achieve my rather simple presentational goals.

This is where the CSS Anthology's example-driven format excels. The vast majority of the book's sections are titled "How do I...?", followed by a straightforward illustration of how to use CSS to achieve a specific sort of output; the examples include some sophisticated and advanced effects that go well beyond my simple requirements.

The CSS Anthology also provides an extremely understandable description of how and why various types and versions of browsers do or do not process standards-based CSS properly. Having gone numb trying to assimilate the information contained in the sprawling browser compatibility tables found in other more comprehensive reference books, I found the CSS Anthology to be refreshing in its straightforward, understandable summation of browser compatibility issues and possible workarounds.

In summary, I would recommend the CSS Anthology as one of the members of your CSS reference library. Note, however, that you'll most likely also want to obtain a complementary reference book for a more definitive guide to the nits and bits of all the CSS selector and property elements; the CSS Anthology does not pretend to be a definitive reference guide.

I love this book!!!

Bringing a writing style and book layout that is rarely found in computer books, I find Rachel Andrew's "The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks" to be required reading by any and all CSS developers.

Broken up into 9 different sections, Rachel goes beyond just the basics of using CSS to set colors, fonts, etc and really delves into the main power of CSS which so many other books only lightly touch upon: positioning of elements on your web page.

Keeping this in mind, Rachel's book is not meant to be a lecture, but a 'cookbook' where she outlines different problems and then shows how CSS can be used to solve these problems and produce a solid looking web page.

I would recommend any web developer to pick up a copy of Ms. Andrew's book. You would be hard pressed to find a book better written then this one and I guarantee you will not be disappointed!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This is an "how to" for people who can at least write limited HTML and want to improve their skill in using CSS.

To take full advantage of this you should: (1) be able to author an HTML page and have some understanding of CSS - (2) the publisher maintains a page where you download the book's CSS snippets but you must buy the book from them to get access to it. Typing the HTML in by hand is instructive for those who want to improve their skill. For others, if you value your time, downloading the snippets from the publisher is a time-saver.

In summary, it is one of the top sources for practical info on the craft by one of the leading experts. It is not a book to learn HTML and CSS but more for the intermediate level person. You will be buying very practical, hard won knowledge at a bargain price but it is only valuable if you design or plan to design web pages. Many designers really need this if they want to save time and money in their craft.

This book is for CSS haters, people frustrated with CSS, and those making the transition to CSS-based design. Other resources are better served for those who haven't touched an inkling of CSS. Once you have basic grounding in CSS, then come back to this one.

Like the title implies, it's true you don't have to read the book from front to back; however, it flows well so it is possible to read it cover-to-cover. The introduction indicates the book is not a tutorial. The first chapter uses a different format from the rest of the book and provides a CSS refresher. The chapter is also useful for getting your CSS vocabulary straight with its describing CSS selectors, tag selectors, pseudo-class selectors, and class selectors.

Every item in the book begins with "How do I...?" with the solution following. Tips, important notes, and warnings are sprinkled throughout the chapters. The book's layout is friendly for scanning and finding what you need. Screen shots and sample code support the content to help those who appreciate visual aids.

A good way to use the book is while you're working on a site and you get stuck. For instance, you're working on a form. In the old days, many of us used two-column tables to organize the form. You want to do the same thing with CSS. Here you would refer to Chapter 6: Forms and User Interfaces and check out "How do I lay out a two-column form using CSS instead of a table?" Or use the index to look up "forms" and underneath is "two-column forms."

Andrew also helps you create CSS drop-down menus, something I don't encourage because it's problematic in many ways. Even so, I've written articles showing how to do this because it's a foundation for designing with advanced CSS techniques and helps you become more comfortable with CSS.

[...] That's generous considering there are nine chapters in the book. Plus, the site has the codes from the book for downloading. What about the rest? Yes, it's worth it because the later chapters cover forms, CSS positioning (a biggie especially for designers struggling to drop the table habit), and techniques such as creating rounded corners with CSS that works across browsers.

The announcement of IE 7 coming out late this year will have little impact on the book except in the areas covering browser-specific issues. It depends on what Microsoft does with the new version of IE. I suspect Andrew will release a new edition when the time is right. Meanwhile, right now is a great time to get this handy book.

Let's be objective, all the books following a "theorical" approach of CSS failed. The website (w3c) is not very clear, the syntax is all but easy to remember and - above all - browsers were designed by integrating their own view of CSS ; view that is sometimes far from the original w3c specs, we have to cope with w3c implementations (centering vertically you said?).

I spent a tremendous time on the net and in various books to find a solution to common problems, hardened by the differences between browsers.

This book always answered my questions ; sometimes it was not exactly the answer I was looking for, but among the 101 recipes, I always found something near enough to guide me towards a correct result.

Initially I was reluctant to purchase a developer book made of recipes. Nevertheless, I must admit this one fits the needs, it deserves all his 5 stars.