CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions (Paperback)

~ Andy Budd (Author), (Author), Cameron Moll (Author)
Key Phrases: proprietary box model, selector hack, horizontal nav bar, Internet Explorer, Tuscany Luxury Resorts, Unsurpassed Comfort (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Over the past couple of years, web designers and developers have begun taking more care in designing and building web sites. Less readily do they turn to old-fashioned techniques such as GIF spacers, tables for layout, and deprecated HTML elements, which can cause accessibility/usability problems and are just bad practice. There are three main web standards married together to create usable, standards-compliant web designs - XHTML for data structure, JavaScript for dynamic effects, and Cascading Style Sheets for styling your data.

Working as a companion to our Web Standards Solutions book, this title covers advanced Cascading Style Sheet techniques, and includes are all the techniques you need to master CSS and craft modern, standards-compliant web page designs. You'll already know why you should be using CSS, so we don’t bore you with pages of theory; instead, we jump straight into practical solutions, allowing you to get what you need as quickly as possible.

Renowned web designer Andy Budd starts off by introducing the elements of an effective CSS toolkit, including good working practices, the cascade, the box model, relative and absolute positioning, floating, and more. He then delves into advanced techniques like replacing images, styling links and lists, creating navigation menus, making forms look good, debugging and overcoming browser quirks, and hacking and filtering. The book is rounded off with two case studies to give you inspiration for your own designs, written by two more of the world’s finest web designers, Simon Collinson and Cameron Moll.

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: friends of ED (February 13, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590596145
• ISBN-13: 978-1590596142
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (121 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #61,514 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

173 of 178 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best CSS Reference Book in print today!, March 12, 2006

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

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.

81 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful book, but sloppy editing, July 21, 2006

By	JM - See all my reviews

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.

56 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Book but how about checking typos before publishing?, April 9, 2006

By	J.Gustafsson (Las Vegas, NV USA) - See all my reviews

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.