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CSS: The Missing Manual [Paperback]

David Sawyer McFarland (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (96 customer reviews) |

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Book Description

Publication Date: August 31, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0596526873 | ISBN-13: 978-0596526870 | Edition: 1
Web site design has grown up. Unlike the old days, when designers cobbled together chunky HTML, bandwidth-hogging graphics, and a prayer to make their sites look good, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) now lets your inner designer come out and play. But CSS isn't just a tool to pretty up your site; it's a reliable method for handling all kinds of presentation--from fonts and colors to page layout. "CSS: The Missing Manual" clearly explains this powerful design language and how you can use it to build sparklingly new Web sites or refurbish old sites that are ready for an upgrade.

Like their counterparts in print page-layout programs, style sheets allow designers to apply typographic styles, graphic enhancements, and precise layout instructions to elements on a Web page. Unfortunately, due to CSS's complexity and the many challenges of building pages that work in all Web browsers, most Web authors treat CSS as a kind of window-dressing to spruce up the appearance of their sites. Integrating CSS with a site's underlying HTML is hard work, and often frustratingly complicated. As a result many of the most powerful features of CSS are left untapped. With this book, beginners and Web-building veterans alike can learn how to navigate the ins-and-outs of CSS and take complete control over their Web pages' appearance.

Author David McFarland (the bestselling author of O'Reilly's Dreamweaver: The Missing Manual) combines crystal-clear explanations, real-world examples, a dash of humor, and dozens of step-by-step tutorials to show you ways to design sites with CSS that work consistently across browsers. You'll learn how to:

  • Create HTML that's simpler, uses less code, is search-engine friendly, and works well with CSS
  • Style text by changing fonts, colors, font sizes, and adding borders
  • Turn simple HTML links into complex and attractive navigation bars-complete with CSS-only rollover effects that add interactivity to your Web pages
  • Style images to create effective photo galleries and special effects like CSS-based drop shadows
  • Make HTML forms look great without a lot of messy HTML
  • Overcome the most hair-pulling browser bugs so your Web pages work consistently from browser to browser
  • Create complex layouts using CSS, including multi-column designs that don't require using old techniques like HTML tables Style Web pages for printing

Unlike competing books, this Missing Manual doesn't assume that everyone in the world only surfs the Web with Microsoft's Internet Explorer; our book provides support for all major Web browsers and is one of the first books to thoroughly document the newly expanded CSS support in IE7, currently in beta release.

Want to learn how to turn humdrum Web sites into destinations that will capture viewers and keep them longer? Pick up CSS: The Missing Manual and learn the real magic of this tool.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Almost 500 pages of CSS help, with more than 100 pages of practical tutorials to guide you through the process of implementing and refining CSS to save you many a wasted hour. At GBP25, you'll be hard pressed to find a better guide to designing with CSS." .NET, February 2007

About the Author

David Sawyer McFarland is the president of Sawyer McFarland Media Inc., a web development and training company located in Portland, Oregon. In addition, he teaches JavaScript programming, Flash, and web design at the University of California, Berkeley, the Center for Electronic Art, the Academy of Art College, and Ex'Pressions Center for New Media. He was formerly the webmaster at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 496 pages
  • Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (August 31, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0596526873
  • ISBN-13: 978-0596526870
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (96 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #312,062 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
146 of 153 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
§

Consider this a "getting started the right way with HTML and CSS" book. As such, it does a marvelous job.

I had a chance to get this beginner's book -- even though my bosses have been grossly overpaying me for years if I really were a beginner! Too many beginner books tend to over-simplify, which becomes a barrier to the more complex issues that a serious beginner will meet down the line. That is not the case here.

Step by step (sometimes even telling you what and when to click!) the book will take you through the basics of creating stylesheets for HTML. You will move from text format basics to moderately advanced layout issues and even print media stylesheets.

The text of the book itself is formatted in an interesting way that is easy to read and makes points clear. There are lots of images and diagrams. I liked the way many of the illustrations jutted out into the outer margin. The effect was a vivid enhancement and the book is bound in a way that lets it sit flat, making it easier to read while keying.

The author also performs a service by introducing, when appropriate, advanced issues and controversies that will surely interest the type of person motivated to go on in this field. The book includes appendices with a CSS Property Reference; CSS in Dreamweaver; and extended CSS Resources.

§
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69 of 70 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I've read and reviewed a number of books on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and I've learned something from them all. But for whatever reason, this one showed up at just the right time and has me inspired and motivated on a new project... CSS: The Missing Manual by David Sawyer McFarland.

Contents:

Part 1 - CSS Basics: Rethinking HTML for CSS; Creating Styles and Style Sheets; Selector Basics - Identifying What to Style; Saving Time with Inheritance; Managing Multiple Styles - The Cascade

Part 2 - Applied CSS: Formatting Text; Margins, Padding, and Borders; Adding Graphics to Web Pages; Sprucing Up Your Site's Navigation; Formatting Tables and Forms

Part 3 - CSS Page Layout: Building Float-Based Layouts; Positioning Elements on a Web Page

Part 4 - Advanced CSS: CSS for the Printed Page; Improving Your CSS Habits

Part 5 - Appendixes: CSS Property Reference; CSS in Dreamweaver 8; CSS Resources; Index

From the newbie perspective, this book works well. The first part of the book lays out the case for using CSS instead of pure HTML to format your pages and gain control of the style. It takes a subject that can be a bit intimidating and makes it very approachable. From there, you get a section on how exactly CSS works. This is much easier to digest than some of the more formal reference manuals I've seen in the past, and there's not as much focus on the minutia of every little variant that can happen. This is the material you'll use 95% of the time. Part 3 is where I started to get excited. I've been doing CSS for a while now, but over time I've built up designs that "work" but that could be done much better with what I've learned of late. I noticed a number of items that I want to try out on a new project I'm about to start, and I have a feeling that I'll be in a much better situation style-wise on this application than any of the other ones I support. Same with part 4 and the chapter on improving your CSS habits. I was/am guilty of a number of these things, and this information will go a long way towards making me a better CSS junkie (and will make anyone following after me much happier in terms of support).

I think what worked so well for me here was the consistent use of a single "site" for examples and illustrations. The CosmoFarmer site gave the information a thread to hang on to throughout the chapters, and progressions were logical. I appreciated the tutorials at the end of the chapter so that you could try out the new skills. But what I *really* liked were the references to other sites where you could get more information, as well as clarification on what browsers don't do things according to specs, and how to work around these bugs.

Armed with this book, a newbie would be able to become competent in CSS. And if you've been doing CSS for awhile, there's a strong chance that McFarland will deliver some nuggets that will take you to the next level. I know that'll be the situation in my case...
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59 of 61 people found the following review helpful
Excellent book on CSS December 27, 2006
Format:Paperback
The problem with many of the CSS books that I have read is that most of them just reiterate the CSS specification. While this is useful knowledge, it doesn't cover what you need to know to build robust web applications that work consistently across the myriad of browsers on the internet.

This book covers the usual stuff with CSS: styles, precedence rules (the cascade), text and fonts, padding and spacing, the box model, positioning, tables, etc. It also goes into detail about how to apply this knowledge.

Some of the stuff that is included:

- building tabs with the Sliding Doors technique

- Entire chapter related to IE6 and how it diverges from the spec, and work-arounds (aka hacks) that can be used to correct these problems. Other browsers such as Opera and Safari are also covered throughout the book.

- Entire chapter related to floats and using these to create column-based layous. Work-arounds to problems and unexpected behavior are also covered.

- Entire chapter related to forms and how to use CSS for layout

The book is well edited and contains some really good graphics to explain the layout and positioning. Each chapter has a tutorial to help you work through the techniques.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Well organized with plenty easily understood explanations,examples and...
As someone who has been using table based html layouts and who has real problems trying to switch over to css based layouts, this book has been an absolute miracles. Read more
Published 12 months ago by U. Namgyel
Great book if you are not a beginneer
I have found that this book is really good, there was some facts about CSS coding I was not formalier with even though I have taken a
HTML class and other coding classes. Read more
Published 13 months ago by unique
Easy To Read, Very Informative
Flat out, the best manual I've ever read. Well worth the relatively low price.

This book is one of the easiest to read of all manuals I've ever purchased (and I've... Read more
Published 14 months ago by K. Murray
Everything you need to know about CSS
I highly recommend this book to beginners, intermediate students even to the pros. David is very precise with his explanations, illustrations and exercises. Read more
Published 16 months ago by jarcom
Almost perfect technical book
I've read thousands of technical texts in my life and this is by far one of the best I've ever seen. You can tell David was pumped about writing this book. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Data Virtue
Web Design
Get this book if you want to get a grasp of CSS. Goes through the basics first and then progresses through most of the CSS aspects. Read more
Published on April 3, 2010 by Robert B. Mobley
Very good to Excellent - CSS and HTML
All the information to get you up and running building your own sites with css and html is laid out in an easy to follow step by step manner. Read more
Published on February 17, 2010 by Rudy Andl
covers all the bases
i bought this book for my wife and i'm sincerely impressed about the improvement she had with this book.

It covers all the basics and more, very recommended
Published on February 1, 2010 by C. Solis
Best So Far
I bought this book along with the "Novice to Professional" book - you never know what is going to be better. This book is by far the most useful. Read more
Published on January 7, 2010 by William Jackson
CSS the Missing Manual
Very easy to understand manual. Clarified many points in the CSS code for me. Wish I had had the book a year ago.
Published on October 9, 2009 by Peggy M. Barnette
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