Customer Reviews

CSS Pocket Reference

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

(note: this review is for the 2ND edition of the book...)

I just found a new book that I'll get to wear out really quickly. It's the CSS Pocket Reference (2nd edition) by Eric A. Meyer (O'Reilly). As with all O'Reilly Pocket References, it's just the core information formatted so you can find it quickly for reference.

Chapter Breakout: Adding Styles to HTML and XHTML; Rule Structure; Style Precedence; Element Classification; Element Display Roles; Basic Visual Layout; Floating Rules; Positioning Rules; Table Layout; Values; Selectors; Pseudo-Classes and Pseudo-Elements; Property Reference; Tables; Paged Media; Dropped From CSS2.1; Visual Styles; Paged Media; Aural Styles; Index

For all the Amazon reviewers complaining about this book not being up-to-date... You need to get the 2nd edition. It's got the latest on what you need.

Now, this is not a training manual or something you're going to be able to use to pick up CSS. Rather, like all Pocket Guides, it's the distilled essence of the reference material that you need on a daily basis. Rather than dig through a large book looking for stuff, you can use the pocket guide to get the answer quickly. I'm at the stage in my CSS learning where I understand what I can and can't do, but I don't always know the exact syntax or options available to me in a particular parameter. I've grown quite fond of the larger CSS book from Meyer and O'Reilly, and in fact I've memorized certain page numbers that I continually go back to. This pocket reference will replace much of the wear and tear on that book, and allow me to save it for when I need explanations on concepts.

Another keeper to add to my programming bookshelf...

The majority of the book consists of an alphabetical guide to CSS properties. If you need to look up what a particular property does this would be quite useful. However, if you are trying to find a property to use and you do not know the name, this does not help. The book is entirely lacking any catagorical index to the CSS properties. Had CSS Pocket Reference 2nd Edition contained a two to four page index of the properties grouped by catagories such as text, layout, borders and so forth, I would have rated it better, but alas, it does not.

As a Perl and PHP programmer who does a lot of web-based pages, I use this pocket reference very often when designing page styles. It helps immensely that I have syntax and samples in front of me for each of the items I expect to be able to use in today's modern browser. As the title indicates, it is a pocket reference and is not designed to teach people how to get started using CSS. There are plenty of good books out there to help users do that. My favorite is Elizabeth Castro's HTML For The World Wide Web (5th Ed.). Once users have a basic understanding of the rules for creating CSS, this book is an invaluable tool to jog the memory and sits next to my desk anytime I'm doing HTML or XML page layout. Because nearly all the properties covered in this book are supported by Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Firefox, I chose not to ding the book for failing to cover what features were not supported by the major browsers.

Target audience: Web site developers, HTML, XHTML, XML authors with a basic understanding of CSS

Hits: Excellent property reference, good examples, explanations. Well organized.
Misses: Could have done a better job explaining which items are supported in which (of the most popular) browsers.

This is a good book, but certain types of user may find it a little frustrating.

Regular or advanced users of CSS will find it very convenient. It contains a lot of useful information and, when you need to check the syntax of a particular property, the information is easy to find, clearly written and very comprehensive.

The problem arises when you don't remember all the basics. The index structure contains references to property names, but not applications. For example, suppose you want to put some text in italics and justify the paragraph, there is no entry in the index that says "italic" or "justify". You need to know which properties to use, or scan the index until you see properties that might be relevant (in this case, the properties you need are 'font-style' for italics and 'text-align' for justify).

So, it is a good book, but I would like to echo the message of Joshua Cogliati's review: it would be a much better reference with the addition of some basic information in the index.

A mistake so often made is judging a pocket reference guide in the same way you would judge a full size text. Pocket guides should only provide a quick reference for a technology you already know, and not be looked at as a learning tool. This reference is a boil-down of selected sections from the author's larger definitive title on Cascading Style Sheets, and there is no question that the information provided within is as informative and exact as is covered in the larger book; the light-weight pocket guide is much easier to carry when you need to verify something with CSS.

The guide is designed well, with a structured table of contents which breaks the styles up into logical groups, and even an index for those quick find needs. Each style entry provides the information needed without wasting space on the cautions and extras that a larger text typically provides.

If you already own "Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition" (ISBN: 0596005253) that this pocket guide companions, this is a good addition to the set. If not, obtain both as there are no better references.

The first O'Reilly Pocket Reference I owned was the HTML Pocket Reference, and it's excellent. I figured since I'm starting to use CSS more & more it would be nice to have a quick handy guide, and I figured since the HTML reference was so good, why not go for the CSS reference.

I do not like it at all. At risk of repeating other problems already noted I'll give my biggest gripes. There is almost no mention of CSS2. Although browser support is not very extensive yet, the standard has been defined, so why not include it?

Compatibility charts do not have any mention of Internet Explorer 6. Granted, the book may have been published before it's release, but I have not been able to find one with a print date newer than May, 2001. Two years is a long time in the world of web design.

The properties for various selectors are not organized in a way that maked them easy to find. I'm not saying that I know a better way to organize them, but unless you already know the name of the property you're looking for you have to flip through the book guessing at it until you find what you're looking for.

If you're in the market for a cheap pocket CSS reference, stay away from this one. There has to be something better.

I will, however, recommend a full-fledged CSS book from O'Reilly: CSS- The Definitive Guide.

I've used this pocket reference for a long time now and I love it. It's a great way to refresh your memory when you can't seem to remember a property and/or its value.

Although I must say that I refer to it much less now than I did when I first got it. Mostly because I know most of the properties and values by heart at this point and so I can use IDEs "IntelliSense" features.

Consequently, I must add that this is not a teaching aid. You will not learn how to style with CSS from this book! There are much better books on the topic! (For example: "Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design")

An excellent guide to CSS-1 that's starting to show its age. Browsers covered go as far as IE5.5 and NN6.0, but it can almost be taken for granted that newer variations do a better job.

For what it is, this book is invaluable. Support charts tell you what works and what doesn't, example code is enough to fill in questions about syntax, and the book is designed to make each CSS property easy to find with a quick flipping through the pages.

Meyer knows his CSS. Make sure you have this book on your desk.

As a web developer, I've been involved with doing more coding work using CSS in my pages as browsers such as Mozilla have come on the scene. So far, I've relied on Danny Goodman's book "Dynamic HTML", also published by O'Reilly. It has a chapter on CSS, and its coverage, while covering all attributes in CSS1 and CSS2, was a bit lacking in some details. (It was published in 1998.) Dynamic HTML is also a 1000+ page Bible of sorts, and felt unwieldy to refer to often. I wanted something lighter and more up-to-date.

Thus, I bought this book, not realizing that it only covers CSS1... surprising since it was published less than a year ago, nearly three years AFTER Goodman's book was published. Dynamic HTML already has excellent treatment of CSS1, and I was really more after a guide on the exciting features to be found in CSS2. I promptly returned the book.

I'd still only give the guide 4 out of 5 stars if it had the CSS2 attributes. Half of the book is devoted to tables showing the support for each attribute in about 10 different browsers; excuse me, but are there _that_ many users of Opera that we need to know the differences between Opera 4 and 5, on the Windows and Mac platforms? It's a bit too overwhelming, using up space which would have been better used on more examples and tricks.

This small, handy book is packed with CSS references perfect for grabbing and flipping through when looking for that one piece of code to add to your site. It is not a book about learning CSS. This reference book is a alphabetical listing of CSS selectors and properties. As I was learning CSS I found this book very helpful in locating quickly the code I was looking for.