Customer Reviews

CSS Pocket Reference: Visual Presentation for the Web (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly))

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been using this reference for about a year now, and my conclusion is that it's better than nothing, but leaves a lot to be desired. I can usually find what I'm looking for, but often find myself giving up and just searching Google.

One big problem (as with most books today) is a weak index. It seems the index is computer generated by simply culling the text, and the end-result is that unless you already know what you're looking for, then you can't find it. Example: let's say you can't remember the CSS instruction for underlining text. So you look in the index for "underline" and there's nothing remotely close to it. Next, you might look under "font," particularly if you remember that other font formatting instructions start with "font-". Likewise, nothing there.

Another example of a problem I've seen is just some very poorly written text. After reading it 5-6 times, I still struggle to figure out what's being said. That's just bad writing. The author has gotten lost in the complexity of the subject, and hasn't put the effort into explaining it for the reader in a clear and concise manner.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the W3C standard for the visual presentation of web pages, although it can be used in other situations too. The book begins with a short introduction to the basic concepts of CSS. What follows is an alphabetical reference to all CSS2.1 selectors, and finally an alphabetical reference to all CSS2.1 properties. This is a good handy reference once you understand CSS, but I wouldn't advise it as a sole source for novices. Instead, try "CSS: The Definitive Guide" in its latest edition for a very good all-round tutorial and reference. This book is for those occasions when you don't have time to go digging through the much larger "Definitive Guide" for short answers to questions. The table of contents is not currently shown for this book in the product description, so I show that next:

Chapter 1. CSS Pocket Reference
Section 1.1. Conventions Used in This Book
Section 1.2. Safari Books Online
Section 1.3. Adding Styles to HTML and XHTML
Section 1.4. Rule Structure
Section 1.5. Style Precedence
Section 1.6. Element Classification
Section 1.7. Element Display Roles
Section 1.8. Basic Visual Layout
Section 1.9. Floating Rules
Section 1.10. Positioning Rules
Section 1.11. Table Layout
Section 1.12. Values
Section 1.13. Selectors
Section 1.14. Pseudo-Classes and Pseudo-Elements
Section 1.15. Property Reference
Section 1.16. Tables
Section 1.17. Paged Media
Section 1.18. Dropped from CSS2.1
Section 1.19. Visual Styles
Section 1.20. Paged Media
Section 1.21. Aural Styles
Index

For a small book, CSS Pocket Reference packs a lot of information.

The author, Eric A. Meyer, thoughtfully provides a basic CSS primer in the first 33 pages of the reference.

A must have, go anywhere, reference for every web page author/designer.

CSS, or "Cascading Style Sheets" is the language used to tell a web page what you want it to look like -- to "style" the web page, in other words.

This book isn't intended to take you from the moment you learned the term to really knowing how to use it. It's intended to keep you from having to remember all the little details, or having to look them up in your giant textbook.

The book begins with a quick overview of the purpose and rules of CSS. Then comes the main part: a list of selectors and properties.

Each listing includes the values, initial value, what it applies to, whether it is inherited, percentages if that's relevant, the computed value, and then a description.

So, for example, the entry for "background-color" tells us that we can specify the background color for our web page by using <color>, that it can be transparent, that we can specify that it inherits, and that it applies to all elements.

Then it goes on to say exactly what this property will do ("...sets a solid color for the background of the element") and what kinds of problems we might have with this when using different browsers. For more complex choices, there will also be examples.

Having described everything from :active to widows, the book finishes up with a list of older terms that are no longer used. There is a thorough index, as well.

You'll pull this off your shelf often if you write web pages, whether to check the options for bullets in your unordered lists or to find out what the mysterious term Dreamweaver offered you might mean. It's small enough to stick in a pocket and complete enough to be a useful reference for beginners or experienced users.

The CSS Pocket Reference is just that, a "reference". It is not a lesson guide on using CSS. It will give you the quick syntax when you need it. It also gives a list of the browsers that support each element. Very helpful if you want your page to be compatible with more than one browser.

Exactly what I was looking for - all the codes needed for CSS at my fingertips, in a compact, easy to carry size. Great reference!

This Pocket Reference is difficult to use. You have to be pretty adept at CSS for it to be beneficial. Even after reading the sections on positioning, which are complicated, positioning continues to be a difficulty.

This book is like a textbook for css. There isn't much introduction or extra content, it just says "Here's what things you can change in css, here's the accepted values for them"

For me, it was perfect. The book tells you the various ways to include it in html pages, it tells you how things are calculated and best of all, it's cheap.

Great book.

I suggest reading the definitive guide first but I keep this pocket version on my desk (well, I know it's around here somewhere). A useful quick reference for web designers that have abandoned the outmoded world of tables-based layout.

You can't go wrong with this one-stop shopping reference book on CSS. You need to know or, at least, have a familiarity with CSS to take advantage of this tool. Highly recommended for CSS geeks & web designers. Eric Meyer is The Man.