Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web (3rd Edition) [Paperback]

Hakon Wium Lie (Author), Bert Bos (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0321193121 | ISBN-13: 978-0321193124 | Publication Date: May 5, 2005 | Edition: 3

Since 1996, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) has been the standard language for describing the layout of Web pages. This classic, fully four-color book explains how to use the latest release of the CSS language, with clear and practical examples for each CSS language element. And more than just the "how," the book also explains the "why" behind the design of each CSS element, ensuring that readers have the understanding they need to create their own CSS libraries.The foreward is written by Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing with WebStandards and Taking Your Talent to the Web.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

In this updated edition to their original best-selling classic, the co-creators of CSS clearly, logically, and painlessly explain the hows and whys and ins and outs of the visual formatting language that is their gift to us. The Web would be a poorer place without Messieurs Bos and Lie. Your shelf will be richer for the addition of this book.

Rely on it. Study it. Savor it.

The Indispensible CSS Tutorial and Reference—Straight from the Creators of CSS

Direct from the creators of CSS, this is the definitive guide to CSS, today's indispensable standard for controlling the appearance of any Web or XML document. This book doesn't just show how to use every significant CSS 1 and 2.x feature; it carefully explains the "why" behind today's most valuable CSS design techniques. You'll find practical, downloadable examples throughout—along with essential browser support information and best practices for building high-impact pages and applications.

Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web, Third Edition covers every CSS 2.1 improvement and fix, from new height/width definitions in absolutely positioned elements to new clip property calculations. Clear, readable, and thorough, it's the one must-have CSS resource for every Web developer, designer, and content provider. Coverage includes

• Mastering essential CSS concepts: Rules, declarations, selectors, properties, and more

• Working with type: From absolute/relative units to font size and weight

• Understanding CSS objects: Box model, display properties, list styles, and more

• Exercising total control over spacing and positioning

• Specifying colors for borders and backgrounds

• Managing printing: Margins, page breaks, and more

• Implementing media-specific style sheets for audio rendering, handhelds, and other forms of presentation

• Moving from HTML extensions to CSS: Five practical case studies

• Making the most of cascading and inheritance

• Using external style sheets and @import

• Integrating CSS with XML documents

• Optimizing the performance of CSS pages

• Includes a handy CSS Quick Reference printed on the inside covers

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

HåKON WIUM LIE is the CTO of Opera Software. His job is to make sure Opera remains a better, smaller, and faster browser than the one you know. Before joining Opera in 1999, Håkon worked at W3C, where he was responsible for the development of Cascading Style Sheets—a concept he proposed while working at CERN in 1994. Håkon holds an MS degree in visual studies from the MIT Media Lab.

BERT BOS, along with Lie, was one of the original authors of CSS. He joined W3C in 1995 to launch its internationalization activities and currently coordinates its style sheet activities.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 3 edition (May 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321193121
• ISBN-13: 978-0321193124
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #787,123 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Speaks with an authority as no other, November 18, 2005

By 

Brett Merkey (Palm Harbor, FL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web (3rd Edition) (Paperback)

I have gotten each edition of this book as it came out -- giving the still valuable previous edition to the most worthy co-worker. This book (whatever edition!) is rightly regarded as one that belongs by the desk of the astute and experienced Web worker.

When the first edition came out, I rejected it for another book on CSS. I figured that a book explaining CSS by the W3C alpha geeks who *created* the CSS recommendation would be too technical and unreadable. I learned how wrong I was. Lie and Bos's classic book turns out to be one of the most readable and clear treatments of CSS you can obtain.

I can agree that if you have a previous edition, there probably is no compelling reason to update. Some explanations have been elaborated and browser compatibility is updated for Firefox. The core value remains the same: simple enough for novices, detailed enough for experts.

Given the relation of the authors to the official work of the W3C, the book speaks with an authority as no other.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars After six years, an inconsequential update, May 18, 2005

By 

R. Todd King (Greater Boston) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web (3rd Edition) (Paperback)

If you already have the 2nd edition of this book, don't bother purchasing the 3rd, as little of the content has changed.

Only very light edits have been made to the text. The coding examples remain the same - after six years. The order of the chapters has been slightly rearranged, and two outdated chapters (on WebFonts and aural style sheets) have been dropped. Color illustrations are used less frequently, hurting the clarity of the examples; and the page layout is not as clean. On the positive side, entries in the "CSS quick reference" (on the inside cover) now refer to the correct page numbers in the book. And of course the browser compatability charts, noting which browsers support which CSS features, have been updated: Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 1, Opera 7.2, Safari 1, and the Prince 4 CSS formatter are now covered.

If you have not used previous editions of this book, read through the comments made about the 2nd edition, as much of what was said there still applies here. This remains a decent CSS coding reference, but frankly, I refer to Elizabeth Castro's "HTML for the World Wide Web, 5th edition" far more frequently.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good, not perfect, June 2, 2005

By 

David Naylor (Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web (3rd Edition) (Paperback)

This is a great CSS guide and reference. It has something for all skill levels.

Beforehand I thought the book would only be a technical (code-centered) guide to CSS, but it turned out to contain many practical design tips as well. I would say it is useful for both beginners and advanced website designers. If you're new to CSS, this book gives a great introduction to the subject, and if you've been in the game for a while you'll most likely find there were several handy, nifty little features of CSS 2.1 you didn't know about. (I thought I knew basically what there was to know about CSS, but the book has already tought me several new and useful things.)

The book is logically laid out and divided into chapters. One very useful feature is the complete list of CSS 2.1 properties found on the inside cover, as well as the browser compatibility information listed for each property. (Although I've found the latter to be slightly misleading at times. Specifically, the book claims that Firefox understands the 'quotes' property properly, while it quite obviously doesn't.)