Customer Reviews

Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web (2nd Edition)

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

 

 

This book is an indispensible resource if you've already decided HOW to implement CSS on your site and are looking for the best explanations of CSS selectors and syntax. The sections on typography and block-level elements, in particular, are detailed and extremely helpful (all that typography was much more than I needed to know, but it's good that it's there).

However, do NOT use this book if you haven't decided yet which CSS methods to use and cross-browser compatibility matters to you (or your clients). Each chapter cheerfully explains CSS features the way the creators WISH they would work, without indicating serious bugs or pitfalls you may encounter in the real world when trying to implement them the way they tell you to. The browser support charts are buried in the back -- they barely scratch the surface, especially where Netscape 4.x is concerned.

Making design decisions based on the information in this book could lead to some very unexpected and ugly results. Instead, use O'Reilly's "Cascading Style Sheets: A Definitive Guide", which documents browser compliance much more thoroughly, and turn back to this book as a quick-reference while you code.

Prior to purchasing this book, the only things I knew how to do were make links so that they weren't underlined and change the color of some text. The basic, commonplace implementations of Cascading Style Sheets. Well, after hearing more about this rising development in web deisgn, I took an interest in CSS and decided to buy this book. I was not disappointed. It covers every aspect of CSS in a simple yet thorough manner. The quick reference inside the covers is also extremely helpful when you need to find the right CSS tag.

In regard to previous reviewers who say most of this will not be supported in the near future or ever, my response is that yes, it is true true that many of CSS' features will never be fully developed and implemented but if you browse through the actual body of the book, you will find that the bulk of the material covered is either already supported by the major browsers or will be in their next release. Therefore, I feel that it will not be long before the vast majority of this book becomes incredibly useful.

I have borrowed the O'Reilly CSS book and it is also quite good but I feel that this book goes into better detail about each tag and parameter.

I wish I could give it 4 1/2 stars but the reason I have given this book 4 stars instead of 5 is because the author is also the main developer of CSS. Him being so closely involved has both advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is obvious: this guy knows more about CSS than probably anyone in the world. But, due to the same fact, I would say he has a less neutral, more idealistic approach of CSS. That is why several features covered are a few browser versions ahead of their time, which has been the main argument of most people who didn't like this book.

All in all, this book does a superb job at covering every nook and crannie of CSS, from the widely supported to the underdeveloped. One day, technology will catch up to this book and it will be indespensible but until then, it is still the most useful guide to Cascading Style Sheets.

This book is absolutely indispensable. I don't have any other CSS books and I knew nothing of CSS before I started, but now I know it like the back of my hand. It's not only a great book to learn CSS, but it's also invaluable as a reference tool once you progress. Not one of those books you read then end up only to have to buy a more in-depth book for reference once you have progressed. It's good for everyone, beginner or advanced. Absolutely worth every penny.

The second edition of Lie&Bos is a welcome update for designers using CSS. As more and more browsers support CSS, having a reference book written by the co-authors of the specification is very helpful. The book goes into more depth than most designers will need, but its reassuring to know that answers to all questions can be found when needed.

The updated of the book also lists which CSS features are supported by which browsers. The Opera browser comes out on top, with Microsoft and Netscape trailing behind.

If you're stuck in the GIF tarpit, this book will help you out!

This would be a great book if it discussed more than the W3C specifications, most of which are not implemented properly by today's browsers. If you are serious about learning CSS, you need to understand browser implementations, and practical uses of the CSS spec. For example, the discussion on CSS-Positioning leads one to believe that this will replace HTML table alignment. It gives no indication to the usefullness of CSS-P to DHTML and such effects like drop-down menus.

If you want to learn CSS, there are many online resources. Also, a great product called TopStyle has built in code validation that clearly reveals browser implementation issues...it can't be beat.

There are some issues with this book that are purely the publisher's fault. (I am sure the authors are just as annoyed as I am.) Let's get them out of the way first.

Inside the back and front covers are what appears to be a handy quick reference. Great idea - except almost all the page numbers are wrong! That makes it completely useless. I have scratched in corrections in my copy, but I am not about to do a complete revision. The first edition had this same flaw, and I had hoped that the second would fix the problem.

The index is iffy. That's probably a clue right there to the wishy-washy structure of the book. It seems to be all over the place, with crucial bits of information about a topic filed away under some other topic, often in an example. As a reference work, it's very, very poor. It's written as if the reader is going to read it from start to finish and remember its entire contents. Yeah right.

Finally, the complete lack of real-world information about just how badly the various browsers support CSS is rather annoying. Sure, I understand that that stuff gets out of date quickly, but for designers who are targeting NS 4.7, it's useful to know what works and what doesn't.

Its sole saving grace (those two stars) is that is does in fact cover most of CSS - by hook or by crook. The examples, though contrived (and again, unrelated to the real world) do illustrate the concepts to a greater or lesser degree.

This book is amazingly well-written. As a beginning web designer with basic knowledge of HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, as it's name does not tell you, not only gives a fantastic insght into CSS but also gives the reader a stronghold on HTML.. Also, for all web designers with interest in starting XML and XSL, this book is invaluable as a lead-in as to the why's of XML and XSL's existance. Well written and informative. Buy it.

I wish I had known about this book before buying the other ones. Very well written, excellent style, it can be used as an introduction as well as a reference.

The authors organized this book very well. A table of style attributes adorn the inside of the covers. This alone makes the book worth the price. I frequently refer to this table. Inside, the authors carefully explain stylesheets, from their basic composition and application, all the way to advanced features. This book does not spell out the browser-specific implementation, but rather the CSS standards. I look for books just like this one -- well-written (easy to read), straight-forward and well-designed.

This book's own style is atrocious -- which is ironic, considering its subject. The outside back cover's clumsy rendition of the standard promotional cliche for tech manuals sets the tone: "This book should be on every web content provider, every web designer's shelf."

Between the covers, one finds a bizarre inattention to basic editing practices. The customary space is often not inserted after periods and commas. On pp. 213-217, for example, one sees: "ments,or"; "block.The"; "below.The"; "top,right,etc.,are"; "sheet,and"; "printed,such". (If you happen to see spaces, they were probably automatically inserted by some process after I wrote this.)

The index also breaks new stylistic ground, by not listing entries alphabetically.

The "quick reference" gives wrong page references (p. 202 for "border-top-style," instead of p. 190), making things a lot less quick.

The book also has terrible substantive problems, namely incoherence. Perhaps if you already knew CSS, you'd be able to figure out what the authors are talking about. Most of the time, I couldn't.

This is not a first edition, but the second. Addison-Wesley should be embarrassed.

[Courtesy copy of this review emailed to Addison-Wesley.]