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Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation, Second Edition [Paperback]

Owen Briggs , Matt Patterson , Eric Costello , Steven Champeon
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

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Book Description

February 26, 2004

CSS is one of the trio of core client-side web professional skills: HTML for markup, JavaScript for dynamism, and CSS for style. All web professionals who want to take their page design to the next level, with all the advantages that CSS brings, will need this book.

This book is a focused guide to using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for the visual design of web pages. It provides concise coverage of all the essential CSS concepts developers need to learn (such as separating content from presentation, block and inline elements, inheritance and cascade, the box model, typography, etc). It also covers the syntax needed to effectively use CSS with your markup document (for example CSS rules, how to structure a style sheet, linking style sheets to your (X)HTML documents, CSS boxes etc).

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a powerful technology that can be used to add style and structure to your web pages without needing to resort to "hacks" such as HTML table layouts and "spacer images". However, this is not the only advantage over other styling methods. You can specify your CSS styles in a separate file, then apply those styles to every page in your web site. When you want to change a style on your site, you can do it by modifying one style sheet, rather having to update every page. This is only one example of the many advantages CSS brings to your web development work.



Editorial Reviews

Review

Review of the first edition:

"Tells you the bits you need to know without swamping you with nitty-gritty details. The balance is just about perfect." (Web Page Design for Designers wpdfd.com)

About the Author

Owen Briggs is an independent web designer based in Victoria, Canada. Like so many people, he was introduced to personal computers in 1978 with the Commodore PET and hasn't stopped playing with them since. Online, he is a member of the Web Standards Project and perpetrator of www.thenoodleincident.com. Offline, he tries to maintain his privacy.

Matt Patterson is an independent typographer based in Reading, U.K. Introduced to the web in 1996, he was building sites immediately and became interested in CSS when he realized it meant you could do actual typography on the web. These days, he mostly spends his time designing and building websites and web applications based on open standards at the front- and back-end. He thinks that specifications—the main product of pre-DTP typographers—are a lot like CSS, and that this is a good thing. He lives with his wife, Clare.

Eric Costello is a web developer for hire, working out of his company Schwa. He is
helping to build The Game Neverending (www.gne.net). He maintains a personal site at glish.com, where he links to articles on Web standards, Flash, DHTML, CSS, XML, and other topics of interest to web developers. He helped usher in the era of CSS page layouts by offering information and CSS templates for free download. He is an emeritus of the Web Standards Project steering committee, and the developer for Stewart Butterfield's 5K Contest, along with being a pretty lousy guitar player, photographer, husband and father.

Steven Champeon is chief technology officer for hesketh.com. On a number of hesketh.com projects, he has developed and/or supervised large-scale Web site technical architectures, information architectures, and applications for Internet and intranet use. Steven has provided technical editing on the topics of XML, XHTML, and other Web-related topics for IDG Books Worldwide, MIS:Press, O'Reilly and Associates, and Macmillan/New Riders.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: friendsofED; 2nd edition (February 26, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 159059231X
  • ISBN-13: 978-1590592311
  • Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 0.9 x 9.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,390,253 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
(11)
4.8 out of 5 stars
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Buy this book if you want to learn CSS layout techniques...you'll be glad you did. C. Butterworth  |  7 reviewers made a similar statement
It flows well and has incredibly useful examples. C. Sautot  |  4 reviewers made a similar statement
I just would like to have CD also with samples. Matjaz Toplisek  |  1 reviewer made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
49 of 51 people found the following review helpful
By CMOS
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is useful either as a first-time guide to understanding CSS and its syntax (as well as usage), or as a complimentary title to other well-known CSS books like those from Eric Meyer. The combination I have gotten the most benefit from, was reading through Meyer's Definitive Reference (2e, O'Reilly) a couple times, and then brushing up on things with this book.

I think that Meyer's book (and he has more than one - I'm just talking about the one noted above) is a great coding reference and theory primer, while this book is more useful as a means of getting code on the page, trying it out and going back to see where your mistakes were.

One reason I say that is that the diagrams and explanations used in this book are a little bit easier to grasp and apply in some cases. It's a bit more accessible, both in terms of presentation and writing style, while not being "dumbed down" in the least. The way the book is organized is also preferable to other web references I've read (CSS and otherwise). All in all, highly recommended if you're looking to take your CSS skills from "I know how to apply styles to fonts and drag DIVs onto my page" to "I know how to code custom DIVs and classes that give me exactly the look I want while keeping the code accessible and small."
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Great for Learning Layouts February 24, 2005
Format:Paperback
I own several CSS books and have skimmed through many more at the local book store. I must say this work is the best that I've seen for learing complex layout tecniques that work with multiple browsers.

There are many practical examples of two and three column layouts. Once you work through the examples, you will have a good knowledge base to create solid web page designs.

The chapters on cross browser support and troubleshooting are also very useful.

Buy this book if you want to learn CSS layout techniques...you'll be glad you did.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book fits in nicely between reference works like Eric Meyers "Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide" and technique books like Dan Cederholm's "Bulletproof Web Design". At first glance, this rather unassuming book contains pretty basic information about the applications of CSS. However, this book deserves a careful reading, as it is packed with excellent explanations and examples.

"Cascading Style Sheets" isn't full of flashy illustrations, but the examples are well thought out and present the ideas well. The chapter on layout ("Boxes, Boxes, Boxes") contains the best explanation I have seen on how layout boxes function in CSS. If you've been wrestling with understanding the difference between absolute and relative positioning, and how to use these values to make stable layouts, this book is for you.

The chapter on typography is an excellent resource for developers who may not have had the chance to study this essential subject. The authors present theory and application of good typographic practice (which is often ignored in current web design).

The chapter on browser bugs ("Cross-browser CSS") summarizes the current knowledge on cross-browser compatibility very well, and provides rock-solid workarounds for those thorny problems.

Last but not the least, the chapter "CSS Design Projects" will give you some solid examples to apply to your own designs.

There's quite a few good books out there right now on CSS, and quite a few not-so-good books; how is one to choose? Well, this book should be at the top of your shopping list--it's a rich, detailed, and extremely well-written book about the subtle craft of web design with CSS.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars Preachy and unclear
I had hoped to use this book as an introduction to using CSS and to help me update my online portfolio. Read more
Published on October 31, 2007 by I. McIntosh
5.0 out of 5 stars Jam packed full of great information on css and layout
Do you want to learn really how powerful CSS can be? This book takes you from the ground up and helps you to understand not only the how to use css for layout but also why you use... Read more
Published on May 2, 2007 by Benjamen Eschenfelder
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book to start and devlope CSS
I have seen this book as very good reference for css. I just would like to have CD also with samples. It is must buy.
Published on March 22, 2007 by Matjaz Toplisek
5.0 out of 5 stars autoparts web man
This book does an excellent job of explaining CSS. My main focus is seperating content from presentation being my sites are search engine friendly.
Published on November 4, 2006 by Joseph S. Worthington
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Great for CSS beginers, I found everything here I needed to know to get started.
Published on July 6, 2006 by Natasha
5.0 out of 5 stars Real Motivation to use CSS
Before reading this book, I had never understood the TRUE real reason for using CSS. The authors for this text do a fantastic job at explaining how HTML has become tainted with... Read more
Published on February 23, 2006 by C. Sautot
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, and perhaps the paragon of CSS for learners
I own virtually all mainstream (and a few "offbeat") books on CSS. While I have been using CSS for sometime, I had never harnessed its real power before reading this book (and of... Read more
Published on August 19, 2005 by Ralph V. Letizia Jr.
5.0 out of 5 stars My first choice for people that need to get started on CSS
This would be my first choice, among the few excellent books on the topic available on the market, for people that need to get started on CSS. Read more
Published on May 28, 2004 by Foti Massimo
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