Customer Reviews

Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The problem with CSS books is that they always take two tracks: They're either a rote reference of the specification, or they're random "projects" that the author either thinks are interesting or, more likely, just happened to complete himself at work, so he feels qualified to write about it. Eric Meyer on CSS is the latter, and it suffers greatly for it, especially if you don't just happen to need exactly the kind of site he likes to create. Which, quite frankly, are unexciting, especially when you consider some of the impressive CSS on the Web today. But the big problem is that core CSS topics are only mentioned--often in passing--when they solve a problem for a project. You'll get no run-down of the importance between various positioning styles, for example, until the CSS he uses throughout the whole book suddenly doesn't work and he has to try something different. Don't get me wrong, this book isn't worthless, but everyone here is acting like this book is a cure-all, and it's not. If you want to master CSS, you will still need several books, none of which are perfect.

I've read one of Eric Meyer's other books about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets - The Definitive Guide) and loved it for its informative style and still use it occasionally as a reference. His latest book takes a different approach, not a reference book but more one that takes information about CSS and applies it here to real life examples, which makes it much easier for the average CSS author to learn and see how the CSS styles shown relate to what is being done on the site it affects. The book consists of 13 chapters or "projects," ranging from converting an existing page to CSS, to styling a press release or events calendar, to even creating your own online greeting card. There's a companion web site, which lets you download the files to be used with each project.

The book is wonderfully laid-out with lots of gorgeous color drawings and figures, which aid the reader in understanding each change. The step by step instructions are easy to follow and with each CSS code change or addition shown in red, also easy to understand and follow along with. I was amazed at the wide range of effects that can be done using CSS, as shown with each project.

This book is an excellent "tutorial" for those wishing to learn more about CSS.

Unlike most of the CSS books floating around out there currently, "Eric Meyer on CSS" gives you practical projects to work through, and apply CSS to, talking you through the whys and wherefores all the way. It takes you all the way from transforming an existing HTML table-based layout into a more streamlined structure using CSS, all the way up to bleeding edge design concepts that will be more and more feasible as the browsers catch up to web standards.

I would not recommend this book to someone who has absolutely no experience or knowledge of CSS (maybe check out the tutorials in your HTML editor, or look at some of the online tutorials at Webmonkey.com before diving into this book).

And, for intermediate users (you've been using stylesheets for awhile, maybe just to handle typography), I'd recommend also getting Eric Meyer's "Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide" for a more in-depth study of the CSS specs, though you can make it through most of the concepts presented here with just the information given with a little extra mental effort and perseverance.

The writing style is conversational and entertaining, and there are clear reasons given for everything. Meyers is definitely trying to teach you to fish rather than hand you a mackeral and send you on your way.

I really enjoyed that the book was in full color, and had a lot of visual aids -- New Riders is great for this.

If you're interested in the possibilities of web design using CSS, this book is well worth the price of admission.

Like many others, I bought the book based on on-line raves. I thought it was great at first but now the blush is off the rose. The book IS a more informative and user-friendly intro to CSS than the others I have (many are "look what I made, mommy" books by designers...nice visuals but not the best learning tool). Some of the lessons were a struggle so, fortunately, there were the free tutorials from w3schools.com to help with the rough spots.....never thought of myself as a slow learner until now.

Then, just when you think CSS will answer all your prayers, you get seriously gored by the infamous NN4 incompatibilities and then IE problems crop up.

What this and every other book lacks is a decent chart reference which shows browser incompatibilities like the great cheat sheet programming cards from visibone.com BUT, I shouldn't have to buy this kind of critical tool, it oughta be a pullout or be in the appendix.

Until a better book comes out, prospective buyers should go ahead and get this one PLUS Meyers Programmers Reference (ISBN #0072131780). Round it out the Visibone cheat sheets for quick reference and to keep those nasty NN4 and IE4 nightmares from giving you an ulcer. Between all this stuff and the W3C School site (PS:which also has HTML and CSS validator links and other very cool stuff), even I was able to master CSS...but it takes more books and programmer's aids.

As an avid reader of Eric Meyer's other books I was a bit hesitant at first: I usually work with references, and as a 'code warrior' I'd rather read the W3C specifications than a nice little article about how cool it is to colour a heading.

I was in for a surprise: The projects make it actually easier to see the connections between the theory and code on one side, and the results/web page on the other side.

Now I have a book that entices me with neat ideas - and the images that show me how it could look. Every project leads me step by step through the process of changing a bland pure HTML page into a CSS page, and how I could change and tweak it even further.

Make no mistake: this book is still full with code and theory, but Eric Meyer combines this with his typical writing style: concise, clear, to the point and with a certain lightness and wit that is in all of his writings.

This is not a book for beginners, but if you know about HTML and CSS and want to do more, learn new things and prepare for the future: that book was worth the wait.

I have been working my way through On CSS, and when I picked it up I thought I was very wise in the way of cascading style sheets. Mr. Meyers disabused me of that notion. He is an expert and by working through the examples you can really learn to make this system of styling sit up and bark. A note on the back cover says the book is for intermediate to advanced people, the note is correct. Don't buy this book if you are just trying to learn CSS at first. I think some of the disappointed buyers were too new at style sheets to get the expected benefit out of this book. Newbies would do well to investigate Elizabeth Castro's HTML For The World Wide Web by Peachpit Press and all the W3C.org tutorials out there before tackling a man like Meyers. But if you're ready for Eric, Eric is ready for you.

One thing you have to remember, play with the examples after you do them. Try to break them, and don't just follow along without understanding what you are doing. If you try to follow Meyers like a cookbook you will really let yourself down. This is a great learning tool, worth the time and money investments.

Another great feature of On CSS is something which you might think was a miserable drawback at first, but it turns out to be where you can get the most out of the book. The designs you end up with at the end of each chapter are C (Average) grade. Each one screams for a good designer to make them better. So when you finish each exercise, take the style sheet and turn a lackluster presentation into a Grade 1 design. Meyers invites you to play with the finished product at the end of each chapter, please do that---you earned it.

So, I would also say that if you are going to get Meyers' books, open up your wallet a little wider and get Robin Williams' book The Non-Designer's Design Book. I think of her as Meyer's big sister and the two go together like XHTML and CSS (or peaches and cream for you more lyrical folk). Robin Williams is an expert on teaching good design for layout and text (and images as well). Her book is ostensibly for text, but you will have all of the best design lessons you need to style up a remarkably svelte webpage if you do what Williams says with Meyers.

On CSS is a great addition to your understanding (as I am sure the second one is)--As Long As You Put In The Work And Go The Extra Mile.

P.S. Both the Williams and Castro books I recommended are under $20 each and will turn into reference books to keep and go back to often.

To those reading the below reviews with less than 5 stars...DON"T BUY THEIR REVIEWS. They obviously are very uninformed when it comes to designing with web standards. I have to reply to the above (  
Eric J. Tischler) who referred to hand coding pages as "the web stone age". This is, in every sense of the word, BACKWARDS.

Although WYSIWIG editors are great time savers, they can never replace your BRAIN! Stop falling victim to the mindless "click and serve me" mentality and seperate yourself from the herd.

Learn what Mr. Meyer painstakingly offers in this book.

The power it will give you over layouts is immeasurable and CSS will be a vital part of the futre of web design as HTML4.0 will be relegated back down to where it belongs as structural markup only. HTML was not meant to be used for presentation, which CSS1 and CSS2 perform beautifully at.

thank you and good night! (try the fish!)

New Riders publishes nice looking books, but many of them, this one included, suffer from a lack of professional editorial oversight. A book that sells for $45.00 should be proofed a little more closely. The book's companion site lists dozens of editorial errors that should have been caught before the book went to press: [...]. After spending this much on a slim paperback volume, the last thing I want to do is spend an hour paging through the book, hand-correcting editorial errors that New Riders' editors should have caught in the first place.

Otherwise, Meyer's command of CSS is evident, but this is not the book that it could be. The presentation is hampered by its organization into "projects", and the reader must slog through details of Meyer's application of strategies in his own projects to find ideas that can be used elsewhere.

CSS is a great technology, but users are in need of something better organized, better presented, more comprehensive, and less crippled by rampant editorial gaffes.

"Eric Meyer on CSS" is one of the first and only books on CSS to take a real world and hands-on-teaching approach to CSS. You will learn CSS and how to apply it to real world situations, which helps to re-enforce what you are learning. This book will guide you through a series of well thought out projects that show you how CSS and can be used to solve problems. The book is in full-color, which makes it fun to read. Eric's writing style is very approachable and conversational, which makes you feel comfortable. His tips on browser bugs and gotchas are worth the price of the book alone!

You should have a solid understand of basic HTML and web design principles before you read this book. But once you are ready to learn CSS - make sure this is a book you don't pass up! In a market flooded with technical regurgitations and theoretical pontifications, it is so refreshing to see this kind of approach taken with a subject like CSS. There is just no better way to teach CSS!

As a fellow author and Web developer, reading this book was not only informative but very engaging and entertaining! This book should be part of every Web designer/developers curriculum. Do I have any complaints? Nope, I just wish there was MORE of it!

Eric Meyer is the acknowledged master of CSS, the new styling mechanism for the Web. His newest book, which completes a CSS book trilogy, reflects this vast experience. On the surface this book is a collection of 13 redesign projects, each illustrating different aspects of CSS layout techniques and HTML. Underneath is a philosophy, a way of thinking, and a collection of ideas. The book makes CSS look relatively easy, when in fact it's not.

The projects illustrate (in full color) how to rework existing designs in CSS, from the simple to the sublime. As you're reading the book, you get the feeling Meyer isn't fighting the medium, he's working with it in almost a Zen-like way. Tables can stay and be styled or go, it doesn't seem to matter to him.

Meyer works within browser bugs and limitations and shows a hack-free path through CSS layout and font styling techniques. Only in the last chapter, where he nearly recreates the layout of the book in CSS, does he resort to voice family hacks to work around browser bugs.

Each of the thirteen projects has the same basic framework. He strips example designs down to pure structural HTML and builds them back up, CSS layer by CSS layer until the design technique is recreated. Everything from hyperlink styles and menu skinning, print style sheets, forms, multicolumn layouts, fixing backgrounds, and recreating the book's own layout in CSS is covered, not an easy task.

Meyer's prose is also easy to take, peppered with pithy quotes and humorous headlines. The net effect feels like you are looking over his shoulder, watching and listening to him redesign web sites that will be "forward compatible" and made to last. Meyer makes learning CSS seem easy. As Jeffrey Zeldman wrote in the foreword, I don't know how he does it.