The Essential Guide to CSS and HTML Web Design (Essentials) [Paperback]

Craig Grannell (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1590599071 | ISBN-13: 978-1590599075 | Publication Date: November 12, 2007 | Edition: 1st ed. 2007. Corr. 2nd printing

There are a lot of books out there covering CSS and HTML, but this one stands out from the crowd by combining all the best aspects of reference and tutorial books — it teaches everything you need to know to design great web sites, and moves at a fast pace, eschewing unnecessary theory and obscure details. It is designed so that any level of web designer or developer will find this to be an essential guide.

It teaches the basics of CSS and HTML before quickly moving on to cover in depth all of the essential areas of web design, include forms, tables, typography, layout, browser quirks and more. It also includes complete case studies to inspire readers, and reference sections, so readers can quickly look up syntactical details.

It is also bang up to date, covering support of the newest standards in all the latest browsers.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Having originally trained in the fine arts, Craig Grannell become irrevocably immersed in the world of digital media a decade ago and has never looked back. Along with writing for a number of design-oriented publications, he’s written books on web design, and he continues to be creative in the fields of photography and music. Find out more about Craig at Snub Communications (www.snubcommunications.com) and Project Noise (www.projectnoise.co.uk).

Product Details

• Paperback: 552 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1st ed. 2007. Corr. 2nd printing edition (November 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590599071
• ISBN-13: 978-1590599075
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #292,049 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #84 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > CSS

More About the Author

Craig Grannell is a British writer, designer and, frankly, a bit of a geek. In his youngling years, he battled with Commodore VIC-20s and space invaders. Now he's beyond such things, but only because he's battling space invaders on his iPad, which is FAR MORE GROWN UP.

Along with writing for more British, American and (oddly) German design, technology and gaming mags than you can shake a stick at, Craig was at some point convinced to write books. He still thinks this could have been some amusing jape that no-one's let him in on, but he's nonetheless proud of his web design and iPad tomes, and they've sold quite nicely, so he must be doing something right.

In 2010, he won the prestigious Totally Made Up Because I Haven't Won Any Awards award, and he'd therefore be grateful for some proper awards, which can be sent by post to the usual address. In a brown paper bag.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding CSS design coverage, December 26, 2007

By 

John Woods "TObject" (San Diego, CA, United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Essential Guide to CSS and HTML Web Design (Essentials) (Paperback)

The CSS and HTML Web Design book builds on the excellent earlier title by the same author. The new book is larger, it contains more examples; a lot of the examples are presented in a step-by-step manner. The new examples overall are trickier than old examples which, for better or worse, tended to gravitate towards the academic side of web design rather than real life requirements often imposed upon website builders.

After general introductions, the main sections of this book consist of chapters dedicated to styling text, images, navigation, tables, page layouts, forms, and putting everything together when building complete websites. A special place in the book takes the chapter on dealing with browser quirks. This is a very important chapter that teaches how to deal with browser compatibility issues; it is especially relevant as some of the examples from other chapters do not work as expected in Internet Explorer versions 6 or earlier.

At the core of this book are HTML/XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), but the author also takes dives into various web technologies such as mail form scripts, PHP, JavaScript, and even mentions Ruby On Rails. There is practically no information on ASP.NET, but the web design lessons from this book are applicable to any server technology.

The book appendix contains handy references of most important XHTML and CSS elements and attributes, character encoding tables, web color guide, and information on browsers and recommended software.

The CSS and HTML Web Design is an excellent title containing a wealth of information useful to website designers of any level.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent css/html design guide, February 25, 2008

By 

artlmntl (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Essential Guide to CSS and HTML Web Design (Essentials) (Paperback)

The author promises this book is different. I suppose it is, thanks to the author's friendly and comprehensive approach to the material. This is a surprisingly complete guide for beginning and intermediate CSS designers with a lot of useful answers to practical design problems. For instance, many books discuss how to write a form, but this book tells you how to write a mail form, including the fact that the form won't do anything without script support and where to find that support. It's that level of detail that sets this book apart.

As one would expect, the author begins with the basics, discussing CSS and its benefits. Then, he talks about typography and working with type before moving on to images. He even includes a brief discussion of color theory. He shows how to display random images using both JavaScript and PHP and provides an exhaustive discussion of links and navigation, including some discussion of accessibility. Of course, he discusses tables and the box model before moving on to forms and page testing. He has a coherent discussion of IE issues and using conditionals to call version-specific style sheets. He moves on to discuss creation of an online storefront and business websites, ending with useful XHTML, entities, and CSS references. The book is over 500 pages with many code examples.

I'm sure there are advanced designers who don't need this book; but for the beginner, this book is an excellent place to start. For the intermediate designer, this is a very good reference. I really like Stylin' with CSS: A Designer's Guide (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter) for the author's presentation of information and the book's attractive physical design; but if I am objective and fair, Craig Grannell's "Essential Guide" is the better book. Grannell supplies more information in greater depth over the entire span of CSS design. So, beginning and intermediate designers who buy this book will not be disappointed. Thanks for reading.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good guide for web design, February 22, 2008

By 

E. Kaykçlar (Turkey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Essential Guide to CSS and HTML Web Design (Essentials) (Paperback)

It's a very good guide for people who haven't done any graphical background. A good intermediate level of XHTML and CSS. Not for experienced designers.