Customer Reviews

More Eric Meyer on CSS (Voices That Matter)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Eric Meyer has done it again. His self-titled sequel More Eric Meyer on CSS is a collection of ten conversion projects that teaches CSS by example. A practical alternative to his other new book, Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, 2d ed., More is more inspired how-to than dry reference. Meyer says that the ultimate goal is to "lure you into using more CSS" with tempting visual effects, improved accessibility, design flexibility, and reduced page weight. I asked Eric Meyer why he wrote this book:

"There was such positive response to 'Eric Meyer on CSS' that New Riders and I decided it would be fun to create a sequel. Both books share the same project-oriented, practical philosophy, which is what people really seemed to like - that and the full color printing! The hope is that the book will help more designers get to know and love CSS, and inspire them to take the concepts presented and do something really awesome."

Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman actually make standards sexy. Yes, by converting to CSS-based techniques you make your designs more flexible, accessible, and gracefully degrade, but you also lose wait, and gain pizzazz. Chapter 6 "CSS-Driven Drop-Down Menus," where Meyer shows how to create JavaScript-free nested pull-down menus, is worth the price of the book alone.

As you progress from project 1 through 10 Meyer takes you through more difficult CSS conversions. The first two chapters show you how to use CSS layout to convert conventional table-based designs into CSS-based layouts. Tables still have their uses however, and Meyer is not above styling table-based financial reports with CSS in project 3. Chapter 4 shows how to create translucency with positioned backgrounds. While the technique does a nice job of simulating the problematic semi-opaque PNG, Meyer points out the additional graphic overhead required for this technique.

Chapters 5 through 7 are the heart of the book, styling lists to create rollover, drop-down, and tab-based menus. Some of these techniques you may have seen before, documented by foreword writer Douglas Bowman and the aforementioned Zeldman. Meyer is the first to gather them all into one place and update them for CSS 2.1 and modern browsers (most version 5+ browsers). He takes you step by step through transforming simple unordered lists into line-straddling rollover menus, lightweight CSS-only drop-down menus, and variants of Bowman's "sliding doors" technique to create rounded tabs.

Chapters 8 through 10 take it up a notch, styling a weblog, a home page with weblog, and the CSS Zen Garden site. The Zen Garden project actually uses a PNG file that works with a full alpha channel in IE6/Win as well as IE5/Mac, Mozilla, Safari, and Opera. Chapter 10 in particular will be of interest to graphic artists who convert graphics comps into XHTML and CSS.

Starting with purely structural XHTML, Meyer shows you how to gradually build up your style sheets, adding effects with each iteration. Full color screenshots, notes, warnings, and websites annotate each tutorial with alternative methods, browser workarounds, and further reading. The net effect is like having a CSS master look over your shoulder as you convert existing web sites. You can take many of these techniques directly from the book and companion site (more.ericmeyeroncss.com) and put them directly into your sites, with some minor caveats.

Eric Meyer has arguably done more than anyone to help promote the use of CSS, and for that we applaud him. CSS is not just for styling text anymore.

This is an excellent follow-up to "Eric Meyer on CSS." Meyer starts us in the same place as the original - turning an old-style table-based layout with font tags galore and showing how to trim the page size down using CSS for layout and formatting. The next 2 projects (Styling a Photo Collection and Styling a Financial Report) again hearken back to the original in that you are trying to complete a specific task. Along the way you are introduced to progressively more difficult concepts.

The gravy starts with Project 4 and continues through the rest of the book. Meyer leads us through some of the cutting-edge uses of CSS today and makes them work across today's popular browsers. When there is a problem rendering an effect in a particular browser, Meyer explains the pros and cons of using the technique.

This book is rated Intermediate-Advanced (same as the first book). Take that to heart. The projects in this book are harder than the corresponding project in the original. Neither teaches the basics. They make a great 1-2 punch and reading them in succession is a great idea. Make sure you follow along at the computer and do the projects - just reading them is helpful, but practice, practice, practice is absolutely necessary to really "get it".

Meyer again mentions that if you have read his previous books and don't like his writing tone, pass on this book. I find his writing style engaging. If you don't, consider getting the book anyhow - what you will learn from it should exceed any cringing you do at the style.

Eric Meyer is pushing the envelope again. This book is interesting for those who wish to look ahead, and standards continue to develop because people like Eric Meyer do these kinds of things. However, if you are looking for a practical guide to making your own site, this is not the book for you.

Quite a few of the tricks and techniques expounded here do not work on the majority of browsers, and very little account of backward compatibility is evident. That is not a criticism of the book, which does what it set out to do in quite an extraordinary and admirable way. Be aware, though, that this book is not for the budding web author wanting to learn something about making pages that work today for the majority of visitors. Better is Eric Meyer's first book in this series, and better still is Eric Meyer's "Cascading Styling Sheets: The Definitive Guide" from O'Reilly.

This book falls way short of actually teaching you anything concrete. Sure the projects are great, and if you are good at memorizing than you'll really benefit from this book (or if you are lucky enough to actually have a project similiar to one of the 10 he puts in the book). But from how he writes the material I am having real trouble applying the material in the book to real life situations. I met all the requirements of the book (basic knowledge of css) and understand all the styles he is using, but I don't understand the concept and reasoning behind some of his actions.

For example, in the second project he floats the actual anchor tags for a set of images instead of the actual images themselves. This resulted in a diagnol lineup on the screen. Perplexed, I read on hoping for an explanation as to why he floated the anchor tags instead of the image tags and why they were in a diagnol lineup. He didn't provide an explanation for this at all.

I'm not claiming I didn't learn anything from the book. Far from it.. I enjoyed a few of the projects and tip my cap to the author for his grasp of css but you can't just throw code into a book and not explain how it works. I know it says that he isn't going to talk about theory in his books, but if you want to apply it to other scenarios you must at least provide a basic understanding of WHY the elements behave that way. Most of the cases I played around with the elements and figured it out on my own, but I didn't spend 30 bucks to figure it out on my own.

I can't believe I am actually using the title "Worst book ever." It sounds juvenille, but I can't think of any other thing to say.

I am an experienced HTML designer. I do it for a living. I have been using HTML for many years, and I even taught HTML at a local 4-yr college. I use some CSS in all my projects in a separate file. I have also read hundreds of technical books from design to programming languages to networking to...you name it, so learning from books is nothing new to me.

Ok...now about this book.

Perhaps the author's intention was not to provide a reference manual or an in-depth tome of CSS terminology. I get that. However, if he intends for people to learn by following his examples, the book could not be worse.

I could hardly get through the first chapter. There were several errors (the very first project...he tells you to open the wrong file), and he just does things with very little description. I followed along typing everything exactly, and the pages still didn't look like the ones he was referencing. Absolutely no time is given to explaining the values and properties he is using (although he says the book is for experienced HTML users with SOME exposure to CSS). You are just supposed to take an HTML page and rebuild it in CSS. When you're done, you're supposed to magically understand what you did.

The book was incredibly difficult to follow along with. It is disjointed. It references figures that don't seem to correlate with what the author is doing. I found it easier just to take the completed project and go through the code myself and compare it to how the page looked. I also brought the finished files into Dreamweaver for a visual look, and I changed the CSS values to see what it did to the page. As a result, I came to the conclusion that it is easier to learn CSS by just getting some pages and playing around with them.

This book is NOT a learning tool. I checked it out of the library, and the 50 cent fine I was charged for returning it late was too much to pay for this book. There HAS to be better books out there to learn CSS, and if you want an in-depth and/or technical understanding of CSS...this book is not for you.

Maybe his other books were better...I don't know. I would love for anyone who gave this book a high rating to help me understand why?

This book is a definite plus for all people who have dabbled in table-free design but weren't quite ready to dive head first. If you are not familiar with basic CSS mark up, this book is not for you. If you wish to learn CSS from the ground up- see Christopher Schmitt's book "Designing CSS Web Pages" published by New Riders as well. Anyone who uses heavy javascript in their design will also find many streamlined CSS alternatives to that clunky code. "More Eric Meyer on CSS" starts off with a lesson on how to convert an existing table layout to cascading style sheets. I like the way Eric leads through the examples, every step in the code reveals possible browser conflicts. Lucky for us, he is able to supply the right workaround to make the pages compliant. Readers will also walk though styling a photo gallery, styling a financial report, `transparency layout', and many more. My favorite lessons were CSS-Driven Drop-Down Menus, Opening the Doors to Attractive Tabs, and Designing in the Garden. I have been a fan of the csszengarden site, and I had fun reaching the Zen Garden!
Overall, this was a useful and comprehensive book. Eric Meyer has a simple way of presenting the lessons. None of the ten lessons he covers should take longer than one hour. He is obviously extremely knowledgeable in this field. His praise is well deserved. I personally plan on implementing these lessons on my personal site and those of future clients. The only flaw I found with this book was chapter 10's missing lesson file from the books website, this was alright, as a similar html file was supplied. It was definitely not enough to lower my perfect rating though.

There are a couple of ways to learn something new. One is to follow the traditional pedagogical formula of systematic unfolding of a discipline. The other main way is to watch someone perform the task and learn the lessons along the way. This second approach is the one Mr. Myer uses in this CSS book.

For me, the "sliding windows" technique (based on a pre-existing trick which Eric Myer properly credits and improves upon) in which you learn how to make list-based, auto-sizing buttons using a single image was worth the price of the book alone. I'm using those buttons in my latest web project, and they're fast and nice looking. The great thing is that once you get the CSS set up and the image wherever you want it, simply adding a list element will generate the new button.

The other conversion projects were very good. I really enjoyed the photo gallery chapter. I've used a variant of that theme in my own gallery project with very positive results.

Eric Myer hates tables. Some of the efforts he goes to to avoid tables seem more work (pulling tricks out of hats to ensure cross-browser compatibility) than just surrendering and using the damned table once in awhile. That's where he and I part company. I'm not such a CSS purist that I can avoid, for practical purposes, the ease of the occasional, shameful table.

If you're interested in seeing how CSS can be applied to solve practical - although, in this book, not necessarily "everyday" - problems, this is the perfect book. If you're relatively new to CSS, you'll definitely need a reference/introductory text as well. But once you progress beyond the syntax and basic logic of CSS, and begin using it to style and layout real sites, More E.M. on CSS deserves a read and a spot on your bookshelf.

The CSS guru himself Eric Meyer has another book that continues this CSS projects (Eric Meyer on CSS). This book is there same basic format where he goes through step-by-step with 10 web projects and shows the reader how to use CSS to improve a non-CSS page.

From the first project which converts a non-CSS site to use CSS in improving its design, accessibility, search-engine optimization, readability and efficiency. Eric really explains in detail exactly why and how CSS can improve an existing site.

There are so many possibilities to use CSS; Eric has created some great projects to show you how. From creating a photo-album, to displaying spreadsheet like data, to background positioning and creating some cool CSS menus.

This is a great book for anyone who wants to learn more about CSS and apply to "real-world" cases that you can use right away. Out of these 10 projects, I found at least half of them useful right out of the box to apply to my site. The rest I will use as a reference for when I add more content.

This way to teaching the reader I find allot more valuable because it includes things that are used in everyday web design, not just theory and what-ifs like other books.

It is easy to find exactly what you are looking for within each chapter and can be used by any skill level because that first project starts from the ground up in teaching the user how to use CSS efficiently and correctly.

You can purchase this first book or this book; it doesn't matter because they both contain great CSS projects that can teach you CSS for any situation.

A great addition to your CSS library...

Eric Meyer is arguably the most well known expert on CSS, and this book demonstrates perfectly how he earned that. Easy to read, good relevant examples, and in-depth explanations of the topics at hand, this book is a wealth of important information for designers and developers looking to take their skills to the next level. Several of the book's 10 projects are those you would expect to do professionally if you work in the field. As was stated in another review, Chapters 5 - 7 are the heart of the book, although I would add the first chapter as well, since it talks about converting existing pages.

Written for someone with at least basic CSS knowledge, the book does a very credible job in bringing the reader along into the more advanced CSS ideas and principles. There is a lot more explanation than code, and I liked how the changes were provided in a controlled manner so I could see the effect each change had on the page. The exercises at the end of each chapter are a plus also, as it challenged my understanding of the material and helped me internalize what I read. This won't be the only book I need on the subject, but it will be an indispensible one.