Professional CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design [Paperback]

Christopher Schmitt (Author), Mark Trammell (Author), Ethan Marcotte (Author), Todd Dominey (Author), Dunstan Orchard (Author), Jeffrey Zeldman (Foreword), Todd Dominey (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0764588338 | ISBN-13: 978-0764588334 | Publication Date: July 29, 2005 | Edition: 1

Professional CSS Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design

As the preferred technology for Web design, cascading style sheets (CSS) enable Web designers and developers to define consistent styles on multiple pages. Written by leading CSS authors who are also professional programmers and designers, this is the first book to showcase examples of high-profile, real-world Web sites created by world-famous designers using CSS.

Each chapter offers an exploratory look at each designer's process from start to finish and how he overcame each site's unique set of challenges. You'll learn what each designer would have done differently as well as various CSS tips and techniques that were used for each site. This is a resource to which you can turn regularly for more know-how and insights into designing large-scale, professional-level Web sites with CSS.

What you will learn from this book
* The preliminaries you need to iron out before you begin a site in order to avoid problems later
* How to tackle browser-compatibility issues
* Best practices for using XHTML with CSS
* How to successfully integrate Flash content into an XHTML and CSS site
* Using drop shadows, drop-down menus, bounding boxes, and rollovers
* Ways to develop a site that can reliably handle constant streams of up-to-date information

Who this book is for

This book is for designers who understand CSS at an intermediate to advanced level, but who are looking to learn how to effectively develop CSS-enabled designs at a professional level.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Professional CSS Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design

As the preferred technology for Web design, cascading style sheets (CSS) enable Web designers and developers to define consistent styles on multiple pages. Written by leading CSS authors who are also professional programmers and designers, this is the first book to showcase examples of high-profile, real-world Web sites created by world-famous designers using CSS.

Each chapter offers an exploratory look at each designer's process from start to finish and how he overcame each site's unique set of challenges. You'll learn what each designer would have done differently as well as various CSS tips and techniques that were used for each site. This is a resource to which you can turn regularly for more know-how and insights into designing large-scale, professional-level Web sites with CSS.

What you will learn from this book

• The preliminaries you need to iron out before you begin a site in order to avoid problems later
• How to tackle browser-compatibility issues
• Best practices for using XHTML with CSS
• How to successfully integrate Flash content into an XHTML and CSS site
• Using drop shadows, drop-down menus, bounding boxes, and rollovers
• Ways to develop a site that can reliably handle constant streams of up-to-date information

Who this book is for

This book is for designers who understand CSS at an intermediate to advanced level, but who are looking to learn how to effectively develop CSS-enabled designs at a professional level.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

About the Author

Christopher Schmitt is the principal of Heatvision.com, Inc., a new media publishing and design firm based in Tallahassee, Florida. An award-winning Web designer who has been working with the Web since 1993, he interned for both David Siegel and Lynda Weinman in the mid-1990s while an undergraduate at Florida State University pursuing a Fine Arts degree with emphasis on graphic design. He is the author of The CSS Cookbook (O’Reilly, 2004) and Designing CSS Web Pages (New Riders Press, 2002). He is also the co-author (with Micah Laaker) of Photoshop CS in 10 Simple Steps or Less (Wiley, 2004) and contributed four chapters to XML, HTML, & XHTML Magic by Molly Holzschlag (New Riders Press, 2001). Christopher has also written for New Architect magazine, A List Apart, Digital Web, and Web Reference. In 2000, he led a team to victory in the “Cool Site in a Day” competition, wherein he and five other talented developers built a fully functional, well-designed Web site for a non-profit organization in eight hours. Speaking at conferences such as The Other Dreamweaver Conference and SXSW, he has given talks demonstrating the use and benefits of practical CSS-enabled designs. Also helping to spread the word about Web design, he is the list mom for Babble (www.babblelist.com), a mailing list community devoted to advanced Web design and development topics. On his personal Web site, www.christopherschmitt.com, he shows his true colors and most recent activities. He is 6'7" tall and does not play professional basketball, but he wouldn’t mind a good game of chess.

Mark Trammell of Gainesville, Florida, directs the Web presence at the University of Florida.

Ethan Marcotte of Boston co-founded Vertua Studios (vertua.com), a Web design shop focused on creating beautiful, user-focused sites. A steering committee member of the Web Standards Project, he is a leading industry voice on standards-based Web design. Ethan is also the curator of sidesh0w.com, a popular Web log that is equal parts design, coding, and blather.

Dunstan Orchard of Dorset, UK, and San Francisco is Senior UI Engineer at Apple’s online store. He is a member of The Web Standards Project, a silent developer for the popular open source blogging platform Wordpress, and an occasional contributor to his own site at http://1976design.com/.

Todd Dominey of Atlanta founded Dominey Design (domineydesign.com), an interactive Web development and design studio that has produced original work for Budweiser, The Washington Post, Google, Winterfresh Gum, and others. He is also a Senior Interactive Designer at Turner Sports Interactive, designing and developing Web destinations for major PGA tournaments (including the PGA Championship and The Ryder Cup).

Product Details

• Paperback: 456 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 1 edition (July 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764588338
• ISBN-13: 978-0764588334
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,456,030 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The founder of Heat Vision, a small new media publishing and design firm, Christopher Schmitt is an award-winning Web designer who has been working with the Web since 1993.

As a sought-after speaker and trainer, Christopher regularly demonstrates the use and benefits of practical standards-based designs.

He is Co-Lead of the Adobe Task Force for the Web Standards Project (WaSP) in addition to being a contributing member of its Education Task Force.

Author of numerous Web design and digital imaging books, including Adapting to Web Standards: CSS and Ajax for Big Sites and CSS Cookbook, Christopher has also written for New Architect Magazine, A List Apart, Digital Web, and Web Reference.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars There are better books on CSS..., September 2, 2005

By 

Adrienne Adams (Lopez Island, WA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Professional CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design (Paperback)

I was a bit disappointed with this book. There are two rather glaring shortcomings here:

1. There's a distinct lack of focus. While the content is based on real-world CSS solutions, the authors can't really seem to get in the groove. The first chapter is devoted to "Planning and Development of Your Site". While that is certainly important information, it really is a subject that has been treated better and more thoroughly elsewhere (Goto & Cotler's "Web Redesign 2.0" comes to mind). Later chapters sort of ramble through the subject matter, not really succeeding at being thorough case studies of the sites. (For example, the chapter in ESPN was truly disapointing for its lack of content.) I really got the impression that the authors were trying to "pad" the content so as to make the book seem bigger than it really is.

2. Poor reproduction of graphics. In some cases, it's difficult to see what the authors are trying to represent. Several errors in Chapter 3 ("Blogger: Rollovers and Design Improvements") make the examples very confusing. The book's editing left much to be desired--I found quite a few errors throughout the book.

Given these two shortcomings, there is still valuable information in the book. With better editing, and tighter focus on the subject matter, this would be a good choice for a reference book on applying CSS to real-world projects. As it is, it's not a bad book to have in your collection, though I wouldn't put it on my "must-have" list.

31 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Written in geek-style, but for total beginners, September 23, 2005

By 

M. Schlosser "mario" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Professional CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design (Paperback)

I don't really know which book the other reviews are talking about, but I do not have much good to say about this book. Couple of reasons: it's incredibly talkative without actually providing any valuable information above very basic knowledge and tips'n'tricks. For example, although shooting at "designers who understand CSS at an intermediate to advanced level", it spends about five pages on (re-)introducing the box model (you know, what exactly padding and margin refer to). The pace of the book is just painstakingly slow: in the chapter where a three-column layout is introduced, it literally builds the three-column layout from a simple text page up, depicting over and over again how the simplest code change affects the browser rendering - only to stop at a stripped-down three-column layout that has achieved nothing (and where you can find much better examples by just typing "three-column layout CSS" into Google).

Now you may say: that sounds great for beginners. It's not at all - since the book doesn't really follow any logic, it just introduces random websites (e.g., fastcompany.com) and uses these websites as an example on how to layout with CSS (then again, without really showing how for example fastcompany.com does it in practice). So there's absolutely no learning curriculum that is being followed.

And lastly, here's my favorite quote: A chapter talking about how to design round boxes with CSS is kicked off by "We also touch upon issues these solutions have with Internet Explorer and provide workarounds (if possible) for this troublesome browser." Yeah guys, too bad that 90% of the world IS using IE. I don't like it either, but it's not my choice, so please give me something I and 90% of the world can work with, and not some geek's elaboration on how great Firefox can render CSS. The chapter goes on to dwell for pages and pages about how to do it, only to conclude that the solution basically doesn't work for IE.

Conclusion: I can't really see who should buy this book - not interesting as a tutorial on CSS (since it doesn't follow any logic and introduces topics as it hums along), not interesting as a resource on coding how-tos (since it's way to shallow on real coding content - see three-column layout), not interesting as a study on how real websites are built based on CSS (because in the end it doesn't really disect these websites or the design choices made, they seem to be used only as an alibi to get on certain topics).

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars mediocre, opinionated, and somewhat boring, January 12, 2007

By 

S. Smith "Quality counts" (West Chester, Pa United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Professional CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design (Paperback)

This is not a reference book nor a how to book. It describes web sites & how those sites tackled their display problems. If you have to buy 3 css books, I'd recommend this order:

1. OReilly - CSS The Definitive Guide by Eric Meyer (great reference)
2. Any good CSS cookbook

And, if you really need a 3rd book after the 2 above... consider this book along with any of the several others out there.

PS: I am not a fan of MS either, but if I'm paying good money for a book, I don't want to be continually reminded by the authors of how poor of a product ms puts out. The poor quality of MS Web technologies is well known.