Robin Nixon's CSS & CSS3 Crash Course [Kindle Edition]

Robin Nixon (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

From the author of the top-selling book "Learning PHP, MySQL & JavaScript", and the popular "Robin Nixon's HTML5 Crash Course", this new CSS & CSS 3 course teaches you everything you need to know about the web layout language, all the way from the basics, up to advanced features such as animations, transformations, shadows, web font management and much, much more.

Everything is clearly explained with plenty of examples and figures, and you will absolutely find this one of the easiest courses you have ever taken. Once you've completed it, you'll completely understand CSS and CSS3, and be fully confident of how to use it to make really impressive and dynamic web pages.

Starting from the basics of CSS (which experienced users can skim) the book covers everything you need to know about CSS and CSS3 in these 16 easy-to-follow lectures:

• Introduction to CSS
• The CSS Rules
• CSS Selectors
• The CSS Cascade
• CSS Fonts & Typography
• CSS Color & Position
• The CSS Boc Model
• Introduction to CSS3
• CSS3 Attribute Selectors
• CSS3 Backgrounds
• CSS3 Borders
• CSS3 Box Shadows, Overflow & Columns
• CSS3 Colors & Opacity
• CSS3 Text Effects & Web Fonts
• CSS3 Transformations & Transitions
• CSS3 3D Transformations

Once you've read this book you will be fully up-to-date on all the latest powerful design features provided by CSS3, and will be all set to bring your web designs up to the next level.

From the Author

My popular HTML and HTML5 Crash Course is available in various versions and has now been taken by thousands of people, many of whom also asked me about CSS, and particularly about the new features in CSS3, so here's the result.

Robin Nixon's CSS & CSS3 Crash Course is for absolutely anyone with any amount of previous experience, because it teaches both CSS and CSS3. If you already know some CSS you can use the first few chapters as a refresher, or skim over them. If not they offer a simple, straight-forward and easy-to-follow introduction. The remaining chapters detail in depth what CSS3 has to offer and exactly how you can make the best use of its new features to make the most compelling and dynamic websites.

I believe you will find this one of the easiest-to-understand books on the subject, and with it you'll very quickly take your web development skills to the next level.

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 3235 KB
• Publisher: Nixon Publishing (December 22, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B006PIW4IM
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #78,239 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Robin Nixon has been a writer for 30 years, has written in excess of 500 articles for many of the UK's top magazines, and has authored over a dozen books.

Robin started his writing career in the Cheshire homes for disabled people, where he was responsible for setting up computer rooms in a number of residential homes, evaluating and tailoring hardware and software so that disabled people could use the new technology, and writing supporting documentation and articles for a selection of national magazines.

After this Robin's career became a hundred percent writing-oriented when he joined a large magazine publisher, where he held a variety of different editorial positions, before leaving to become a self-employed writer.

With the dawn of the Internet in the 1990s, Robin branched out into developing websites (including the world's first licensed Internet radio station). In order to enable people to continue to surf while listening, Robin also developed the first known pop-up windows.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s Robin and his family moved to the USA a couple of times, once to run a web design company in California, and then again to set up an English Tearoom in Texas. In between times they ran several successful pubs, bed and breakfasts and nightclubs in England.

In recent years Robin has begun to focus more closely on motivation and personal improvement in his writing, while still continuing to produce more in his popular series of books on computing, which have now been translated into several different languages.

Robin lives on the south-east coast of England (where he writes full time), along with his five children and wife Julie (a trained nurse and university lecturer) - between them they also foster three disabled children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good CSS & CSS3 primer, February 10, 2012

By 

A. Wiersch (Lantana, TX USA (near Dallas)) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Robin Nixon's CSS & CSS3 Crash Course (Kindle Edition)

This is a good book to get started with CSS, including CSS3. It's good for beginners or for those who already know some CSS but want to learn more, especially some new CSS3 properties. However, if you are an 'advanced' user wanting greater depth & detail, then you'll probably want something 'beefier', but the price is right for what you get.

The course is divided into 16 lectures, with later lectures concentrating on the new CSS3 properties. The later lectures discuss the new CSS3 attribute selectors, backgrounds, borders, box-shadows, colors, gradients, opacity, text effects & web fonts, and transformations (2D and 3D). However, some CSS3 things are not included - like speech, generated content, and navigation. Part of the reason that some things were left out is because they are in a greater level of flux and have less browser support.

I found the later chapters more interesting, especially the ones on 2D and 3D transitions, mostly because I was unfamiliar with those new CSS3 capabilities.

There are some examples which I thought were very useful, and you can download example files from the web.

Also talked about are the proprietary properties that are needed for support in more browsers (those beginning with -moz-, -webkit-, -o-, etc.). Unfortunately you'll probably find that Internet Explorer is the browser that seems to have the least support for a lot of new CSS3 stuff, but the book includes some ways to simulate some CSS3 effects. Hopefully IE 10 will change a lot of that.

NOTE: This review is based on an updated book that corrects some errors and misprints that were in previous versions.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A printout of a web-based tutorial, February 19, 2012

By 

John R Alden (Edina, MN United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Robin Nixon's CSS & CSS3 Crash Course (Paperback)

I found this book very disappointing. It is clearly a printout of an online course, in black and white at that. It doesn't stand alone. You must have access to the webpages he references for the book to be useful. There are many places where, instead of describing features, he gives you examples which you can only see by displaying the source of a web page (for which he kindly provides a picture!). The section on colors and opacity starts with a display of "the color wheel displaying both hue and saturation" in black and white! The rest of the chapter is similarly full of gradients and various interesting color effects, illustrated in black and white. The author clearly knows his stuff, but print, especially without color, isn't an appropriate medium for this content.