Eric Meyer On CSS

2006-05-20T15:26:05+00:00

Eric Meyer On CSSBy Eric A. MeyerReview by: Alex[attachment=2250:attachment]If there was ever an expert on CSS who's name haunts the corridors of the W3C it would be the wizard of CSS known to humanity as Eric Meyer. A man who has contributed so much to the world of website design and probably one of the greatest CSS developers on the face of the planet. Eric Meyer on CSS is a book which shows developers a step by step guide to using CSS to transform your website projects. As Meyer himself comments in the start of the book, if you are looking for a way to transform old school designs or if you enjoy using a hands on approach to website design, the book is for you, if you want a book which teaches you CSS and explains the importance of every tag, you may want to look elsewhere. However this book is not a reference manual, it is a step by step guide to accomplishing certain tasks or as the book refers to them "Projects" these include converting old designs into new, styling your elements, making input boxes and print preview look and work more effectively with CSS and much more. With 13 chapters which explain areas of CSS which every good website developer who uses CSS should take into account, this book is an excellent buy for developers who want to have a run down on accomplishing specific web design tasks. There is actually nothing which can be criticized in this book as it does exactly what it sets out to do, if you are an intermediate / advanced level CSS developer who understands how to implement CSS, Meyer explains in simplistic terms how to keep your website design going strong. The book contains tips and tricks to getting your CSS to work and the best thing is that how Meyer lays out his content makes for easy reading. Each project in the book gives a little quote which may be worth remembering while working, lists of the projects goals, how to prepare, laying the groundwork which gives the bare bone code and then moves on to giving a fantastically easy step by step guide to how your ugly duckling can evolve into a beautiful swan of a design.The chapters in this book include 13 projects, the first chapter (possibly the most important) explains how to convert an existing page into a CSS powered design, Chapter 2 shows you how to style a press release. Chapter 3 shows you how to style an events calendar, Chapter 4 explains how you can bring those boring hyperlinks to life, Chapter 5 shows you how to skin a menu successfully and effectively, Chapter 6 explains the details of styling your designs for printing so that they work well with your printer, Chapter 7 gives information on making input boxes blend in well with your design (which is something many CSS books do not cover in very much detail), Chapter 8 is more of an unusual one as it shows you how to make an online greetings card using CSS, Chapter 9 gives you a step by step guide to working with multi column layouts, Chapter 10 gives some very valuable advice into how to work outside of boxes and get your designs to expand beyond the boundaries that they sometimes pose, Chapter 11 is mainly a project which gives you information on how to work with positioning properly, Chapter 12 explains the task of fixing those backgrounds which you want to work properly within CSS and the final chapter (project) of the book is an interesting chapter as it details how the actual books design was created and can be generated using html and CSS standards to show you that almost anything can be accomplished using CSS design.This book is suitable for the following types of people interested in website development:[list][*]People who have a working knowledge of CSS who wish to be shown how to use it more effectively.[*]Website designers who want to understand how to seperate design from content.[*]Developers of websites who wish to know how to convert old designs into new ones.[/list]If you have a basic knowledge of CSS and HTML and wish to learn the tricks of the trade to be able to accomplish feats of design perfection using CSS, this guide is for you, if you want to understand how to get started into converting old content and style mixed pages into separated and easy to manage sites, this book is also for you. However if you have no working knowledge of CSS and want a proper guide to the language rather then a crash course in design, you may wish to look elsewhere. For those web designers who love books such as the CSS Zen Garden this book is an amazing addition to your bookshelf and is well worth the price tag.

Statistics: Posted by Alexander — Sat May 20, 2006 3:24 pm

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Eric Meyer On CSS