Cascading Style Sheets: Designing For The Web

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Cascading Style Sheets: Designing For The Web
Author: Hakon Wium Lie
Review By: Vulture

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CSS: Designing For The Web, written by the creators of CSS, is the perfect book for anyone who wants to brush up on their CSS knowledge. This book covers almost every aspect of CSS in outstanding detail from Span and Div to Media-Specific Style Sheets, it truly is a remarkable guide. On thing I found most useful in this book was the CSS Quick Reference which lists every attribute in CSS 1 and 2.x with possible values and a page number where that attribute is explained, all of this sitting in the inside cover for quick access. This book is not, however, a guide to HTML and readers should appreciate how HTML works to get the most from this book (understanding of basic CSS wouldn't go amiss either).

Cascading Style Sheets: Designing For The Web doesn't only show you the code to do what you want, it explains it as well. This is something I've found lacking in other CSS books and until I read this book I couldn't tell you what the baseline or ascender was, why em was different from ex or why using pixels for measurements is a bad idea. This book is written by those who know best and they succeed at outlineing the "best practices" for CSS on the web.

One of the problems with CSS and the web is that different browsers have a habit of displaying differently and some browsers (no names please) are badly lacking in support for CSS. Recognising the problem, the authors have put a key at side of each attribute letting you know which common browsers (they list Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera and Konqueror) support that particular attribute - excellent information for those who need cross-browser support. Don't let the book's name surprise you, its not only concerned about CSS for the web. The book devotes a chapter to other media, specifically print.