CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions | Andy Budd, Simon Collison, ...

CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions | Andy Budd, Simon Collison, ... | Brian's Review

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CSS Mastery: Advan...

	CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions Andy Budd, Simon Collison, ... friends of ED, 2006 - 280 pages average customer review:based on 101 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

This book is your indispensable guide to cutting-edge CSS developmentall you need to work your way up to CSS professional. You'll learn how to: Plan, organize, and maintain your stylesheets more effectively Apply the secrets of liquid, elastic, and hybrid layouts Create flickr-style image maps, remote rollovers, and other advanced CSS features Lay out forms using pure CSS Recognize common browser bugs, and how to fix them While CSS is a relatively simple technology to learn, it is a difficult one to master. When you first start developing sites using CSS, you will come across all kinds of infuriating browser bugs and inconsistencies. It sometimes feels like there are a million and one different techniques to master, spread across a bewildering array of websites. The range of possibilities seems endless and makes for a steep and daunting learning curve. By bringing all of the latest tips, tricks, and techniques together in one handy reference, this book demystifies the secrets of CSS and makes the journey to CSS mastery as simple and painless as possible. While most books concentrate on basic skills, this one is different, assuming that you already know the basics and why you should be using CSS in your work, and concentrating mainly on advanced techniques. It begins with a brief recap of CSS fundamentals such as the importance of meaningful markup, how to structure and maintain your code, and how the CSS layout model really works. With the basics out of the way, each subsequent chapter details a particular aspect of CSS-based design. Through a series of easy-to-follow tutorials, you will learn practical CSS techniques you can immediately start using in your daily work. Browser inconsistencies are the thorn in most CSS developers' sides, so we have dedicated two whole chapters to CSS hacks, filters, and bug fixing, as well as looking at image replacement; professional link, form, and list styling; pure CSS layouts; and much more. All of these techniques are then put into practice in two beautifully designed case studies, written by two of the world's best CSS designers, Simon Collison and Cameron Moll. Summary of Contents: Chapter 1: Setting the Foundations Chapter 2: Visual Formatting Model Recap Chapter 3: Background Images and Image Replacement Chapter 4: Styling Links Chapter 5: Styling Lists and Creating Nav Bars Chapter 6: Styling Forms and Data Tables Chapter 7: Layout Chapter 8: Hacks and Filters Chapter 9: Bugs and Bug Fixing Case Study 1: More Than Doodles Case Study 2: Tuscany Luxury Resorts

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It Answered All My Questions - Intermediate CSSer

Not a beginner's book and thank god for that - beginners should start online anyway.

If you've been working with CSS for a while but have some nagging questions that never seem to get answered about the tricky stuff like certain layouts and centering, this is the place to go. Andy Budd appears to possess that rare quality that makes for an excellent how-to author which is a deep awareness of just how hard it was to come by his own solutions to CSS issues and focus on those in his book rather than just reiterating stuff you could get from w3schools and peppering it with the occasional tip that's useful.

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Brian's Review

This book requires that you have some previous CSS knowledge. The first few chapters provide a quick and thorough review of things that you should already know about CSS. The rest of the book is packed full of useful CSS tips. I take Web Coding classes and can say that this book very closely follows the same teachings of professors. I would recommend this book for intermediate level CSS people wanting to hone and advance their understanding of CSS.

CSS Mastery Review

I'm a developer with minimal experience designing web pages "by hand." Most of my work on the front-end includes using built in templates and designers to do the front-end magic for me.

I decided to change all that and picked up this book. In a couple of days I was up and running creating some pretty cool front-end designs...plus, the advice in this book matched almost all the advice I was getting from one of our top front-end guys.

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CSS Mystery

The book started out very good by clarifying a few things I missed in Elizabeth Castro's - XHTML & CSS. The author's explanation of the cascade & specificity was not very clear. He only gives you a basic introduction to positioning & fails to truly teach you how to use the CSS positioning properties in an effective manner. My top complaint though is the fact that the case study at http://tuscany.cssmastery.com breaks in IE7 (W T F ?) I would suggest reading Michael Bowers Pro CSS & HTML Design Patterns for a much more informative view of the cascade, specificity & positioning along with code that actually works in projects you may be trying to style up now! That being said - the book does have good sections on commenting your markup, application of filters & hacks & troubleshooting your designs.

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Not for Beginners

This book has some useful information and is really targeted to the hardcore CSSers, who already know the basics (& a little bit more). It outlines clearly many topics and use some good examples (with some minor typos). If you are a beginner, I would not really recommend the book as it may overwhelm you with too technical stuff and exceptions. A good way in learning is not to provide exceptions at the beginning of a learning experience, but more towards the end. But that always happens with folks who know their stuff too well. So, get your basics and foundation right first, know about CSS and THEN go for this publication.

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