CSS: The Missing Manual
Cascading Style Sheets can turn humdrum websites into highly-functional, professional-looking destinations, but many designers merely treat CSS as window-dressing to spruce up their site’s appearance. You can tap into the real power of this tool with CSS: The Missing Manual. This second edition combines crystal-clear explanations, real-world examples, and dozens of step-by-step tutorials to show you how to design sites with CSS that work consistently across browsers. Witty and entertaining, this
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- ISBN13: 9780596802448
- Condition: New
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127 of 134 people found the following review helpful:
 For the Beginner — Approved by an Expert, By
This review is from: CSS: The Missing Manual (Paperback)
6 Responses to CSS: The Missing ManualLeave a Reply |
For the Beginner — Approved by an Expert,
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Consider this a “getting started the right way with HTML and CSS” book. As such, it does a marvelous job.
I had a chance to get this beginner’s book — even though my bosses have been grossly overpaying me for years if I really were a beginner! Too many beginner books tend to over-simplify, which becomes a barrier to the more complex issues that a serious beginner will meet down the line. That is not the case here.
Step by step (sometimes even telling you what and when to click!) the book will take you through the basics of creating stylesheets for HTML. You will move from text format basics to moderately advanced layout issues and even print media stylesheets.
The text of the book itself is formatted in an interesting way that is easy to read and makes points clear. There are lots of images and diagrams. I liked the way many of the illustrations jutted out into the outer margin. The effect was a vivid enhancement and the book is bound in a way that lets it sit flat, making it easier to read while keying.
The author also performs a service by introducing, when appropriate, advanced issues and controversies that will surely interest the type of person motivated to go on in this field. The book includes appendices with a CSS Property Reference; CSS in Dreamweaver; and extended CSS Resources.
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|Excellent book for newbies and intermediate coders alike…,
I’ve read and reviewed a number of books on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and I’ve learned something from them all. But for whatever reason, this one showed up at just the right time and has me inspired and motivated on a new project… CSS: The Missing Manual by David Sawyer McFarland.
Contents:
Part 1 – CSS Basics: Rethinking HTML for CSS; Creating Styles and Style Sheets; Selector Basics – Identifying What to Style; Saving Time with Inheritance; Managing Multiple Styles – The Cascade
Part 2 – Applied CSS: Formatting Text; Margins, Padding, and Borders; Adding Graphics to Web Pages; Sprucing Up Your Site’s Navigation; Formatting Tables and Forms
Part 3 – CSS Page Layout: Building Float-Based Layouts; Positioning Elements on a Web Page
Part 4 – Advanced CSS: CSS for the Printed Page; Improving Your CSS Habits
Part 5 – Appendixes: CSS Property Reference; CSS in Dreamweaver 8; CSS Resources; Index
From the newbie perspective, this book works well. The first part of the book lays out the case for using CSS instead of pure HTML to format your pages and gain control of the style. It takes a subject that can be a bit intimidating and makes it very approachable. From there, you get a section on how exactly CSS works. This is much easier to digest than some of the more formal reference manuals I’ve seen in the past, and there’s not as much focus on the minutia of every little variant that can happen. This is the material you’ll use 95% of the time. Part 3 is where I started to get excited. I’ve been doing CSS for a while now, but over time I’ve built up designs that “work” but that could be done much better with what I’ve learned of late. I noticed a number of items that I want to try out on a new project I’m about to start, and I have a feeling that I’ll be in a much better situation style-wise on this application than any of the other ones I support. Same with part 4 and the chapter on improving your CSS habits. I was/am guilty of a number of these things, and this information will go a long way towards making me a better CSS junkie (and will make anyone following after me much happier in terms of support).
I think what worked so well for me here was the consistent use of a single “site” for examples and illustrations. The CosmoFarmer site gave the information a thread to hang on to throughout the chapters, and progressions were logical. I appreciated the tutorials at the end of the chapter so that you could try out the new skills. But what I *really* liked were the references to other sites where you could get more information, as well as clarification on what browsers don’t do things according to specs, and how to work around these bugs.
Armed with this book, a newbie would be able to become competent in CSS. And if you’ve been doing CSS for awhile, there’s a strong chance that McFarland will deliver some nuggets that will take you to the next level. I know that’ll be the situation in my case…
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|Excellent book on CSS,
The problem with many of the CSS books that I have read is that most of them just reiterate the CSS specification. While this is useful knowledge, it doesn’t cover what you need to know to build robust web applications that work consistently across the myriad of browsers on the internet.
This book covers the usual stuff with CSS: styles, precedence rules (the cascade), text and fonts, padding and spacing, the box model, positioning, tables, etc. It also goes into detail about how to apply this knowledge.
Some of the stuff that is included:
– building tabs with the Sliding Doors technique
– Entire chapter related to IE6 and how it diverges from the spec, and work-arounds (aka hacks) that can be used to correct these problems. Other browsers such as Opera and Safari are also covered throughout the book.
– Entire chapter related to floats and using these to create column-based layous. Work-arounds to problems and unexpected behavior are also covered.
– Entire chapter related to forms and how to use CSS for layout
The book is well edited and contains some really good graphics to explain the layout and positioning. Each chapter has a tutorial to help you work through the techniques.
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|An excellent resource for all online communication,
My company is a consultancy that creates interactive learning programs for large corporations. I am especially interested in blending the best practices of instructional design/performance support, technical communication, and web site design. For the latter, this book is an indispensible resource!
I shared the book with our Content Director, who, at first, was too busy to really pay any attention to it. Once he cracked the cover, he immediately wrote me back and raved! The book compiles so many of the basic concepts that he and I desire our entire writing team to incorporate into their projects.
We purchased multiple copies and assigned one chapter to each of our team to present to the team as a whole. These weekly presentations have been refresher for some, but new material for others, and now we are finally all level-set on basic writing/presentation concepts for online delivery. Hooray!
Only negative feedback I can give is that I did hear a bit of grumbling that the author broke her own rules in a couple places – using a few headings that were too long, for example, when there is a chapter specifically on writing good headings. I should probably have docked the rating a bit for that stuff, but overall we got so much good from this little book that I feel I must give it full praise!
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|Impractical for Business Websites & Google,
[Update at bottom] Letting Go of the Words is a terrific book with respect to site structure and usability, but is extremely inadequate in regards to Search Engine Optimization and content that actually sells.
Dr. Redish’s experience with web content is largely related to government agencies. In that respect, I couldn’t ask for a better book on the basics of site structure and usability. The author presents a solid primer on helping your visitors find the information they seek as easily as possible.
The book, however, largely ignores issues that are important to business websites that wish to rank well on Google and other search engines. As an SEO guru, I was surprised that a book on writing web content completely ignores the fact that Google absolutely loves keyword-rich content. While some web purists believe in designing sites as though search engines never existed, it’s impractical to cut short the very content that would ultimately deliver visitors to your site.
Government sites will generally rank well by virtue of their number of (quality) inbound links. Business owners aren’t looking to simply provide information, they’re looking to get traffic and motivate visitors to perform an action (purchase, contact, subscribe). Some of her tips (“don’t embed links” – chapter 12) are in opposition to what designers should do to encourage Google to “spider” relevant pages and categorize them better in its results.
If this book teaches you the architectural skills of constructing a physical store that’s easy to get around, it does so without mentioning how to encourage walk-ins to buy your products, nor how to get them from the street into your business. Brilliant from a usability standpoint, but often contradictory to what can help sites generate search engine traffic and drive sales.
[8/8/10 Update: While it doesn't emphasize SEO or sales copy, this is still the best book on usability that I have ever read. It's a must-own for designers, though I suggest you supplement Dr. Redish's techniques with other books on optimization and writing copy]
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|Great for info sites, less useful for marketing content,
Everyone who writes web content will benefit from reading this book with its clear guidelines and extensive examples. The book is well organized and its format makes it easy to find specific ideas.
However, this book will be most useful for writers working on information sites. The book presents only limited discussion and examples for e-commerce sites and does not address important issues for those sites, such as guiding customers to a sale or writing for search engine optimization.
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