CSS Cookbook: Quick Solutions to Common CSS Problems

by Christopher Schmitt

Book Overview

Learn how to solve the real problems you face with CSS. This cookbook offers hundreds of practical examples for using CSS to format your web pages, and includes code samples you can use right away. You'll find exactly what you need, from the basics to complex hacks and workarounds.

Each recipe explains how to customize a solution to meet your needs, and each chapter features a sample design that showcases the topics discussed. You'll...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 059615593X
• ISBN13: 9780596155933
• Release Date: February 2010
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 728 Pages
• Weight: 2.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.9" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

CSS Clearly Explained

I highly recommend this book. I am not a specialist in web design, but did have a certification in HTML/XHTML before reading it, so I had some background. Major topics are Web Typography, Page Elements, Links and Navigation, Lists, Forms, Tables, Page Layouts, Print-Friendly functions, Hacks/Workarounds and miscellaneous designing issues. Each chapter is divided into subsections, and they are patterned as follows: - Statement of the "Problem" (as the book puts it), or what it is that you want to do. - "Solution": first gives the HTML (if relevant), and then the CSS for modifying the HTML to get what you want. - "Discussion": explains in plain English what you just saw in the "Solution" section. - "See also": suggests other resources. Some of the examples require some knowledge of JavaScript, and in those cases I simply had to note that fact and move on. Most of what is illustrated in the book assumes only knowledge of HTML.

Good Reference for All Levels of CSS Developer

I've recently had the pleasure of reading CSS Cookbook by Christopher Schmitt, published by O'Reilly (the people who put animal pictures on their tech books - seems silly, but now you know exactly who I mean, don't you?). While I do not recommend it as a beginner's guide to CSS, I recommend it for the bookshelf of current CSS developers, or perhaps if you have a basic knowledge of CSS (maybe you use it control fonts and colors, and that's about it) and would like to implement even more of your design with CSS. The book is meant to be a reference book, but I read it straight through for the purposes of a review. It's one of the thinner reference books you can buy - weighing in at a little over 250 pages - but it is packed; no long-winded opining, no lengthy sidebars, just a raw: problem - solution - explanation - see also format. This format makes it very easy to look up the specific CSS issue you need insight on and get it. The book is divided into various categories of CSS, beginning with typography and other elements, moving along to links, lists, forms, tables, all the way up to a page layout section (if you've never used CSS to lay out an entire page, this section alone is worth the cost of the book), then addressing print CSS, browser hacks and workarounds, and then finishing with a brief section of raising various design possibilities that CSS makes possible. Each section begins with beginner-level problems, such as how to justify text. The section then gets into mid-level problems, such as CSS rollovers and various uses of background images. Finally, each category will tackle big-boy problems, like how to make a CSS-based splash screen that converts to main content, creating variable-length folder tabbed menu items, and centering fixed-width items in a variable-width area. I feel like I have a fairly good grasp of CSS - I do almost all my pages in Strict XHTML and use CSS for my layout, formatting, the works, and I still learned plenty from this book. If nothing else, it will give you other ideas on how to solve common problems. One unexpected value of this book were all the hacks and tricks. As many developers know that peruse various web development blogs, websites, and mailing lists - there are scads of CSS tips, tricks, hacks, and workarounds posted out there, but finding the one you need when you need it can be a challenge. This book contains all the main ones, dealing with Fahrner Image Replacement and its alternatives, CSS "Sliding Doors," various box-model hacks to deal with Internet Explorer, Netscape 4 hacks and reminders, etc. It's like someone took all the standard "fixes" for common CSS issues from all the blogs, websites, and mailing lists and put them in this book. For me, that was worth the price of admission. I'm not always this laudatory about all tech books. In fact, I'm reading a CSS book right now that has loads of problems. The CSS Cookbook, however, is one I would recommend without reservation or a single "yeah,

Find the complete answer and instructions fast

If you do any programming at all you soon learn of the immense value of programming cookbooks. This particular one came at a good time for me as I was trying to figure out how to create a particular effect for a web page and knew that it could be done with a cascading style sheet. A quick turn to the correct page and the code was right there along with an explanation of how it works. Twenty minutes later it was completely coded and working correctly. The author lists many common problems and for each of them provides a problem definition, a solution, and a discussion. For many of the problems the author also includes a "See Also" section that points you to further reading. With so many problems and solutions it is important to organize them in a way so they can be located quickly. To achieve this goal the book is divided into ten distinct sections. These sections are: Web Typography, Page Elements, Links and Navigation, Lists, Forms, Tables, Page Layouts, Print, Hacks and Workarounds, and Designing with CSS. A top quality cookbook title from O'Reilly Media, CSS Cookbook is a highly recommended read for anyone working with web pages and cascading style sheets.

Must have for CSS developers

This book can save you a lot of pain in developing CSS on multiple browsers. There is a lot of detail in the recipes on where the browser rendering quirks are and how to create CSS that works on all browsers. That being said, this is not a book for CSS or HTML beginners. You need to understand the basic mechanics of the syntax and preferably have some experience with CSS before you pick this book up. This is a book for those that have worked with CSS and been stung either by browser incompatibilities or the inability to find the right CSS syntax for tricky jobs. Non-Javascript menus, the box model hack, three column CSS layouts, hanging list indents, it's all in here. The great part about the cookbook series is that it not only shows you how to fix the problem in front of you, it also has enough discussion to get you around related issues and maybe teach you a thing or to. I highly recommend this book to any serious CSS user.

This is a very good, practical guide for putting CSS to use

O'Reilly's other books on CSS tend to be more for reference and learning, but this book, by Christopher Schmitt, contains good, practical advice for putting CSS to use. And as a bonus, this book covers the brand-new CSS 2.1 conventions. Like other "Cookbook" tech books, there are plenty of real-world cases and blocks of code that designers and developers can use or adapt in their own situations. There are plenty of "Hello World" examples that will be useful to those new to CSS, but there is some advanced material, too, for those at intermediate levels looking to spread their wings a bit. This volume bookends quite nicely with the "Eric Meyer on CSS" books.