Designing CSS Web Pages

by Christopher Schmitt

Includes examples and deconstruction's to aid in understanding CSS and its application. This book aims to encourage web designers to look at the perceived limitations of the web as a new challenge to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0735712638
• ISBN13: 9780735712638
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: New Riders Publishing
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.3" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

a lot more than CSS

Christopher Schmitt has taken it upon himself to write a book that not only covers CSS, but the idea of designing websites with sanity in mind. Throughout the book, Schmitt distinguishes between good and bad things to do while you're designing a website. He talks a lot about what clients expect and that kind of things, something teachers need to go over more. He also provides coding for both CSS and Javascript, along with touching on print, audio, and more forms of media CSS can be utilized for. I read this book from cover to cover without becoming bored; Schmitt has found a way to approach a technical subject and make it interesting, as opposed to most tech books which are just straight code and very drull. I definitely recommend this for any web designer, beginning or advanced.

The ideal choice for visual designers

I'm a graphic designer and have gathered some solid background in web design through the years.The moment I saw Christopher's tutorial "Web Page Reconstruction with CSS" [the website] on Digital Web Magazine mentioning the upcoming book, I immediately knew that this was the book for me.It turned out to be an eye-opening experience starting with the structured content and moving towards the "styled" end result purely with the implementation of css. I have looked at several other books on css and while many of them provided valuable in-depth knowledge none of them created a spark for me like "Designing CSS Web Pages" did. Like no other author Christopher shows in simple examples how CSS can be used to actually work on the look of pages, accompanied by the underlying code. That makes it the perfect companion for the visual designers out there.Even the so-called appendix has a lot to offer: the 50 formatting exercises show you how to create variations of a headline followed by a paragraph: headlines separated by various line styles, headlines left-, right- and centre-aligned, headlines residing in their own, coloured box tucked into the text block, headlines spiced up by background images... you name it!I admit, as others have mentioned, that some chapters require an understanding of other, related techniques like JavaScript, so the book would not seem an ideal choice for beginners. However the examples are clearly presented to be as comprehensive as possible and certainly sparked my interest to deepen my knowledge where it was lacking.For those that have a basic background the book opens up a bunch of new possibilities - it really is that good.

A Great Place to Start

As a person with 8 years of web design experience, I know all too well that things are constantly changing. The vast majority of those years were spent creating table-based layouts. I needed something to jump start me and help me make the switch from table-based to CSS layouts. This book served as the perfect tool.In reading other reviews, where people complained about errors, I didn't run into this problem. I guess that's because of the way I use books. I simply took the code that Mr. Schmitt has in the book, downloaded the great examples on the book's site, and played with the code enough to gain a solid understanding of the principles that he presented.Coupling the book's topics with other info readily available on the web and via CSS mailing lists, creating sites with CSS has been (for the most part) a pain-free experience. My advice? I definitely recommend this book. Just take it with a grain of salt (like any other book or product) and do all you can to get the most out of it. The author definitely knows his stuff, so overall, you can't go wrong.

This is a good book, but not for everyone.

In terms of quality, I'd rate this book as high as anything from Glasshaus, most prominently "Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation". This book covers a lot of the same ground as the Glasshaus title but I found it particularly useful due to its slightly more graphic design bent. The code samples in the book are not merely basic utility layouts (2 columns, 3 columns, vertical centering etc), but more aesthetically 'designed' examples of using CSS -- a feature clearly missing in a lot of books aimed at the 'web developer' community. I'd venture to say I am not one of those to get so enamoured with the technology itself that they fail to see it as a handy means to an end. I really value Schmitt's efforts in this sense. Again we get the 'separating content from design' jazz, fair enough, but then the author takes a slightly different direction choosing to show how CSS can be linked to other technologies such as JavaScript and the not-so-common PNG and SVG graphics file formats. PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is partly supported by most modern browsers and offers many advantages over the GIF format. SVG (Scaleable Vector Graphics) is similar to Flash, but can be scripted directly from JavaScript on the page. This may or may not be useful to some of you. There are many CSS techniques in the W3C specifications that are poorly, inconsistently, or not supported at all, in even the latest browsers. As a practising designer, and not just an academic, Christopher is only too happy to point out the limitations of browsers and explains some of the many pitfalls that await the unwary if you try to push the envelope too far. The projects, again downloadable from the publisher's Web site, focus on publishing - in business, personal and 'underground' styles. The typography is a lot fancier than any other book I've seen and the attention to detail, even for 'web' typography, is highly commendable. An earlier review on this website said this book is not well technically edited. I am not sure why that was said, but I work with Opera 6 (and 7 beta), Mozilla 0.9 and above, netscape 6 and above and IE 4 and above. All samples I have tried have impressed me. In sum, if you want to separate your content from design and give your 'styles' some, er, style, AND if you are fairly familiar with the basic CSS lingo (i.e., you dont need to know box models or glish but should understand what a link rel is), then this is probably a very useful book for you. If you are looking for a very basic introduction to CSS, I'd strongly recommend the Glasshaus book. If you are serious about your work, get both.

DHTML`ers Bible.

Firstly, I loved this book. Very well written!As a Web Developer who specialises in writing DHTML based apps, I needed a resource that could provide me with industry raw tips to help making my CSS development that much more solid.I found the use of interviews with some of the pioneers in the web development industry to be well worth the purchase, as its great to see what the people who invent / author allot of the techniques we use day in day out feel on the subject.Great book, a must for developers and should be regarded as one of those "bible" books we place on bookshelves above our workstations!GREAT WORK CHRISOPHER!