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Binding:	Paperback
EAN:	9780596802448
Label:	O'Reilly Media
Feature:	ISBN13: 9780596802448 Condition: New Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media
Studio:	O'Reilly Media

Editorial Reviews

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 second edition gives you up-to-the-minute pro techniques. You'll learn how to:

Create HTML that's simpler, uses less code, is search-engine friendly, and works well with CSS
Style text by changing fonts, colors, font sizes, and adding borders
Turn simple HTML links into complex and attractive navigation bars -- complete with rollover effects
Create effective photo galleries and special effects, including drop shadows
Get up to speed on CSS 3 properties that work in the latest browser versions
Build complex layouts using CSS, including multi-column designs
Style web pages for printing

With CSS: The Missing Manual, Second Edition, you'll find all-new online tutorial pages, expanded CSS 3 coverage, and broad support for Firebox, Safari, and other major web browsers, including Internet Explorer 8. Learn how to use CSS effectively to build new websites, or refurbish old sites that are due for an upgrade.

Customer Reviews

This wonderful, supurb book, "CSS: The Missing Manual (Fully revised 2nd edition", has set the bar high for the standard of excellence as regards teaching CSS. I started trying to learn CSS a long time ago but due to the poor quality of the books on the subject, I never "got it". Tragically, I first tried to learn css from the ridiculously terse and totally incomprehensible book, "CSS Pocket Reference (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly))". I next erred on the other extreme by purchasing the insanely meandering, needlessly padded, and pointlessly "funny" book, "Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML"

I really cannot say enough good things about "CSS: The Missing Manual (Fully revised 2nd edition". The author is so distinguished it's unbelievable. Not only can he really, really teach well-- in addition he really, really knows CSS inside and out.

At the end of each chapter he has a tutorial. After downloading all the code from the book's website, I do the tutorials using FireFox with the "FireBug" add-on enabled. "FireBug" is fantastic as a learning tool. It lets you easily change CSS operands and instantly see the effect. Another great FireFox plugin is "ColorZilla"-- it's "eyedropper" shows the RGB values of colors on the web page when you hover or click on a color. It's very validating to see "ColorZilla" display the exact same RGB color value that you can see via "FireBug" is the color setting for that element. Another useful plugin is "CodeBurner for Firebug" because it extends "FireBug" with reference material for CSS and HTML. Also, I find it very helpful to look at the source code of the book's downloaded tutorials via "jEdit", a free text editor which the book recommends. "jEdit" does a fantastic job of showing html and CSS in color, which makes it much easier to comprehend the CSS while doing the book's tutorials. The only shortcoming of "jEdit" is that it is a little clumsy to switch between edit windows. So, I use a 2nd text editor called "NotePad++" to show the "after version of the tutorial", and use "jEdit" to show the "before version of the tutorial". That way I can easily copy/paste the source code snippets as I go through the tutorial.

Thanks to this great book, "CSS: The Missing Manual (Fully revised 2nd edition", I finally at long last, feel confident of my CSS skills.

I think the book is great. I don't want to review it in detail here because others have done a great job of this already. It's easy enough for the beginner and detailed enough for the seasoned CSS coder to use it as a reference.

I would like to address the Kindle formatting of the book. It leaves something to be desired. I only mention this because until you get used to the poor formatting, it can be a little difficult to read on the Kindle. Here's an example from the introduction of the Kindle edition itself:

...
you'll learn about the basics of CSS. In
Chapter 1
, you'll get right to work creating a
...

The Kindle edition is FILLED with this kind of formatting. The book is a great buy. Go ahead and get it. Just be aware that the Kindle version isn't well formatted. Not sure if this is Amazon's fault or the publishers. Hopefully one or both of them will fix this. It mars an otherwise excellent book.

When I bought the book, I knew what I needed to know and what I could expect as far as my knowledge of building websites reached. I'm not an expert, but certainly not a beginner.

I started my first website in 1997 and only started daring to use CSS in 2005 - eight years later. At that time I began to read books by Mulder (yes, one of the first) and later Cederholm, Meyer, Clark, Zeldman and found information on CSS on the internet. I learned some things I needed to know and the more I read, the more I understood what I didn't know. I'm not criticizing these books, but "CSS: The Missing Manual" explains backgrounds, which the other ones lacked - for me that is. I'm still reading it and not from front to back, but back and forth, and learning more than before. There's more about CSS3 in this book also, presented in a way that I understand.

This is not a book for the beginner, who still has to learn about HTML (but then... who's going to buy a book on CSS if he doesn't understand HTML?); but it is also not a book which can only be understood by the experienced.

There is certainly no shortage of books about CSS. For more than a decade now, HTML, CSS and JavaScript have been the core client-side technologies required of competent website authors. Sure, many people get by using WYSIWYG editors (e.g., Dreamweaver) and/or a CMS (Drupal, Joomla, yui, etc.) to produce websites. But, for true design competence and flexibility, serious professionals need to master these three "languages." Typically, one learns (X)HTML first, followed by CSS and then JavaScript, in that order. At least that has been my path.

Over the last decade or so, as the benefits of the separation of structure and presentation have been accepted by the design community, CSS has become increasingly important. HTML documents that just a few years ago would have been implemented with nested tables and spacer gifs in the HTML markup now have their presentational aspects created in separate CSS files. Almost everybody acknowledges that is a good thing, and I agree. Unfortunately, many very good books on CSS over the last decade (and still on the market) devote a lot of space trying to convince developers WHY CSS styling is preferable to the old-time methods, thus minimizing the pages they can devote to HOW one actually uses CSS. There was clearly a need for that emphasis in the past, but let me suggest that the war has been won and it's time to move on.

This second edition of McFarland's book is, everything considered, the best book I've yet read on CSS, and I've read quite a few. At over 500 pages, it is thorough in its coverage and doesn't waste space rehashing the styling wars that have dominated the literature of the last decade. Explanations of topics are cogent and well illustrated. In addition to a copious amount of downloadable code examples, the author includes many links to online sources for further exploration of important topics. Browser incompatibilities are well covered and hacks provided. I especially thought the explanations on using CSS for layout tasks (e.g., divs, floats, relative and absolute positioning) were unusually clear and easy to understand.

For those who already are reasonably familiar with (X)HTML and looking for a good guide to the world of CSS, it's hard for me to imagine a better book. It wasn't the book I used to first tackle CSS but, in retrospect, I wish it had been!

I was a total beginner regarding CSS. I made a few websites using GoLive, never using CSS, and never getting into any code, including html. But if you're making websites today, you need to use CSS (and basic html, which is also covered, and very easy to learn). So I bit the bullet and started reading this book from page 1, never moving on to a new section until I was sure I understood the basics of what he was covering. The thing is, McFarland explains it all very clearly. When I was done with the book, I knew the basics of CSS! That blew my mind. My friends think I'm a genius when I build web pages for them, but little do they know how simple it is in essence. I refer to this book on occasion. It really is a manual as nobody can read the book and memorize every aspect of CSS. But after reading it and gleaning the essence of it, it is easy to refer to the book and brush up on details. I very highly recommend this book. An understanding of CSS will never be handed to you on a silver platter, or by swallowing the blue pill. You must put your mind to the grind and this is the book to do it with.

This is an excellent book. In conjunction with Elizabeth Castro's HTML book this can help you learn web programming. But I tried to use this with dual monitors on a macbook pro and there are 3 problems.
1. Kindle keeps crashing when I flip between the book and the web editing software I am using to do the very well written examples.
2. Kindle does not parse the text correctly so sometimes when there is a parenthesis ")". it puts in a line feed.
3. In the kindle it is difficult to flip to the back of the book and see the appendix and other references.

I had hoped to use this as an easy to carry reference, but ended up ordering the hardcopy book as well. Oh well, so much for portability.

I spent too many days trying to learn CSS using free tutorials on the Internet and was getting nowhere fast.

I spent a lot of time at w3schools but I found that I still wasn't "getting it".

This book pulls all the concepts together very nicely. By following the tutorials the reader can see, step-by-step, how a few simple CSS statements can turn a drab web page into something exciting. The explanations are clearly laid out. Many times I went "Ohh, that's how they do it -- I got it now."

The writing style flows smoothly and I found it easy to read and understand.

There are errors in the book but they're all listed on a web page which the author comments upon.

I'm now on chapter 6 and I'm made a lot more progress than the near worthless free on-line tutorials. You get what you pay for.

Use w3schools CSS area for reference but if you want to really learn CSS, then you have to get this book.

I highly recommend this book.

Here's my situation. I'm a professional technical writer who uses a single-sourcing tool called MadCap Flare to write, format, and produce content for printed manuals and online help systems. Flare itself isn't so hard to use. But it relies completely on CSS to format its output. For many years now, I've been using style sheets (in Word and FrameMaker), but I've only had a rudimentary knowledge of CSS. My use of Flare mandated that I get up to speed with CSS, otherwise I'd never be able to control Flare's output to the degree that I needed to.

To start out, I did a couple of web tutorials on CSS. Then I read Hakon Wium Lie's book, which is a terrific reference resource, but not the best "learning" book. Nor does it clearly illustrate the full potential of CSS (which is ironic, since Lie helped define CSS specification). But it did get me moving down the right path and improve my Flare output. Wanting more, I read a couple of other books. But they were geared more toward advanced techniques for users who already understand CSS's capabilities. I needed to step back a bit and find the right book directed at intermediate users. Based on the Amazon reader reviews, I decided to give McFarland's CSS: The Missing Manual a try. And I'm really glad I did.

For beginners, McFarland assumes you know a little bit of HTML, but that's about all. He guides you through CSS and its awesome capabilities with an easy, conversational writing style and clear examples that explain the interaction between CSS and HTML. The book teaches you gradually, and in a very logical order. You are always building on stuff you already learned in earlier chapters. Best of all, he provides tutorials so you can apply your new knowledge right away with practical, real-world examples. He also explains how to minimize your CSS markup to get the most versatility out of the last amount of code. His chapters on floating elements, managing divisions, and multiple columns is worth the price of the book, alone. He also provides common fixes so your CSS works with quirky web browsers (IE6, etc.). He also has a chapter dedicated to managing print output, so your web pages print nicely, which is invaluable to us who manage single-source content for multiple output formats. Upon finishing this book, I was able to completely overhaul and streamline my CSS files, and get much better results from my print and online output.

If you are a beginner with CSS, start here. I promise you, this book will get you up to speed quickly. If you are an intermediate user, this book is a great refresher, and it covers all of the same techniques I found in books for advanced users, but with examples and tutorials that are much easier to follow. In short, this book's content is clear, thorough, and straightforward. Isn't that what you want when you are trying to learn something new?

CSS is very, very cool. And this book is a superb learning guide that will help you realize its full potential. If you are a tech writer or a web designer, this book deserves a place on your shelf.

And *understand* is the operative word here, because 'CSS The Missing Manual' explains the ins and outs of CSS to make sure you not only know what to do, but why you do it. Too many books sadly leave the important 'why' part out, luckily this isn't the case. I've built several websites in the early 00's using GoLive, using the old school hacks like transparent pixels and such. It's been years since I had to do any web development, I was too busy being a designer, but recent circumstances forced me back to web development. I started out using the old techniques I understood before until someone asked me if I was using CSS (which I wasn't) so I decided at that moment I needed to figure out what it even was. One month later and after reading this book, I'm practically an expert. Things have come so very far in the 8 years since I designed a large scale web project (hooray!). The book is really easy to comprehend, its explained so well, you do NOT have to be a programmer to understand it all. This book is likely not for casual users though, but if you are serious about understanding CSS and want to become proficient in it quickly, this the *THE* book to get, my highest recommendation.

Well written, interesting and informative. Very pleased with this purchase. Is well teamed with "Javascript the missing manual" by the same author

This book has a great balance of instruction, and tutorials that make real-world sense. If you buy this book, and think skipping the tutorials will allow you to learn faster, you might re-think that.

The tutorials are very well thought out, and include line-by-line, and step-by-step instructions. Unlike "beginner" books, the code does quite a lot. When you download the "missing manual CD", you will be able to check your work against the finished files. What a great help!

Pulling the basic concepts of ID, Class, Tags together allows you to really move forward in your design skills, especially moving from a "photoshop" layout to a well designed CSS web page.

I had been tinkering with CSS for several months before getting serious. Once I heard you can position an entire website using CSS, I wanted in. This book doesn't leave too many stones unturned, regarding the different CSS functions.

I ran through this book in roughly two weeks. The tutorials at the end of each chapter are excellent and essential to soaking up different commands (style properties). CSS has so many different properties and functions, its had to memorize all of them. Working through the tutorials (even if you already understand the concepts) greatly helps in memorizing a lot of the major functions you'll need to know.

I've created three websites since reading this book, and have only referenced back to it two or three times. If you read through it in its entirety, it will stick with you! Its a great book that's easy to read. I highly recommend it to anyone serious about learning CSS.

I am currently in an internet technologies class that is devoted to the creation of websites using HTML, XHTML, Javascript, and CSS. However, the text that our instructor had us buy for the class was woefully short on all sorts of materials, so I decided to expand my knowledge on my own time. I purchased this book to gain a better understanding of CSS and to learn how to properly use it and many of the things possible with CSS. This book should be required reading for the course I am currently in.... it is fantastic. SEE BELOW:

Pros;
-Easy to read and understand
-Covers nearly everything (not everything, but if you can't do what you want with what this resource provides then you probably do not want to use CSS to begin with)
-Provides links/references to outside materials (from other authors and developers)
-Easy to download the tutorial files from the website (just need to unzip them)
-Provides solutions to problems certain browsers (most notably IE 6 and IE 7) have with CSS
-Illustrated examples and Tutorials

Cons;
-I had some difficulty getting a few of the tutorial pages to do what the book wanted, even though I copied the coding exactly. When I created a different page and used my own resources to work through the examples I had no problem though. Honesty, I dunno what is up with that since it only happened once or twice.
-A few typos
-No comprehensive table of HTML/CSS tags/attributes<-- Set up in Appendix style in the back of the book-- it works since it provides detailed info on each CSS property, but something for quick reference would be great
-Better diagrams of a some concepts would have gone along way too (particularly when talking about descendant and sibling selectors)

Overall:
It's over 400 pages, BUT, it is extremely easy to read an understand ( I already am over halfway through the book). If you are serious about learning CSS and are in the market for a great resource and a solid foundation... BUY THIS BOOK. Easily may be the best $23 you will spend on Amazon... and the payoff is worth it

This is great book for learning about CSS and web design. I am on Chapter 7 right feeling confident with CSS some concepts I never understood are making sense. (I am more of cut and paste CSS guy and wanted to understand what I am copying). The chapters don't take more than hour each for people with some knowledge of HTML and CSS. I never thought I will be upto speed so quickly.
Hats off to the author, I have to design a simple three column layout web-site and was looking for CSS layouts on internet but half-way through the book I have solid idea of the design I have to make.
This is a book I will recommend to my friends and keep with me for reinforcing concepts when needed.

I've only hit the seventh chapter so far, but this is hands down the best book for CSS I've ever checked out. Very in depth knowledge of the workings of CSS and how it applies to web development. There's a whole chapter devoted to the Box Model alone! Excellent read for learning book as well as a great reference tool.

There are many good CSS books out there but what really sets the great ones apart are things like organization, clarity and the quality and simplicity of the how-to examples. I've read through dozens of technical how-to books, on topics ranging from CSS to Photoshop and Motion Graphics, but web technologies are often the most difficult to convey and explain succinctly and in context.

Everything is very abstract in the world of web code; it's no small task to write a truly excellent reference book that keeps you engaged and informed as a reader, rather than bombarding you with white-paper speak or endless, overly complex examples. This book succeeds on all of the counts noted earlier. It's very easy to find exactly the types of CSS elements you need to learn about, and then quickly discover how they work. The time between reading and implementing is short. The examples are very clearly illustrated and the author's style and ability to explain things in the right order and with the right amount of detail, make this book a must-have CSS reference. Example: it took me all of 10 minutes to discover (again) how to build my own navbar elements with this book, including styling and page flow considerations. With previous books -even good ones- I'd often sit there scratching my head, turning pages back and forth for a half hour before similarly complicated topics made sense.

I've probably read through a dozen popular CSS titles. I own three. One from Eric Meyer (the classic O'Reilly title - what else?), a copy of "CSS: Separating Content from Presentation" and now this book. This will be my go-to reference anytime I've forgotten a specific technique or guideline. As someone who works in the digital arts, I often go several months between code updates for my site and so having a truly comprehensive but efficient reference is a must to shake out the cobwebs. This is that book. Enjoy.

My review is of only the Kindle version of CSS: The Missing Manual. This book is an extremenly useful resource for learning and applying CSS. However, the book does not lend itself to the Kindle because of the numerous side-boxes and syntax of example code that get mangled on the Kindle. I bought the Kindle version, gave up trying to understand it, and ordered the paperback version. I wouldn't have spent the extra dough if I didn't think it is a great book, but it is just not suitable for the Kindle environment as are novels an other similar more linear texts. Wish I could get the money back that I spent on the Kindle version. I enjoy reading most books on my Kindle but will never again buy this type of book for it.

I purchased CSS: The Missing Manual to get back up to speed on web design. The website we designed for our small biz about 5 years ago is all tables and slices and generally not great in terms of search rank. This series has been very helpful with our Filemaker challenges so I was happy to see this title. Like the others, it's easy to sit and read through, but also fairly technical so I can jump to a specific topic and get just what is needed at that moment. Only halfway through the book and we have just what we need from our menu pages at about 10% of the code. Highly recommend this book.

I bought this book when i was putting together my rudimentary website last year. At the time, I used it as a reference book, flipping to the keyword index and then the relevant text as needed. I am now reading through the chapters and doing the tutorials and I couldn't be more pleased, it's clear and easy to understand and the tutorials drive the points home. As I've been doing the tutorials, I've been going back to my web-pages and updating them to make them more organized and definitely more snazzy. The companion website is also very informative. Best money I've ever spent on a source-book/guide. Thanks

I knew nothing about to create CSS. This book has been a tremendous help. It is written so anyone can understand what is being said and the examples are great. I would highly recommend this book to anyone just starting out and I really believe it would benefit those already experienced.

Although I've been programming web pages since 1995, I needed a guide to boost my CSS skills with advanced layouts and the new options that CSS can offer these days. After discarding several incomprehensible guides, I found this one to offer the perfect combination of clear explanation and sufficiently advanced concepts to be useful. Definitely a great guide and a keeper.

This book answers all those little pesky questions that you know there is an easy way to accomplish, yet you look forever to figure it out.
Wish I had this book when I was learning CSS as it would have saved me untold hours learning everything the hard way.

It also is a GREAT reference manual when you just want to remember how it is you do 'that".

Using the book with Dreamweaver CS5. The tutorials are very good. I particularly the chapters on inheritance and specificity. They cleared up some head scratchers I've had when a page didn't do what I expected it to do. Book is A+ for me.

The whole series of "The Missing Manual" are, in my opinion, the best books on their subject. Easy to follow and addresses the major points. Not a reference manual, however. This is much more informative.

This book was a really great read - it wasn't too technical and it really outlined basic technique and advanced concepts for a person who may have never had CSS experience before - or for someone who needed to brush up. I loved the fact that they pointed out and explained how to fix a lot of the IE bugs and the tricks that fix them (it's easy to go to one source to solve those type of problems rather than searching each individual one online).

I picked up this book after reading the reviews on here and flipping through a copy at my local store. It is well suited for someone who has a basic understanding of HTML. It is SO EASY TO READ and not all boring or complex like other books I've tried to read. And each chapter ends with a tutorial that helps reinforce the text you just read. The info is easily digestible and I highly recommend it. I look forward to reading other topics in this series.

I discovered the Missing Manual series of books a number of years ago and have now made them a standard purchase whenever I purchase new software. They are all helpful, easy to read, and easy to understand.

I began designing web sites over 10 years ago when I planned my own ([...]). Since then I've worked on a couple others, and have always used Microsoft FrontPage. Several years ago I became aware of a new method of designing web sites that involved CSS. At the time, I didn't need it because FrontPage took care of all of my needs.

However, I have now switched to a macbook and have migrated everything off of Windows with the exception of FrontPage. In my search for a new web site design tool, I came across Dreamweaver. While searching for a Missing Manual for Dreamweaver CS5, I ran across CSS The Missing Manual.

I love reading, and frequently read magazines, fiction, biographies, and, yes, manuals. With most Missing Manuals, I search the Contents or Index for what I need, read, and go on about my business. However, since CSS is completely new to me, I decided to start reading CSS The Missing Manual from page xiii. I'm having troubles putting this book down!

The book is well organized into five parts, including the appendices. Part 1 gives you the basics of CSS, and quite frankly, you could easily begin working on basic styling without reading any farther, but you'd be missing a lot. Part 2 begins the detail of various components of CSS, while Part 3 talks about page layout, and part 4 covers some advanced CSS techniques. Part 5 is the appendices.

Every chapter includes CSS examples, multiple diagrams, references to outside resources, and ends with a multi-page tutorial with step-by-step instructions to accomplish the chapter's topics. Chapter 7 includes a wonderful diagram depicting the differences between margins, borders, padding, and content. There are even references to later portions of the book where you can read more detail about topics that are being introduced earlier in the book. A common thread is here's enough to get you started, and then later, if you're interested, here's a lot more detail on how to use this particular CSS component.

I use yellow stickies (aka post-it notes) to mark points in books that I feel will be important reference points for me. This book is plastered with yellow stickies!

I would highly recommend this book to both the beginner and the experienced. I truly believe everyone interested in CSS can find something valuable in CSS The Missing Manual.

This is an awesome book It's very step by step and really makes you pick up the concept very fast.

I started with very little, almost no, knowledge of CSS and am now writing code almost from scratch (still using the book as a cheat sheet) and am extremely happy with it so far.

I am only half way through and already feel like I've learned most of what I got the book for. Looking forward to finishing it and really feeling accomplished.

The best book of this type I've ever read.

I have been dabbling with web design for several years, mainly just playing around with web pages for personal use and learning experience. I bought this book after it was recommended by a coworker, while working on a web page for a friends business. In a weeks spare time I was able to completely redo the website using modern CSS coding and include features in simple CSS that I use to think was only possible through Java Script.
The examples are very well presented, and enable you to immediately apply the new knowledge to web pages. It starts off with the basics, that any beginner would need, I even learned a few things from this part. The more complex examples focus around, you've seen this here's how you do it approach. When first starting to work through some examples, I thought this might be a problem in that they may stifle creativity getting you to think along the authors path instead of your own. But after working through several I found myself combining functions used to create completely different effects. The examples do a great job of explaining how each part of an overall example interacts with the other parts, allowing you to easily adapt and combine the different parts one example to another and create a totally different look.

Usually I never judge a book by its cover (literally), but since Thursday (And today is monday, so counting, that would be 5 days including Thursday and today) this book has grab me entirely, Im at the 9th chapter and have learned a lot. Im a newbie in web design, and had no clue about HTML (I know the book says you should not read it if you dont know HTML) and still it is so well explained that I know understand a little bit of HTML and CSS to make them work together. This is a Super Book!!! I have gotten css files from the internet and now I understand what they do!!, and finally when I finish reading it, I will make my own CSS aplying all of the Techniques shown here.

Buy this book.

Amazing text book, made my professional web authoring much better and much easier to maintain the pages built. Second edition is more useful than the 1st edition and the info is more current. Anyone who wants to use (and they should use) CSS needs to go through this book's tutorials. The tutorials are excellent.

Great book...I guess. I got it through Kindle and though The Missing Manual is great, I would not recommend getting it through the Kindle. I will probably end up buying the paper version.

This is a very good introductory book for CSS, but lots of its figures are not necessary and occupy too much space for the book. Most of the figures in the book can be removed without affecting readers' learning experience. The point of using figures should be to make concepts clear, but the figures in this book often do not achieve this goal.There are tons of "notes" in this book. Some of them are helpful but some of them are interruption of reading flow. Same thing applies to the boxes.All in all, this book provides lots of information, but the organization is poor.

As an IT pro, but website/CSS novice, I highly recommend this book. The author makes breaks down a difficult subject (CSS), making it accessible for any dedicated reader. Some pages must be read 2x or 3x, but the exercises provide the student with the necessary experience for progressing through each successive chapter. This book does not cut the "chaff" and take you straight to creating web pages, but I wouldn't recommend that approach to CSS web design anyways. A comprehensive understanding of the subject is necessary to effectively create the site of your dreams. This book, so far (just finished chapter 7), delivers on that.

I didn't think I would find a CSS book that I liked better than Eric Meyer's, but this one appears to have reached or surpassed that bar. This book is ideal for someone who is already familiar with CSS syntax but isn't yet clear on how best to use CSS in actual web page design. I've been using CSS to build web pages for over 5 years and still learned dozens of new (at least to me) and interesting techniques. The book is well written and concepts are clearly exclaimed. Simply a superb technical book in every way. One caveat: I completely passed over the tutorials, finding this to be mostly filler for anyone who's already been using CSS.

this book has some good in dept details of the function of css and the tags that may be used. but if youre unfamiliar with syntax and general knowledge of page layout, it might be difficult to understand what the writer is referring to. and it lacks graphic representation of each example they refer to. there is free content that you can download online that is mentioned at the end of the book. might be worth looking at if youre familiar with other forms of coding and want to go into a more graphic approach to building web pages.

I recently purchased this book and it has proved to be an invaluable resource to working with CSS in my project. The only thing I haven't found are some code examples... it would be nice to have sample pages illustrating some key concepts.

CSS: The Missing Manual is a great resource for building a basic working knowledge of CSS and its uses in web design. In addition to the information contained between its two covers, CSS: The Missing Manual points to a variety of helpful resources (both online and in print). Understanding CSS requires basic understanding of HTML, but it you're new to web design or just rusty, the book provides links to online tutorials to make sure everyone is on the same page. One of the best things about this book is the author's approachable tone and sense of humor. Unlike some other technical books I've read, CSS: The Missing Manual makes learning something potentially difficult like web design seem within reach and fun even.

Each chapter begins with a summary of the concept, for example, formatting text in CSS, and then breaks down various ways to format text (selecting an appropriate font, coloring text, changing font size, etc.). If there are multiple ways of writing the code in CSS, the book goes through each method (indicating font size in pixels, keywords, percentages, or ems). Sidebars sprinkled throughout the text provide best practices, important considerations, and FAQs. There are numerous clearly labeled instructional graphics in each chapter illustrate the result of a particular piece of CSS code. This made it easy for me to make a clear connection between the concepts being discussed and how those would translate to the screen. Finally, each chapter ends with a thorough tutorial. As the tutorial walks through the process, it explains why key design choices were made. In fact, the tutorials often require the learner to input a certain bit of CSS code, look at it in a web browser to see why the result isn't optimal, and then go in and tweak the code for a better result. When necessary, the tutorials also provided instruction to work around IE 6.0's glitches, which I found particularly helpful.

Overall, this was a great book to get started in CSS. I walked away feeling confident that I can use CSS style sheets to create web pages. And, with its valuable appendices and web resources, CSS: The Missing Manual is sure to become an often-used desk reference.

I've been searching for a book like this for quite some time now. So many CSS books just teach you the language of CSS and send you on your way. THIS book walks you through the situations where you'd actually apply the CSS. There's lessons on making page navigation, page layout, a stylesheet for printing, and more. Browser bugs, common mistakes, and advice are offered along the way.

This book is easy to comprehend and explains everything very well. I am not a beginner to CSS so I can't speak for that type of reader, but this book is ideal for those with basic CSS knowlege that are looking for some guidance and solutions.

The best CSS book I'm come across!

I wish this book was out alot sooner! It was definitely worth the wait. I've been through so many different CSS books (sitepoint, wrox, oreilly) and just find this book very helpful. It's organized in a logical sequence so that each chapter builds on each other. I carry this book with me all the time. For those who are looking for a clearer explanation of CSS and how it's used, then this book is for you!

This book was a requirement for my web design class. It arrived in perfect condition and in a timely manner. Would recommend it to any beginner in the web design field.

Apart from the author's not understanding the difference between HTML and XHTML (which doesn't matter in so far as CSS is concerned) and that they leave out one whole section of CSS 2.1 that is useful for doing some page layouts (but which don't work in IE7), this book does a very good job of being all that a beginner through intermediate level CSS writer needs to know. With the introduction to CSS chapters at the front of the book, the advanced CSS chapters in the middle of the book, and the reference secion at the back, this book serves as the ideal book for anyone who doesn't want or need more than one book on CSS.

All aspects of CSS 2.1 with the exception of tables are covered in sufficient detail in this book to give the reader sufficient knowledge to achieve the desired results. The book even covers some of the sections of CSS 3 that some browsers are now just stating to support. It is a little surprising that part of the still draft CSS 3 standard is covered toward the end of the book though when one whole section of CSS 2.1 has been left out. With a chapter each to CSS floats for layout and CSS positioning for layout there really ought to have been one more chapter covering CSS tables for layout (I guess you really need SitePoint's "Everything You Know About CSS is Wrong" to supply section of CSS 2.1 missing from the missing manual).

Apart from completely leaving out one of the three ways to do page layout with CSS the book does cover all other aspects of CSS. Given that Internet Explorer 7 and earlier don't support using tables I could understand the omission except that some CSS 3 is covered in the book and IE7 and earlier don't understand that either and the CSS 3 that is covered is far further away from being properly supported by all browsers than the missing CSS 2.1 comm ands are (since the latest versions of all browsers already understand the missing CSS 2.1 commands whereas not all current browsers support the CSS3 commands that the book covers).

A must have for anyone wanting to do professional website design. This book is the most complete and easy to understand resource available for the aspiring web artist.

The book starts pretty basic, but gives a very detailed dive into CSS. This book shows you the different hacks needed for different browsers (ugh ugh IE)! David gives some really interesting tips and sites which display the power of CSS.

I believe I'll use this book as a CSS reference for months to come.

Wanting to get into Web Design and having been a programmer I picked up a book on Ajax and PHP, but after a few pages realized there was something big that I did not know so I moved on to "JavaScript for Programmers"JavaScript for Programmers Even though the programming was not surprising it was clear there were some big holes in my knowledge. So I changed course and worked through "Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS"Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS, 2nd Edition(the Kindle Edition). This was where I needed to begin but I realized that as useful as this book was it was not comprehensive enough. My next book was "CSS: The Missing Manual" and this is exactly what I needed. The book is very thorough, well organized and comprehensive. I enjoyed working through the exercises. They were essential and kept up my interest. Every new lesson sent me back to the webpages I was working on to rewrite my code and try new enhancements.

The book is full of references to very useful web resources. I'm sure that these are all known to professionals but as a beginner I was very happy to get this information.

This book was exactly what I wanted: I needed a book that would show me the basics, expand on them and show them in a way that was actually beneficial. This book delivered in every aspect. It has anything you could possibly want and explains them in a way that makes it easy to learn and remember. The tutorials at the end of each chapter are probably the very best parts of the book. Not only does he do a great job explaining how things work, but he goes into detail in his examples to show how it works as well. Lastly, he does a superb job mentioning the cross browser compatibility issues and almost always has a workaround. Great book, glad to have it on my bookshelf!

this book really helped me. i already knew html pretty well and this just added on to my knowledge. for absolute beginners id reccoment an html book first

After taking a college-level class in web design, I bought this book to help my with a final project. I wish I'd had this book all along. It was much easier to understand and made better use of CSS than the textbook. The textbook was very heavy on HTML formatting but this book emphasized using CSS to format your HTML and greatly reduce the amount of code needed.

I couldn't recommend this book more to someone wanting to teach themselves webpage design. It won't completely replace the need for some HTML knowledge but it will make the process easier.

I really don't think the author left any stone unturned in this book. Its an excellent resource for the developers of all skill levels. I refer to this book before I google for an answer. It is absolutely amazing! I have been programming for over 15 years ,so Im no spring chicken, and out of all the programming books I have read, this by far is the best reference I've ever owned.

Note: I purchased the PDF version of this book at oreilly.com...I have it on my Mac and iPhone.

This book was recommended to me by my web design instructor and it is a wonderful book. It's written in a way that anyone can understand. The tutorials, which you can download online and follow along with in the book, are awesome. This one is a keeper!

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