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Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design (Paperback) (Paperback)
by Eric A. Meyer
| Category:
CSS, Web design, Computer & internet |
| Market price: ¥ 458.00
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¥ 448.00
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| MSL Pointer Review:
A collection of 13 redesign projects, each illustrating different aspects of CSS layout techniques and HTML, with a philosophy, a way of thinking, and a collection of ideas underneath. |
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Author: Eric A. Meyer
Publisher: New Riders Press
Pub. in: June, 2002
ISBN: 073571245X
Pages: 352
Measurements: 10.1 x 8.1 x 0.6 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01019
Other information: 1st edition
ISBN-13: 978-0735712454
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- MSL Picks -
If you were looking for someone to help you understand how to use CSS effectively in real-world projects that would be compatible across browsers, who would you go to? That one's easy - Eric Meyer - the guy web professionals call the CSS master or guru! Eric always wanted to add a third leg to the "two-legged stool" of CSS books he has written. I was fortunate enough to have the pleasure of working with Eric to make a practical project-based guide to CSS a reality.
Eric targeted this book at folks who have a pretty good knowledge of HTML and at least a basic knowledge of CSS. For those of you in that category, you'll love this book. You really get to work right along side Eric as he takes you through the progressively more advanced projects. This is one book you'll truly want to have on your desk if you want to incorporate CSS into your work!
- From quoting the publisher
Target readers:
Web designers, programmers, project managers, and anyone else creating a Web site.
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Eric A. Meyer has been working with the Web since late 1993 and is an internationally recognized expert on the subjects of HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). He is the principal consultant for Complex Spiral Consulting and lives in Cleveland, Ohio, which is a much nicer city than you've been led to believe. A graduate of and former Webmaster for Case Western Reserve University and an alumnus of the same fraternity chapter to which Donald Knuth once belonged, Eric coordinated the authoring and creation of the W3C's CSS Test Suite and has recently been acting as List Chaperone of the highly active css-discuss mailing list. Author of "Eric Meyer on CSS" (New Riders), "Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide" (O'Reilly & Associates), "CSS2.0 Programmer's Reference" (Osborne/McGraw-Hill), and the fairly well-known CSS Browser Compatibility Charts, Eric speaks at a variety of conferences on the subject of standards, CSS use, and Web design. For nine years, he was the host of "Your Father's Oldsmobile," a weekly Big Band-era radio show heard on WRUW 91.1-FM in Cleveland.
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From the publisher
There are several other books on the market that serve as in-depth technical guides or reference books for CSS. None, however, take a more hands-on approach and use practical examples to teach readers how to solve the problems they face in designing with CSS - until now. Eric Meyer provides a variety of carefully crafted projects that teach how to use CSS and why particular methods were chosen. The web site includes all of the files needed to complete the tutorials in the book. In addition, bonus information is be posted.
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Introduction
As many readers are no doubt aware, I've spent a good deal of time andenergy on the subject of CSS during the past six years. In addition to articlesand support charts and test suites, I've also written Cascading StyleSheets: The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly, 2000) and Cascading StyleSheets 2.0 Programmer's Reference (Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 2001), which tome always felt like two legs of a three-legged stool. The first leg coveredtheory in detail with the intent of educating the reader how CSS works in allits details. The second leg was meant for CSS authors who needed a referencetext to help them write clean CSS the first time and to remind them of valuenames and meanings. The missing third leg was a book that showed how CSS worksin a hands-on, practical way, preferably in full living color.
Happily, the third leg is missing no longer: Thanks to New Riders,you're holding it in your hands right now.
Should You Buy This Book?
That isn't a facetious question. As proud as I am of the work containedin these pages, I'm also keenly aware that this book is not for everyreader. So let me take a moment to describe two kinds of readers: those forwhom this book was written and those for whom it was not.
Those For Whom This Book Is Meant
You ought to find this book useful if you match one or more of the followingcriteria:
- You want a hands-on, practical guide to using CSS in real-world projects.That's exactly what this book is all about.
- You're a hands-on learner, someone who gets a lot more out ofinteractive experimenting than from just reading a book. Despite the fact thatthis is indeed a book, it's been intentionally designed to let the reader"play along at home," as it were.
- You've been meaning to increase your CSS skills for some time now,but you keep putting it off because CSS is a large, complex subject, and youdon't have a roadmap for how to get to the next level.
- You've always wanted someone to show you how to convert a typical,old-school, pure-HTML design into a blend of HTML and CSS and to explain whyit's to your advantage to do so. If that's the case, go to Project 1,"Converting an Existing Page," without another moment'sdelay.
- If asked, you would describe your HTML skill level as"intermediate" or "expert" and your CSS skill level as"basic" or "intermediate." In other words, you understandHTML fairly well and have used enough CSS to have a basic grasp of how it'swritten.
Those For Whom This Book Is Not Meant
You might not find this book to be useful if one or more of the followingdescribes you:
- You've never used or even seen CSS before. Although some basic termsare defined in the text and I've included a short glossary, the assumptionhere is that the reader knows the basics of writing CSS and is fairly proficientwith HTML authoring.
- You want to understand all of the subtleties of the theory underlying CSSand grasp the nuances of the specification. There are now many books on themarket that occupy that niche. The focus here is on demonstrating effects thatwork.
- You've only done Web design in a point-and-click editingenvironment. This book assumes that you can edit (or have edited) HTML and CSSby hand, and its narrative is based on that assumption. Its projects may beeasily reproducible in a point-and-click editor, but the book was not writtenwith such editors in mind.
- You want a book that will tell you how to write CSS that will look thesame in all browsers on all platforms, including Netscape 4.x and Explorer 3.x.See the following section, "What You Can Expect from This Book," fordetails.
- You've read my other works and hate the personal, familiar tone Itake in my writing. I promise you that my writing style has changed verylittle.
What You Can Expect From This Book
From the outset, my intent has been to write an engaging, interactive bookthat focuses on practical and interesting uses of CSS that can be deployed intoday's browsers. To do this, each project evolves from having no styles tobeing fully styled and ready for deployment on the Web. If I've done my jobwell, you should get the feeling of watching over my shoulder as I work on aproject, with me commenting on what I'm doing as I do it.
Although you can simply read the text and look at the figures to get a senseof how a project is evolving, I think the best way to work along with the bookis to have a Web browser and a text editor open as you read. That way, you canfollow along with the changes I make in the text by physically making the samechanges in your project file and seeing the changes in your own Web browser.
There is one point on which I want to be very clear: The techniques shown inthis book are generally meant for browsers whose version number is greater thanor equal to 5. If you have to design a site that looks the same in Explorer 4.xand Netscape 4.x as it does in IE6.x and NS6.x, this book is not for you. In fact, "Tricking Browsers and Hiding Styles" on the Web site spendsa good deal of time describing ways to hide CSS from version-4 browsers. Suchtechniques allow you to write CSS for modern browsers and still let the contentdisplay (albeit in a much plainer way) in older browsers. That's about asfar as this book goes to cater to the limitations of version-4 browsers,however.
Overview
In keeping with the practical, hands-on nature of this book, I'vedivided it into a series of 13 projects - each one effectively a chapter. Itis possible to skip around from project to project as the spirit moves youbecause each project was written to stand on its own as much as possible.However, the book was still written with the linear reader in mind, and if youread from front to back, you should find that the projects build on oneanother.
With a few exceptions, the projects are titled in as self-obvious a way aspossible. For example, Project 1 takes a page designed using only HTML markupand spacer GIFs and converts it to an HTML-plus-CSS design.
Projects 2 through 5 cover some fairly basic projects, from touching up apress release or an events calendar to making hyperlinks look better than theyever have before. Projects 6 and 7 increase the sophistication somewhat byfocusing on printing and the styling of form elements in more than one medium.Then, in Projects 8 through 11, the topics of discussion are positioning,integration of various styling techniques, and how to make designs look moreorganic and less boxy.
Project 12 takes a look at a powerful and potentially beautiful techniquethat isn't widely supported but can be adapted to work in the real world.In some ways, this is a look ahead to a future in which CSS support is morewidespread, but if you pick the right tools, you can flex your artistic musclestoday. All work and no play makes for a boring book, I always say.
Project 13 is the most ambitious and complex of the book: It is an attempt tore-create, as closely as possible, the visual design of this book in HTML andCSS. Just as important as the ways in which the look can be re-created are thediscussions of why certain things can't be exactly reproduced on theWeb.
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| View all 10 comments |
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-07-03 00:00>
Unlike most of the CSS books floating around out there currently, "Eric Meyer on CSS" gives you practical projects to work through, and apply CSS to, talking you through the whys and wherefores all the way. It takes you all the way from transforming an existing HTML table-based layout into a more streamlined structure using CSS, all the way up to bleeding edge design concepts that will be more and more feasible as the browsers catch up to web standards.
I would not recommend this book to someone who has absolutely no experience or knowledge of CSS (maybe check out the tutorials in your HTML editor, or look at some of the online tutorials at Webmonkey.com before diving into this book).
And, for intermediate users (you've been using stylesheets for awhile, maybe just to handle typography), I'd recommend also getting Eric Meyer's "Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide" for a more in-depth study of the CSS specs, though you can make it through most of the concepts presented here with just the information given with a little extra mental effort and perseverance.
The writing style is conversational and entertaining, and there are clear reasons given for everything. Meyers is definitely trying to teach you to fish rather than hand you a mackeral and send you on your way.
I really enjoyed that the book was in full color, and had a lot of visual aids - New Riders is great for this.
If you're interested in the possibilities of web design using CSS, this book is well worth the price of admission. |
Garo (MSL quote), USA
<2007-07-03 00:00>
"Eric Meyer on CSS" is one of the first and only books on CSS to take a real world and hands-on-teaching approach to CSS. You will learn CSS and how to apply it to real world situations, which helps to re-enforce what you are learning. This book will guide you through a series of well thought out projects that show you how CSS and can be used to solve problems. The book is in full-color, which makes it fun to read. Eric's writing style is very approachable and conversational, which makes you feel comfortable. His tips on browser bugs and gotchas are worth the price of the book alone!
You should have a solid understand of basic HTML and web design principles before you read this book. But once you are ready to learn CSS - make sure this is a book you don't pass up! In a market flooded with technical regurgitations and theoretical pontifications, it is so refreshing to see this kind of approach taken with a subject like CSS. There is just no better way to teach CSS!
As a fellow author and Web developer, reading this book was not only informative but very engaging and entertaining! This book should be part of every Web designer/developers curriculum. Do I have any complaints? Nope, I just wish there was MORE of it! |
Simon (MSL quote), USA
<2007-07-03 00:00>
Last year, I watched "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and I was amazed at the swordsmanship on display. Swords were no longer weapons, but extensions of arms - as if they were new appendages grown especially for the task. Eric Meyer can wield CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) in just the same way as those actors could wield swords. His level of understanding is exceptional and is only matched by perhaps half a dozen others.
What sets Eric apart from others is his ability to convey his magic to almost anyone. Authors with a decent knowledge of HTML will be completely comfortable with this book. Eric demonstrates how to take exsiting designs and make them look professional and sophisticated, without resorting to bloated markup packed with font tags and spacer images.
I got "Eric Meyer on CSS" for Christmas and spent much of the Christmas period reading it. I tackled the whole book initially without using a computer. Eric's writing style is conversational and amusing, putting the reader at ease immediately. I could follow each project without difficulty, eyes widening with every page. I am already pretty good at using CSS, but with each page I learned more. After finishing it, I went back and worked through the book with the computer, following each example and going through the various end-of-chapter experiments. Gaps in my knowledge were filled in and my understanding grew with each project.
Having finished the book completely, I am eager to begin experimenting on my own projects. "Eric Meyer on CSS" has left me excited about what can be achieved and I strongly recommend it to those that want to further enhance any existing knowledge of basic CSS. |
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-07-03 00:00>
If you are interested in learning about CSS, especially its power, you need this book. If you really gotta learn about CSS, you need this book. Of course it will get dog-earred from use and if purchased for a "corporate use" library, you may have to dust off your boxing gloves. I personally refuse to share!
Excellent resource. Do yourself a favor and work the examples throughout the book. Once you start with Chapter 1, you'll want to anyway. Usually I start these but don't finish. This one was different. I felt I had to finish - like a great novel you can't put down until you see "the end". |
View all 10 comments |
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