A 'must' for any CSS or web programmer's collection
The third updated edition of CSS Cookbook is a winner, offering recipes showing how to customize a solution to meet web design and programming needs. Hundreds of recipe examples show how to format web pages and pack in code samples and details on special effects and enhancements. A 'must' for any CSS or web programmer's collection.
Web Design
I couldn't give it a five star as I have not gone through the entire book, but Amazon would not quit sending these Make A Review emails so here I am. I do like the book and what I've read so far is top notch. Lots of help, but this is not a beginner book. You need some help with learning CSS before picking this one up. That said I would recommend it as a useful tool if you are into making web sites and pages.
Excellent for bringing HTML Old Timers up to speed with CSS
I have been designing and building HTML pages since mid-1994 and I am amazed at how much coding has changed in the past 15 years.
Back then building websites was pretty straight forward, you used tables to create columns and filled them up with text and graphics. Web designs were very basic, fixed width was the norm and there was not much of a difference between the two most popular browsers of the era, Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer 3.0.
Starting in the early 2000s, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) dramatically changed web design and page coding. CSS enabled designers and coders to build more attractive and interesting websites. However, coding pages and then making them work in various browsers - like IE 6, IE 7, IE 8, Mozilla 2.5, Mozilla 3.0 and Chrome - became far more challenging than just laying out tables. Making the learning curve even steeper was the popularity of JavaScript and more recently AJAX, which is the combination of CSS and JavaScript.
Many "old-time" coders tried to stick with table-based layouts, but it was easy to see that basic HTML would not longer cut it and CSS was the way to go. I stopped using tables and educated myself on how to use CSS.
In the early 2000s, I purchased several CSS books, including the first edition of CSS Cookbook. That book turned out to be the most useful because O'Reilly's "Cookbook " format is based on question and answer rather than the other CSS books, which focused on basic tutorials.
With the CSS Cookbook, I was able to look up "How to build a two column page," which would provide me with sample code as opposed to going through a basic CSS tutorial. I was able to learn quickly.
I was happy to discover that the third edition of CSS Cookbook has come up and it has been completely updated with how to create rounded corners with JavaScript and using Lightbox to display images as well as a chapter on how to use JQuery. It will also provide you with the basic CSS instructions on how to make one, two and three column layouts and how to set up floats.
If you are new to CSS, you should consider buying another CSS book, but if you know basic HTML and CSS and want to bring your skills up to the next level, I highly recommend reading this book.
Not for Beginners
Let's get right to it: This book is great but it's not - I repeat - it's not for beginners. You better be comfortable with CSS or you'll simply be wasting your money. The author frequently uses something completely new then introduces the item further in the book. Other times no explanation is given. I've to constantly search [...] just to understand what the author is trying to explain. He throws out codes with no idea how to use it. I was forced to return the book.
cook
The book came quickly. It has many code examples of specific styling issues. I just wish it was a huge book, with many more examples!
(33 reviews)
