Virtual Assistant Forums | Work from Home

dognose · #1 (**permalink**) 02-01-2010

CSS, The Missing Manual
The book that should have been in the box
by David Sawyer McFarland

When I began to design my web site, I used HTML only. It was a cumbersome process. A few small changes in formatting resulted in several minutes of typing. Then I discovered the site, CSS, Zen Garden. Seeing what a behemoth my own HTML file was becoming, I was greatly impressed by the simplicity and readability of the HTML and CSS files of these beautiful web designs. I decided to learn CSS before going any further with my own design. I've always liked the O'Reilly books and in a previous job one of the "Missing Manual" series was extremely helpful. That experience and the end of chapter tutorials, were the significant factors in choosing this book.

You will learn the fundamentals of CSS working through this book. If you follow it up with designing a web site, your skill set will be nicely upgraded! There are some prerequisites. First, you'll need a text editor - Notepad is fine. Second, since CSS is the formatting instruction for HTML elements, some HTML knowledge is required. Lastly, to complete the tutorials that are at the end of the chapters, you'll need to download the project files from the web location noted in the book's introduction.

The first section of the book covers the basics of CSS. In Chapter 1, the author briefly goes over HTML, including the bare bones HTML that is required for every web page. He discusses the evolution of HTML, which sheds light on why HTML is so bulky to format. He explains that with CSS, we can put HTML back into its original role of providing structure to our document, and do the formatting in CSS. In Chapter 2 we create our first style sheets and link them to our HTML document.

Chapters 3, 4 and 5 are the guts of CSS: selectors, inheritance and the cascade. Even as I worked through the book, I found myself re-visiting these critical chapters. Your understanding of these concepts will be greatly enhanced as you continue to work through the book.

The next section, chapters 6-10, covers the fun stuff - formatting! Text, borders, graphics, navigation, tables and forms, all are covered. When you are finished with this section, you will know how to create appealing and functional web elements. The box model is covered in detail and other projects include a photo gallery, a web form, and a navigation bar that has "you are here" functionality.

The following section includes three chapters, 11-13, that cover page layout. Combining the use of the div tag with properties such as float, we see how much control CSS gives us over page layout. Using positioning properties, we can give a sense of depth to our web pages. It is in this section that we really start to see the power and flexibility of using CSS for design and layout.

The final section covers advanced CSS topics. Because many people like to print web content to read elsewhere, chapter 14 covers CSS for the printed page. A 'media' style sheet can be created to eliminate elements not needed on hardcopy, such as banners and navigation bars. In chapter 15 the author discusses establishing good CSS habits, including how to organize your CSS document and commenting your code. In the final chapter, we get a peek into the future and discover what's in store with CSS 3.

In addition, there are three very nice appendices, CSS Property Reference, CSS in Dreamweaver CS4, and CSS Resources. The first is a handy reference to the most popular CSS properties. The second discusses how to use Dreamweaver CS4's CSS features. And the third is a list of other online resources related to CSS.

I believe that if you work through this book, completing all of the tutorials, and you design a site on your own, no matter how simple, you will be a solid intermediate user of CSS when you are finished. The task of designing your own site, outside of a tutorial, is when you will really nail down your new CSS knowledge!

Pros

1. If you complete all the tutorials, you'll have a nice library of concise projects that feature formatting key elements and page layout using just CSS and HTML.

2. There are a number of references to other online tools and sites throughout the text in addition to the great list in Appendix C.

Cons

1. There is some redundancy in the snippets of code, especially in the beginning of the book.

Overall, Laserdog gives this book three wags of the tail - the highest possible rating!

The second edition of this book was published in 2009 and has 560 pages. The price of the book is $23.09 and can be purchased on Amazon.

Click here to buy the book!

Do you have any thoughts, queries, or feedback on CSS, The Missing Manual? Share your comments or questions by replying directly to this thread!

Tess · #2 (**permalink**) 02-02-2010

I really appreciated learning more about this title Lezly, thanks for taking the time to share such a detailed review with us.

It sounds like this is a great starter book for anyone looking to learn how to create websites using CSS [and is there really any other way to do it anymore?

]

OrganizedAssistant · #3 (**permalink**) 04-08-2010

After using FrontPage for many years, I wanted a better way to design websites, so I bought CSS: The Missing Manual and went through it chapter by chapter. I was really pleased at how clearly it explained everything I needed to know. Knowing CSS was also useful when I began working with WordPress a couple of years later, as I can now easily customize designs.

This is probably the second most important book in my library, after my dictionary!

WordsmithVA · #4 (**permalink**) 05-24-2010

Thank you for a helpful review. Learning CSS is on my to do list for the near future!

Off~Site Secretary · #5 (**permalink**) 06-13-2010

The Missing Manual series are usually really informative. Did not realize there was one for CSS.... will need to look into it when I get more familiar with web design. I am still very much at the baby step phase