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Professional CSS: it's here!
After a long period of indecision, followed by a not-short-enough period of saving up some cents, I finally ordered Professional CSS from my usual bookshop – arrived yesterday in the mail –, kind of as an early Christmas a late birthday gift for myself. I'm not much of a buyer of technical books and most of what I know about webdesign I learned either reading/searching on the web or on my own. The previous book I had bought was Webdesign in a nutshell, from O'Reilly. It helped me getting started but, of course, it's more than dated at the moment.
I've been investigating all available books on webdesign and before going ahead and buy myself one I had to choose carefully because I can't afford all of them and you know how hard it is to leave a good book behind.
What I really wanted was a book that didn't give me a beginners view at CSS but showed me best practices and real-world case scenarios instead. I also wanted to learn more and more about CSS to be able to create visually appealing layouts yet do it in a short period of time, without having to loose too much time dealing with browser inconsistencies. Having a knowledge of those problems beforehand can help me shortening the time I spend laying out a webpage.
So, long story short, my options were:
Bulletproof Webdesign
by Dan Cederholm
Dan's latest book is one of the best when it comes down to page layout. From what I've seen in flickr accounts, blog posts, etc., the live color layout really stands out from the other regular technical books. It shows you how to create flexible websites using XHTML and deals with worst-case scenarios.
The Zen of CSS Design
by Dave Shea and Molly E. Holzschlag
The companion for CSS Zen Garden, the website. The book uses examples from the site's gallery to explain how to create beautiful layouts using CSS. Also comes with full color.
- Professional CSS
by Christopher Schmitt, Mark Trammell,
E. Marcotte, T. Dominey and D. Orchard
All these authors contributed with at least one chapter for this book. It's a book for those developers/designers who already understand XHTML and CSS at an intermediate or advanced level to help them learn how to create websites in a professional way. With several real-world case-studies, the authors share techniques used and talk about what they could have done better. Nice for learning best practices. More theory than the others.
The decision
As you already know, I ended up ordering Professional CSS mainly because it's the book I think will make me evolve more. I'm not excluding buying the other books – or at least one of them – mentioned here, but that only depends on the future. You can't have too much books, right?
Anyway, I'll let you guys know what I thought of the book after I take a good look at it. From occasional browsing I can rest assured I didn't do a bad choice. I could be missing out on lots of great goodies on other books, but for now, this will keep me occupied. :)
I'm sure some of you reading this already own any of these three books. I'd like to hear what you loved the most about them and what you didn't love so much. Thanks.
meechwings on sat, 3 dec 2005 14:36
cameroncaindesign on sat, 3 dec 2005 15:22
On the strength of that and the excellent reviews Bulletproof got, I bought that too - I haven't used it as much as WSS, but then I've learnt so much since.
Bulletproof has some great solutions to problems you will encounter if you design sites for other people (ie you can't change the spec 'cos life gets tough), and I expect to be calling upon it in upcoming projects, but so far it has just been a good read with a few 'ahh, I get it' tips.
By complete co-incidence, my sidebar design is almost identical to an example in Dan's new book... spooky...
andr3 on sat, 3 dec 2005 16:24
Yeah, I'm not aware of how old your reference is, nor how proficient you are with CSS, but it's always good to have updated references. ;) If I was starting with CSS now, I would probably get Dan's first book.My only problem with buying these books is that I don't want a book that focus on explaining the basics of CSS.But from what I've seen, this Professional CSS really takes it a bit further.
@Steve:
What do you mean by ? Don't you mean markup?
That would probably be my second choice, when it comes to CSS books right now. However, I'm curious to know the opinion from owners of Dave Shea's book. I tend to look at ZenGarden (site) more as an inspiration source than explaining css. I could be wrong though.
Btw, i like how you've designed your posts in CCCP. You're using some sort of replacement technique for the headers, aren't you?
cameroncaindesign on sun, 4 dec 2005 02:34
I meant that if you agree a specification with a client that includes how things will look and work, then something like IE bugs or float nonsense makes it hard to achieve. If it's your own site or not part of the spec, you can simply shift the technique to something that is easier, if not - reach for Bulletproof ;-)
Thanks for the compliment, I'm using a DTR (Dynamic Text Replacement) script for all h2 headings. The linked script needs a little tweak to work in Opera (whitespace between each image).
CCCP is a bit of an experimental site for me - I also vertically centre the text in the divs that form the 'postcards'. Vertically centred text is hard to achieve using CSS (easy with tables).
andr3 on sun, 4 dec 2005 08:25
Oh yes, vertical centered text has always been a pain. When there are no breaklines I usually use
line-heightto do that.meechwings on mon, 5 dec 2005 06:42
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