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The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks By Rachel Andrew ( SitePoint )
Release Date: 2007-08-14
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $39.95
Price: $26.37
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Product Description
The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks is a compilation of best practice solutions to the most challenging CSS problems. The second edition of this best-selling book, now in full color, has been completely revised and updated to cover the latest techniques and newer browsers, including Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7.
It's the most complete question-and-answer book on CSS, with over 100 tutorials that'll show you how to gain more control over the appearance of your web page, create sophisticated Web page navigation controls, design for today's alternative browsing devices including phones and screen readers, and much more.
The CSS code used to create each of the components is available for download and guaranteed to be simple, efficient and cross-browser compatible.
This book will show you how to:
Construct robust CSS layouts that work every time. Create sleek drop-down menus using only CSS. Build a professional tabbed navigation system. Replace image-based navigation with low-fat CSS lists. Design smarter, more usable CSS-flavored web forms. Use rounded corners minus the bloated HTML. Allow your visitors to select their preferred look and feel. Let the W3C validator do your debugging. Reduce the burden of site maintenance and updates. ... along with 92 other solutions to common questions and problems. The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks is ideal for Web designers who would like to add sparkle to their existing designs, as well as newcomers who want to become true CSS masters. The book can be read cover to cover, or referred to like a cookbook with 101 different recipies for your Website. It's written in an easy-to-follow, consistent format that's well illustrated with plenty of full color screenshots and code examples, providing quick visual cues.
What the Reviewers say: "This is likely the best book we've seen for extending the power of cascading style sheets... The book is an outstanding example of how a code-based, technical manual should be designed and presented... Anyone who uses CSS can benefit from this impressive volume." - The Kleper Report
"If you are looking for a practical, hands-on question-and-answer book The CSS Antghology is highly recommended. It is well designed in every respect: visually pleasing, content is well organised, and it is very well written." - PC Update
"Rachel Andrew has done people like me a huge favor by writing this revision... This is another book that I will not only use to expand my personal web development skills, but will be one that I expect I will refer to frequently as I venture further into more complex web page creation." - TCM Reviews
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 Truly "Essential" If You've Not Been Around the Block A Hundred Times ( jaredstein )
CSS is difficult to master, and most who have have done so over a period of years, through trial and error, and from picking up tips one by one from the community of practitioners. Rachel Andrew's CSS Anthology doesn't offer much for the CSS veterans (I found only 1 tip I didn't know), but it's is absolutely full of all the good stuff that we CSS authors treasure and, of course, USE on a daily basis. The best part? Most instances in this book follow Web standards--you won't find that to be true with many other CSS books.
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 So Far...Not Very Good
After reading two great Sitepoint books* cover to cover and returning to them again and again, I thought "The CSS Anthology" would be another good purchase.
Unfortunately, this book makes learning web design as frustrating as the other two books made it easy. I'm on the verge of returning it.
The writing is not as simple, clever or memorable (important in a How-to) as the other books. Instead, the author tends to complicate rather simple concepts and blur the lines between topics.
I'm at about an intermediate level with CSS. The few solutions here that aren't too basic are hopelessly complicated by bad writing. It is easy to waste a day trying to get something from this book to work, simply because the subject was not well presented.
Because "The CSS Anthology" is not designed to be read straight through- I find myself using internet tutorials to find the same information. Not only do the Internet solutions tend to work better, they're easier to find and easier to understand.
I'll probably try to get my money back. Skip this one from the Sitepoint library.
*"Build Your Own Websites the Right Way Using HTML & CSS" and "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design"- Both excellent for beginners
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Great Buy
For those of us who are beginners or intermediate programmers of CSS, I would recommend this book. From beginning use to advanced hints and tips, this book has something for everyone. Any book that helps me to learn even one item more than I already knew is a benefit to my library, and you can't beat Amazon.com for price!
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A Good Guide With Poor Planning ( valknut79 )
This book has some good examples, and the way that the author describes the code is very well done. I question the overall value of this book, though, because this book is designed with neither the beginner, nor the advanced user in mind.
Ms. Andrews begins her book by making an incredibly quick overview of how CSS works and what it's for, but by no means explains it in enough detail for a beginner to really catch on. As she progresses through the question and answer format, she will quickly lose whatever intended audience she thought she had: the first half of the book is painfully simple, the second half is too advanced for the beginners, and probably too basic for advanced users.
It is difficult to use the guide as a direct reference because of it's format...an unfortunate problem that comes of the way she chose to write this book.
While I do feel that this guide increased my knowledge of CSS, I can't say that the few little tricks I learned were necessarily worth the money I spent on the guide, and that serious users should consider another option.
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 Very helpful book ( therareformband )
I am a web designer by career. And when our company began moving into CSS, I thought I'd better find some good books. This one was fantastic. It's filled with a lot of examples and tricks that not only taught me about CSS at a level I could quickly grasp, but it also provided examples that I could actually pull and use in my projects.
I own other sitepoint books such as "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design" and "CSS the Ultimate Reference" and they are all fantastic. I'm beginning to think that sitepoint is a great source for knowledge. I recommnend this book highly.
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