Tags: books
The CSS Anthology by Rachel Adrew
I picked this book because I have seen that other web designers are recommending it. To be honest I would not probably picked it in the book shop because the cover does not impress me a lot. It is obviously wrong to judge books on the base of their cover but that is the way my brain work naturally. But I try to fight it.
On the other hand, should not the book about design look attractive from outside? Even I know there is nothing the author can do about it because that is how it comes from publisher. Anyway I bought the book because I trust people who recommended it (funny think is that I have never met those people) and I have to say it was a very good decision. I have learned a lot from this book despite of the fact I have read couple of books about CSS before.
So what is this book about?
The book is about CSS as the cover says but not only about that. You can find here everything from text styling, images positioning & replacement, navigation, styling of tabular data, forms, different layout types and techniques up to browsers and devices support. You can find here information about the way professional developers produce their sites. The actual workflow and tools they use.
If you are new to CSS do not worry, you will find here all the necessary information about differences between IDs and Classes, how to style the links, how to define background images, how to define text that can be enlarged in any internet browser and so on and so on.
Structure of the book
As you can see from the names of the chapters the books content is divided into the chapters where each of them answers one particular question. There is more then 100 of them. I think it is very good idea to name your chapters with questions. These are the exact questions which I ask myself during the development process.
More importantly whenever you have a problem and looking for a solution you can just simply go true the Table of content and find the question you are asking yourself. In most of the cases you will find it in this book.
What do I find very interesting ?
The stuff I have not find in other books. Chapters with these names:
- I only have access to one operating system. How can I test in more of these browsers?
- Is there a service that can show me how my site looks in various browsers?
- Can I install multiple versions of Internet Explorer in Windows?
- How do I test my stile in a text-only browser
- How do I test my site in a screen reader?
- How do I create print style sheet?
- How do I create style sheet switcher?
Summary
The books is really well written and consist of very useful stuff. I will definitely use it on a daily bases so it can not go far from my table. Actually after I finished reading this book I found the cover somehow more interesting. So for the future I have to be really more careful with first judgments. :o) Have you read the book? What are your opinions?
