The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web (Voices That Matter)

It's a good display of CSS designs, and it's good for giving you ideas. I found much of the text to be cheesy and repetitive, not unlike what you would stick in a history paper to reach the word count your teacher asked for. It suffers from an identity crisis that many web books do: It moves too fast for the beginner, and re-hashes the basics too much for the experienced. I'm in the latter...more

It's a good display of CSS designs, and it's good for giving you ideas. I found much of the text to be cheesy and repetitive, not unlike what you would stick in a history paper to reach the word count your teacher asked for. It suffers from an identity crisis that many web books do: It moves too fast for the beginner, and re-hashes the basics too much for the experienced. I'm in the latter camp, and my eyes start to glaze over when I read how to use a "background-image" or "border" property. Also, with many CSS books, it fails to acknowledge when compromises are necessary. There are times when it's just plain better to use JavaScript or tables. As a working web developer, you don't have the luxury(burden?) of creating 9 lines of CSS hacks to avoid using a little 3-cell table. Overall, I'm glad to have the book, but mostly for the eye candy rather than what it has to say.   hide