Migliorisi Design Blog

CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions (Paperback)
by Andy Budd (Author), Simon Collison (Author), Cameron Moll (Author)

Simply put:  CSS Mastery by Andy Budd (with contributions by Cameron Moll and Simon Collison) is a must have for anyone who is serious about web design!

I started reading this book with the notion that it would be nothing more than a simple review of things that I already knew.  While it did have a bit of information that was nothing new to me, it provided me with a wealth of new ideas and understanding.

The first thing that I noticed about this book is that it is written by one person, unlike a number of other books that are written by a number of authors all with different styles of coding.  It made it a simple and consistent read - great for someone who has a hard time finding the time to read!

Andy Budd starts off by going over some simple CSS selector syntax - something I am sure many of you are familiar with.  He also goes into detail about some advanced selectors and which browsers do not support them (and I am sure we can all guess which browsers are the ones that are lagging).  He talks about background images, image replacement techniques, and the downfalls of each of the techniques.

There are a few chapters about the Do's and Dont's of general styling - forms, links, lists, etc.  More importantly, he gives several examples how to combine CSS with HTML elements to create beautiful & clean interfaces, such as lists and forms. 

My favorite chapters were Layout, Hacks and Filters, and Bugs and Bug Fixing.  These three chapters taught me quite a bit.  I knew most of the things Andy was referring to, but after reading these chapters, I didn't just know, I actually understood the how's and why's.  The Layout chapter explained a few of the CSS mysteries - such as the Collapsing Margin, floating, and clearing. 

Hacks And Filters was even more intriguing.  It illustrated the process of building a CSS hack, step by step, ensuring that each browser rendered the content as desired.  The text went into detail, describing each line of the hacks, why they work, which browsers the affect, and how to combine them all to create a design that works everywhere. 

Bugs And Bug Fixing discusses some of the quirks found in different browsers.  Perhaps the most important part of this chapter was the information about IE's hasLayout property and how it affects the layout of a given element in the DOM.  Some of the bugs discussed here are the IE6 duplicate content bug, the IE peek-a-boo bug, and the IE double margin bug.  Sure, seems like most of this chapter is focused on IE - and for good reason.  IE has the most market share, and is therefore the most important browser to take into consideration when designing a website.

All in all, I'd say that this book was worth twice the sticker price.  CSS Mastery will teach you not just how to do something, but why you should do it and how it works.  In the end, it just makes you a better designer.

Please tell me of any other CSS books you would reccomend.