Style Sheets Books

Mulder's book on style sheets is the house reference for CSS. Everything is well organized and lends itself naturally to the experienced designer. Not content with just explaining the context and syntax of the language, Mulder provides insightful compatibility information as well, helping you use the proper tags for cross-platform development. I look forward to more books by this author (how 'bout a good reference for XML?)

Without question, the best resource on CSS to be found. Finally, web designers can indent and turn off link underlines with CSS code rather than fancy .gif tricks and other workarounds. I bought this book before CSS was ever really implemented, and it works as well today as it did then. As CSS-enabled browsers become the standard, this book will be even more invaluable. Also covers CSS level two, which is just now becoming standardized in the 5.0 browsers. Buy this book!

This is a great book but there is no CD that is advertised and the companion website no longer exsists. I try and make a point to buy computer books that come with one or the other or both. If someone knows of a new URL that accompanies this book please let me know.

I went into this book knowing almost nothing about style-sheets. Before I had to copy other people's code. I read the book in about three-days and after that I could fluently write style-shhets without the book!

I guess I goofed when I ordered it. I'm a web designer and I should have known that the 1997 publish date would make this book essentially useless. The book, in 1997 terms, is just fine. The problem is, is that it's mainly good as a historical reference in 1999. I'm surprised it's in print. CSS is something we should all learn, but all the references to what might be coming in Internet Explorer 4 made me a little crazy. In 1997 this book should probably have 5 stars. In 1999, 3 is generous. MUCH more useful are the little CSS sections in HTML, The Definitive Guide, 3rd ed. (Musciano & Kennedy, from O'Reilly) and Web Design in a Nutshell (Jennifer Niederst, also O'Reilly). Sorry. I sent this one back to Amazon.com.

Very great book, I learned so quickly and throughoghly. I'm reccomending this book to everyone who wants to learn CSS. It's worth the money, not only as a learning tool, but as a quick reference. Really, im not joking, buy this book!

This book was quite well laid out, and will quickly get you up to speed in understanding and using cascading style sheets. Not in-depth, but very good for an introduction. Could concentrate a bit more on cross-browser compatibility, but well above the standard fare.

The ten minute series provides an excellent way to quickly utilize todays standards and software. That trend continues here

Not sure where "10 minute guide" came from, nor the note on the cover "Embed style sheets with the Active X Control Pad," but nonetheless a good overview of style sheets for those comfortable with HTML.

this is a good book for the beginner who likes a lot of repetition and hand holding. there is A LOT of overviews, introductions, transitions, summations, and examples to reinforce the concepts being taught. as you might guess, there is A LOT of overlap when the writer and/or editor chooses this type of writing style.

i did learn a lot from reading it, and i did retain the information. however, i might bravely suggest that i could have done this anyway, even if the book contained prodigiously less reiteration.

i would have unreservedly given the book at least 4 stars if it had been more condensed. but that's how bad the repetition was in this book. it got pretty exhausting at times, for the reader.

for a future edition, i would recommend to the writer and/or editor to cut out all of the needless verbosity.

I've read several books about CSS over the last three or four years, but this book has to be the most complete I've seen. Not only does Mr. York obviously know this material quite extensively, he does it in a way that makes total sense. And this book is not just for beginning web developers either, there's quite a bit of information that more experienced developers can learn about. I also liked the various code examples in color. It helps to make the specific code stand out much more when it's in a different color than the code around it. This of course helps the reader to understand and remember it more effectively.

The author also takes time to talk about the differences in browsers and how each one presents the code. There are few things more aggravating to a web developer than having to deal with the various quirks of each browser. What looks great in IE may not look so hot in Firefox or Safari. And vice versa. The author cites various examples of this throughout the book, as well as "workarounds" for each "issue."

Another thing that makes this book so enjoyable is how the author goes through step by step instructions on how to achieve a particular style. This is one way to show how styles affect presentation.

It's amazing how powerful CSS has become over the last few years. There's a lot you can do with styles and Mr York has shown all web developers ways we can take advantage of this power.

This book is what it's intend to be: an excellent book for CSS beginners. Good sequence of chapters, good examples, and the wellcome surprise of color sintax and screen pictures.
Congratulations to Wrox, and I expect that other books could be printed with same quality presentation.

When searching for a technical manual, I usually am able to narrow the field down to just 2 or 3 that together will cover my needs.

I sat down with a stack of about 15 books on CSS, including the most popular listed on Amazon, and started thumbing through them to evaluate their content, organization, reference material, indexing, etc. I eliminated several books, and had a tall stack of possible books to one side when I opened this book. I was first struck by the simple beauty of the book layout. The material in this book is presented in an exceptionally pleasing manner, easy to read, and well punctuated with examples and graphics. Code is colorcoded so the reader can easily pick out the portions being described in the text, and followed by color photos of the actual screens resulting from the code.

The book is logically organized and includes the best and most comprehensive reference section of all the books I considered.

The topics are easy to read and clearly presented. There are exercises to do which allow the reader to actually test-drive the techniques described and accompanying code files are available on the website to go along with the book.

I was surprised to find one book that contained everything that I look for in a technical manual. Hurray! I didn't have to buy 2 or 3 books to cover all the bases.

Thank you Richard York.

It must be very hard to pack the perfect reference about CSS in a small book that you can fit in your pocket. But this Pocket Reference about CSS by Web legend Eric A. Meyer himself is very close to being perfect.

The information on it is impeccable and serves as a great resource for those who what they are looking for (think of it as a dictionary). However, if you are clueless about CSS and want to learn from scratch, look elsewhere (his title CSS Web Site Design Hands on Training (Hands-On Training) is a very good starting point) as there are no concessions made her for newbies nor any illustrations to help you visualize the impact that changing things in a CSS expression can have.

Exactly what I was looking for - all the codes needed for CSS at my fingertips, in a compact, easy to carry size. Great reference!

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the W3C standard for the visual presentation of web pages, although it can be used in other situations too. The book begins with a short introduction to the basic concepts of CSS. What follows is an alphabetical reference to all CSS2.1 selectors, and finally an alphabetical reference to all CSS2.1 properties. This is a good handy reference once you understand CSS, but I wouldn't advise it as a sole source for novices. Instead, try "CSS: The Definitive Guide" in its latest edition for a very good all-round tutorial and reference. This book is for those occasions when you don't have time to go digging through the much larger "Definitive Guide" for short answers to questions. The table of contents is not currently shown for this book in the product description, so I show that next:

Chapter 1. CSS Pocket Reference
Section 1.1. Conventions Used in This Book
Section 1.2. Safari Books Online
Section 1.3. Adding Styles to HTML and XHTML
Section 1.4. Rule Structure
Section 1.5. Style Precedence
Section 1.6. Element Classification
Section 1.7. Element Display Roles
Section 1.8. Basic Visual Layout
Section 1.9. Floating Rules
Section 1.10. Positioning Rules
Section 1.11. Table Layout
Section 1.12. Values
Section 1.13. Selectors
Section 1.14. Pseudo-Classes and Pseudo-Elements
Section 1.15. Property Reference
Section 1.16. Tables
Section 1.17. Paged Media
Section 1.18. Dropped from CSS2.1
Section 1.19. Visual Styles
Section 1.20. Paged Media
Section 1.21. Aural Styles
Index

For a small book, CSS Pocket Reference packs a lot of information.

The author, Eric A. Meyer, thoughtfully provides a basic CSS primer in the first 33 pages of the reference.

A must have, go anywhere, reference for every web page author/designer.

If you want a comprehensive, well written and thorough CSS reference, this is the ultimate. Really well done explanations. I tis agreat book to have if you wrestle with the ins and outs of CSS

I'm not familiar with Mr. O'Brien's work, but I've been a fan of Mr. Olssen's blog and website for about a year. I dare to say that he is the most articulate writer on the subject of CSS that I have experienced so far. His explanation, on his blog archives, of CSS positioning and page layout is one of the best, and most succinct, on the subject that I have found.

So, when I saw the pre-announcement of this book I immediately ordered a copy. Since recieving and using the book I am not dissappointed. The book is a thorough "reference" treatment of all aspects of CSS. I keep it close by while working on websites (along with a copy of "The Ultimate HTML Reference").

A reference guide. Sure there are some great tips and explanations regarding CSS, but all in all, it's just a reference guide. All be it very comprehensive. It has references to CSS selectors that are not even available in CSS 2.1 yet, actually for CSS 3, but that hasn't been accepted by the W3C at the time of the book's writing.

I have become a big fan of the Sitepoint books. I own, "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design" and "The CSS Anthology". There are other books by Sitepoint that I will be buying.

This reference does help, if you forget what certain selectors are used for, or if you need a selector to help with your development.

I wish it did provide more insight into tips on how to use the selectors with examples. Which there aren't many of them. But, I guess that's what the other books are for.

Think of this as a dictionary for CSS.

'The Ultimate CSS Reference' is exactly as the title says. A comprehensive REFERENCE for CSS styling. This book is not (NOT) a learning book or an example full book, rather a reference to using CSS. If you use CSS on a daily basis and need such a tool this is a good resource to have. My only gripe is that I don't know why the publishers decided to put this out as a hardcover. The costs could have been kept down and likely more sales would have been made if this had been released as a softcover like most of the other sitepoint books.

sitepoint has long been my favorite web publisher of books and nothing has changed with this release. A solid release albeit a different one from what has been released in the past.

***** RECOMMENDED

OK, so you really know that you need to move on to Style Sheets and the new version of HTML. But you've put it off. The books on XHTML and CSS are long and tedious, and written for beginners so they contain a lot of fluff that you already know.

This book is different. It starts with the presumption that you are already an HTML programmer. In fact you are probably running a site that has a few hundred pages on line and you don't want to go redo the whole thing. This book starts with a fictional web site that uses good HTML 4.0 as was proper in the late 1990's. It's a typical site with lots of tables within tables as was the style of the day.

The first thing that he does is go re-write the HTML into XHTML, removing the commands that handle the style of the presentation. Going to XHMTL is a pretty straightford thing, but without the style aspects you have a pretty dull page.

Second he says let's use CSS to make the page pretty once again. Since you've seen the pages. And you've looked at the HTML that generated them, the task is a conversion, not a design the page problem. This probably matches your real problem a lot better than the way most books cover the subject.

Third is the first word in the title: Accessible. There are now laws coming into effect that say a web site should be accessible to people with various disabilities. What does this mean, and how must you think about page design to make the site accessible?

Finally there is a chapter on what's coming. The web is dynamic and the rules are still changing. This chapter covers the things that are being considered, designed, or discussed about in the committees that make the rules. This is what you will be having to learn next.

This book not only explains how to do write in XHTML and CSS but it tells you why the W3C has changed its standards and why you should write in these two recommendations. It gives you thoroughly explained examples, and explains it in different ways to make you sure that you get it in case you didn't the first time.

This is an easy book to read but it takes some time as it educates you about related topics that you might want to know about.

Not only do you get to learn XHTML and CSS but you also get to update a website the publisher provides to put your new skills to practice and make sure you get it in your head. It also makes a good reference book as it explains CSS properties in detail and their values.

Now adays accesibility is a key tool for websites and that's what you'll learn at the end of the book.

I recommend this book to anyone who already knows HTML and has written websites in HTML (if you dont, dont buy this book to start with) that is willing to take their skills to the next level.

I think the author has done a good job in writing a book that highlights the issues of accessibility - an enormous topic. With eyesight being amongst comon 'issues' people have, the ability to magnify a page is important - guess what I need to be able to do?

Unfortunately, the finished site does not magnify without the page objects loosing there relative positioning to one another. This makes the page look like a scambled jig saw puzzle. I tested in Firefox 1 and the 1.5 beta version. IE 6 limits what you can do with magnification, so ive stopped using it. Opera magnifys beautifully.

I have tried raising the question as to whether this is an issue with the underlying code that the book promotes or is it a browser issue? No response (over a month at time of writing this) from publisher other than to confirm that the forum is 'live'.Really.

Im disappointed and can only rate as 3.

This cards really are quite beautifully printed, on good thick stock paper and have tons of great material. The color information is not quite as relevant now that using web-safe colors isn't a big deal, but this book has so much other great information, particularly if you do coding work and need the Javascript, DOM and RegEx guides. The CSS guide is also my favorite quick-reference sheet for doing style work. The only thing I don't particularly care for is how the JS and RegEx guides have "assert()" around most of the statements. While I understand from a programming standpoint this is more correct in terms of it being a "test" statement, it reduces the readability of what is really just a guide, not an actual programming construct. But that's a fairly minor nit, overall this is highly-recommended, go find yourself a copy!

Lots of information packed into this spiral bound set of 5 laminated 8.5 x 11 inch cards. You won't need as many reference books, as most of the frequently used items can be found in this set. The color chart is a must have. Printed in a very small but crisp font. Not as well made a previous sets from this publisher, but still good if you're seriously into web development.

Anyone who regularly finds themselves looking up syntax for an HTML tag, CSS Style, and/or Javascript statement in a book (e.g. check index and then flip to page) will like this VisiBone booklet because it will save you time. In fact, I hardly look in my books any more for this type of info -- a quick lookup in this booklet is all I need. There is also other helpful info in the book besides just syntax, for example, if an HTML tag has an equivalent Style, it will tell you that next to the HTML tag. There is a lot of detail here in just a few pages and the color format is very readable; it's like a portable reference library for client developers -- great for coding on the road because of its portability.

The Web Design CD Bookshelf CD-ROM by O'Reilly, Associates has received a "BEST BOOK for 2002" award by readers of the Design & Publishing Center, the Editors of DT&G Magazine and the Design-Bookshelf.com.

Need we say more.

The "6 Bestselling Books on a CD-ROM" on the cover looks impressive, but dig into the info contained on the CD and it begins to look a lot less so.

Some of these titles are definitely looking a bit long-in-the-tooth ("Information Architecture for the World Wide Web" was published back in early 1998, and the "Cascading Style Sheets" title is looking a lot less "definitive" in the two years since it first came out). In fact, with the sole exception of the book included with this CD pack, all of the books are at least a year old, limiting their usefulness. Can you say "retread"?

The ActionScript title is good but I would have preferred a more generally-applicable book instead, like, say O'Reilly's recent book on JavaScript...

Still, having all of this info at your fingertips in a CD-ROM format is genuinely useful -- the search feature is fast and accurate -- more so than you're likely to get when looking up the same keyword on a major search engine. So far I've found the XHTML title and the Web Design in a Nutshell (which is the "book" included in this package) the most-referenced titles, the latter in particular an excellent (and relatively recent) publication.

The Web Design CD Bookshelf: Version 1.0 contains six different, complete guides that, taken together, cover everything anyone needs to know about the art of web design. Novice web designers and experienced professionals alike will appreciate being able to quickly look up answers to the most harrowing difficulties at a few clicks of the mouse. The CD-ROM includes the complete text of Web Design in a Nutshell 2nd Edition; HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide 4th Edition; Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide; ActionScript: The Definitive Guide; Information Architecture for the World Wide Web; and Designing Web Audio: RealAudio, MP3, Flash, and Beatnik. Truly the definitive compendium about web design, and the perfect reference for anyone seeking create or improve their own website. The system requirements for The Web Design CD Bookshelf: Version 1.0 are a browser software such as Netscape Communicator or Internet Explorer supporting HTML, and to support the search engine, a Java-enabled browser supporting Java version 1.1.2 or later.

This book is full of well-known (and some not-so-well-known) cinematic scores, such as "Eye of the Tiger" from Rocky, "Hedwig's Theme" from the Harry Potter movies, and "As Time Goes By" from Casablanca. The pieces are challenging--definitely not for a beginner--but can be sightread relatively easily and are a lot of fun to play. For someone who wants some fun, stirring music to play, it's a great bargain.

Piano recital crowds can be an unruly bunch.

Look at it from their perspective: forced to sit on folding metal chairs, usually in a church's rec-room on a Saturday, listening to semi-skilled seventh-graders bungle their way through countless renditions of "Greensleeves" and AM radio-style feel-good tunes.

When it's your turn on the bench, blow them through the back wall with startling adaptations of popular Hollywood film songs!

You might not think that an instrumental version of Huey Lewis' song from "Back to the Future" would be something people would enjoy, but you would be WRONG! "That's the Power of Love!"

And you can't even imagine the applause you'll receive if you double-up for a medley of Aerosmith's obscure, underplayed song from "Armageddon" and "Somewhere Out There" from the Fievel movie.

Lull them into a stupor with the repetitive "Harry Potter" jingle, then make them shaken, not stirred, when you crank into some 007 action!

Now then, how to close out the show? Sting always likes to leave his audience on a subdued note (hence his tendency to play "Fragile" for the encore), so you may want to follow this philosophy by playing the song from "Lord of the Rings" (even though it's not the boring one by Enya). Or, you can leave 'em on their feet clapping with some old-school '70s action: "Stayin' Alive, Stayin' Alive" ah ah ah ah "Stayin' Aliiiii-iiiiii-iiiiiiiiiiiii-iiiive"!

NOTE: "Axel F," the "Jaws" theme, and that keyboard-thing from "Top Gun" are not included, because everybody already knows how to play them.

This book will also come in handy if one of the weird girls in your class makes a misguided effort to regale high-school students with her stirring performance of "Wind Beneath My Wings" and asks you to play the accompaniment.

I am new to HTML/XHTML and wanted a definitive reference book that told me about EVERY HTML tag - and exactly what were and weren't the correct ways to use them. After buying and reading about 5 other similar books, I finally got to this one and it is exactly right. All the other books cover useful snippets here and there, but they aren't exhaustive.

Note that this book isn't good for learning the basics. Rather, it is useful reference once you know the basics and need a source that tells you authoritatively that this such and such tag (e.g., 'p') does or doesn't support such and such attribute (e.g., 'padding') - fyi, it doesn't, except thru the 'style' attribute.

If that's what you need, then this is what you should buy.

AMAZON, SHAME ON YOU!!!!! You should state what edition and the date copyrighted in the book information and indicate whether there are newer editions.

Watch out. Though Amazon has it covered by the "look inside", the book entitled only HTML is the 3rd edition of a book that is in it's sixth Edition. Amazon has combined all the reviews for all the editions. This should not be done!!!!!!! I have always felt comfortable buying from Amazon, no longer. I did have a seller (ordered through Amazon)send me this edition for the full price of the 6th. He got the sixth to me, but it took my time to get it corrected. The 3rd edition is probably not even worth the $10 for the used edition, but is certainly not worth the $20 for the new. Don't be fooled! I can't believe Amazon is stooping to this sort of a con. The most serious problem is that much of what you learn in this edition is being put out to pasture in the next 5 years.


There is a World Wide Consortium that is trying to standardize language and browswers. HTML is being replace in the interim with XHTML and eventually XML. A new, more powerful, formating language, CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, is replacing any formating in HTML.

Many of the reviews you see are for the 6th edition. It does have errors (it doesn't stick to the more stringent XHTML as it should, and the redundancy is annoying. Castro's is annoying in that she sectionalizes the code and it's not clear at first what she's doing. I haven't yet seen the others that are offered.

Don't make the mistake of thinking this book will teach you how to code web pages using HTML and CSS. This is a reference manual that exhaustively discusses the mechanics of coding web pages, but it doesn't walk you through the process step by step. For that, I recommend O'Reilly's "Head First: HTML with CSS & XHTML." The benefit of this book is that it covers every aspect of HTML and CSS, including some which the W3 consortium has approved but no browser yet supports. It's best as a reference book for those already familiar with web page coding. It's full of surprises and "I didn't know I could do that!" moments, given its comprehensiveness.

I have the 3rd edition and use it most everyday in my job. I figured it would be a bit outdated so I bought this latest version. The new version is essentially the exact same as the old version and I feel like I wasted my money. It's also missing the handy quick reference the older version had. However, if you don't have an earlier version, I would definitely recommend it. It's indispensable.

I wanted a complete reference & guide to html/xhtml and that's what I got. I didn't want to be ignorant about any features. I didn't want to be left in the dark about anything. This book has all the info I wanted, and much more. In fact in a way it has too much info. It has info about tags, attributes, and other features that are obsolete, deprecated, or not supported by any browsers. You can skip over those rather than slogging your way through every word in the book. Maybe it's just me, but one downside to this book for me is that the writing style tends to be convoluted, verbose, and somewhat boring. I had some difficulty staying focused and concentrating on this book. But since it fulfilled the reason I got this book, I still give it 5 stars. So if you're looking for a complete book, don't worry, it's complete.